Hi Everyone!!!! Sorry it took me SO long to update! Our precious Lucas Jae was born on 1/26/2011 at 10:17am. He weighed in at 7 lb 7 oz and measured 21 inches long. I have a LOT I want to share including lots of pics of our sweet son but will start with the birth.
I went in for my 40 week appointment on Tuesday 1/25/2011 (a day after my due date) and had an ultrasound done to check the size of Lucas and to see how much fluid was around him (as you go past your due date you run the risk of the fluid getting too low which can be very dangerous for the baby and in extreme cases can cause still birth). The ultrasound estimated his weight to be 8 lb 4 oz but doc said this is give or take a pound. The ultrasound also showed that the fluid around him was in fact low :( which really scared me... doc asked if I was still feeling him move which I was - all the time. He has always been extremely active and that never changed. He still wanted to hook me up to a monitor to track Lucas' movements for about a half hour. As I suspected the monitor showed that I had a wild monkey inside me which was reassuring to both me and doc. However, he didn't see any point in keeping Lucas in any longer since the more time he spent in my belly the more detrimental it would be for him. When he said this I just wanted to get him out ASAP so my baby could be safe in my arms. I had REALLY not wanted to be induced but more importantly I wanted my baby healthy so I was definitely not opposing the doc's recommendation to move forward with it. The hospital didn't have any beds available at the time but were going to call me as soon as one was free - so I called Doug at work and shared the news and told him he should probably come home since we were going to have our baby :).. I was so scared and nervous and spent some time crying just because this wasn't how I envisioned it all happening - but I tried to keep my eye on the prize and that was that our son would soon be here in our arms. By the time I got home and had a quick snack the hospital called and said they were ready for me.. so I quickly double checked my hospital bag and we were off..
Once we got settled at the hospital they decided to give me a cervix ripener instead of starting me on the Pitocin in hopes that it would a) put me in labor on its own or b) make the process once they gave me the Pitocin much quicker and easier... well they gave it to me at around 2pm I believe (it was supposed to stay in for 12 hours) and by 9pm my water broke on its own (which I will say is the WIERDEST thing in the WORLD).. the instant my water broke I went into labor and started having horrifically painful contractions every few minutes. At this point my mind was not made up on whether I would get an epidural or not as I wanted to see how things went.. well after a couple hours of laboring with no drugs I was beginning to contemplate hurling myself out the window and in front of a semi.. so this is when I requested to bring on the drugs!!! Now I knew it wasn't certain whether an epidural would work for me because of my back (as most of you know my spine is fused from my scoliosis surgery) but the anesthesiologist was willing to give it a shot. All I could do was pray as I didn't think I would survive the process without it.. Doug was praying too!!! When they were giving me the epi we almost lost Doug! LOL! He had been doing SOO great but once he saw everything (he was holding me while they did it) he lost all coloring and was told to drink some juice and sit down. :) I don't blame him though.. I'm sure it looked brutal and plus they had to go in a few different places with the needle to get it in a spot that would work, which ended up being much lower than where they usually go in due to the location of the rods in my back.. Once they finally got the epidural in I just waited and prayed for it to start working.. I would say within 10 minutes my legs were numb but unfortunately my abdomen was not.. after several hours of increasing the dosage again and again it FINALLY numbed my abdomen and contractions. The drugs had a really hard time traveling up to numb the appropriate place due to how low they had to go in and also the slight curvature that was still in my spine.. so once they finally got it working I had so much drugs in me that I felt like a paraplegic! The nurse would come in to check on me and just laugh because I'd have one leg dangling off the bed and had no idea! Definitely a bizarre feeling but it was better than those devilish contractions!!! So I continued to labor through the night and was able to doze off a bit thanks to the wonderful, life saving epidural.. but once I got closer to delivery they decided to take my epidural dose down to 50% so that I could slightly feel my contractions to push.. well by the time I was ready to push I could feel my contractions 100% and was still numb as ever in my legs.. not ideal but could have been worse! I ended up pushing for close to an hour and half and it was definitely brutal.. more so because with every push I would get nauseous and sick.. but Doug was by my side the entire time and was an amazing coach - he definitely gave me the strength and motivation that I so needed. Right before Lucas was born my mom came running in :) - she ran in saying "sorry, sorry, I just couldn't wait out there anymore and not know what is going on in here!" LOL.. I just told her that it was okay and to "STAND BY MY HEAD!" LOL.. she did and so both her and Doug got to witness our precious baby being born. It was truly one of the most amazing and special moments I have ever experienced in my life.. there are no words. When they placed Lucas Jae on my chest I was so in love with him I could barely comprehend it.. and his daddy's eyes were filled with so much love and amazement it was overwhelming. :)
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