Happy Birthday Noah!

41 weeks and 1 day - I woke up at 2:30 am with contractions...woo hoo! They were productive and hurt which is exactly what I was waiting for. I am SO glad I was able to go into labor on my own instead of waiting for my induction. My body must have known the threat was in the air :) Here is a picture of us on the way to the hospital, nice and HUGE!


I spend some time hanging out both in bed and on the couch until about 5:30 when I woke up Jordan. I found a handy "contraction counter" website that would track how long/how far apart without much effort. They were never really all that consistent...which we noticed during hard labor as well! Jordan was really excited and stayed awake with me, looking over my chart to see if it was time to think about going in to the hospital. I wanted to do a lot of labor at home since its much more comfortable than the hospital bed with IV's etc. We finally started getting ready around 9am (easier said than done when you are trying to put makeup on/pack and have to stop every 3 minutes for a minute long contraction!). We finally headed off to the hospital around 10am. I got checked in at triage and was a whopping 5cm! I was a keep! I was really concerned I would be turned back home...and not sure how I couldn't handle contractions like this if I was only a 2 or a 3...but they took me :)

One in our room we got settled and I got an IV with penicillin. I tested positive for GBS (group B strep?) that is apparently found in about 40% of pregnant women and is not harmful to me, but harmful to the baby. So penicillin it was...and boy did it HURT. It burned/stung/etc. the entire time the IV was in. It was literally worse to me than my contractions. I would have been happy with an epidural for my arm if it was available! Eventually I decided to get fentenol (?) which was supposed to take the edge off and put in through my IV. It made me really overheated and dizzy and more of a state of blah than actually taking the pain away. I was checked again after a few hours and was 7cm so decided to get the epidural. At least it would get me off the fentenol and I had proven to myself that I could make it through contractions and labor - it was time to get comfortable! As soon as the epidural was in place and the fentenol was stopped I felt better. My head was clear, my temperature was back to normal and I felt much more normal (and I could feel my legs they were just tingly and they wouldn't let me get up just in case).

I was checked again around 3pm and was ready to push! The Dr. came to break my water to get things started. Our nurse was great and helped me through what to do but Noah was pretty stubborn, it took him quite a while! I pushed for a good 2 hours before I started to get tingly all over...the nurse immediately put an oxygen mask on me and said I was hyperventilating. I haven't been taking my asthma medicine during the pregnancy because they were "questionable" as far as being safe for the baby, so after all the hard work my asthma got to me. I pushed hard for another hour until the doctor came in.

All of the sudden the room was filled with about 12 people after having it be only me, Jordan, and the nurse for the whole labor. I could not concentrate on anything due to the pressure to push and need for oxygen. The hardest part is that my contractions were not going down. They never let me rest! My mom said she saw the monitor in the hallway and my contractions instead of having a peak then dropping off they were more like building then plateauing at the top and then going down a few minutes later. I would have like a 5 minute contraction and then a 1 minute break.

The baby's heart rate monitor kept detecting a drop when I would push and the doctor was getting concerned. I was pretty out of it and didn't really know this was going on but Jordan was pretty freaked out. They brought the NICU nurses in just in case. I kept almost passing out and then would remember to breathe. I do remember the doctor had said that after this push they were going to use the vacuum or forceps to get the baby b/c of his heart rate...that was incentive enough. I got him out with that push! Jordan said they unwrapped the cord from his head and he was fine! He didn't get to cut the cord immediately since they wanted to get him over to the warmer/bassinet with the NICU nurses immediately (still in the room) but he did get to "trim" it once he was over there. Then I heard him cry so I could finally lay back in the bed :) The whole thing was pretty amazing! I did get an episiotomy because they wanted him out THEN which is fine, I have a happy healthy baby!
Noah was born at 6:21pm weighing 8 pounds 2.7 ounces and 19.5 inches long. His head circumference was 12 3/4 inches (not sure what is normal). We got a few hours in the labor/delivery room before being transfered to our recover room! The hospital was amazing and the staff was so attentive and helpful. We stayed until Monday afternoon and came home and are SO happy. We love our little man!