John's Birth Story

I love reading other people's birth stories, and I love recording my own to look back on. I was trying to pay attention to the little details of the day, but I had a hard time doing that, and the details I do have are starting to get a bit hazy, so I figured I better get this written.

My doctor told me around my 35 week appt that if I wanted to schedule an induction, the hospital was encouraging people to get them on the calendar early instead of waiting to the last minute {if at all possible}. I told him I would think about it and get back to him. So the next week at my 36 week appt, I told him to go ahead and put me down for September 22. I said my whole pregnancy that I wanted to hold out until my due date to be induced {Sept 26- and I was not about to go past that date. I was already so anxious as it was}, but as the time got closer, not only was I just beyond ready to have him, but I thought if I was scheduling labor, then I needed to make sure it was a day that worked for me. And a Monday was not super appealing-- I didn't want to go home from the hospital on a Wednesday and still have two more school days to deal with. We weren't planning on having any grandparents stay after the birth, and I knew it would be stressful to be thrown back into the real world so soon. So I decided on the Thursday prior {the 22nd} so we would have the weekend to recuperate at home. I still really hoped I would go into labor on my own, especially given the action and false alarms the week before, and the induction could always be canceled, but it was nice to have a date on the calendar. We were planning on having the Quinns come keep the girls, so Mrs. Quinn was able to arrange her class schedule accordingly.

Well the week before my induction, they called to ask if I would move my induction up to the 20th. I really didn't want to, mostly for the reasons listed above, and on top of that Mrs. Quinn's schedule conflicted with that, and she had already rearranged it twice. Plus I didn't feel like their reasons for asking me to move it were valid enough for me to change. But I couldn't shake a nagging feeling that maybe there was some unknown reason I needed to move it and was scared about something happening in the two days leading up to the 22nd.

The night before I was induced, we went to eat at Brio like we had done with both Curran and Sallie Cate {and Sinclair and Becket as well}. We actually haven't eaten there since the night before Becket was born, but we had made a tradition out of it {except with my nephews} so we wanted to continue the tradition with John. The Heys joined us, and we had a fun evening.

Last picture as a family of four!

The 22nd finally rolled around and I was so very excited. I didn't sleep a wink the night before due to nerves and a fair amount of contractions. We had to check in at 5am and they got things started right away. The on call dr was unable to break my water {same thing happened with C, and although they broke it on the first try with SC, they still had a very hard time}. I'm not sure what my amniotic sacs are made out of, but goodness! It was very painful for them to attempt it. But I was glad to hear I was 3cm and 80% effaced since I had been 2cm/50% for 4 weeks. So they started the pitocin and said my dr would be by later to try to break my water again.

I labored for a while and felt pretty good despite the increasing contractions. I really wanted to wait until I had dilated a little more and my water had broken before getting the epidural, even though they said I could have it whenever I was ready. They bumped up my pitocin and the contractions got more painful but were still manageable. I think John was worried about me holding out on the epidural, but I was determined. Well poor baby John could not tolerate the increased rate of pitocin {despite it still being relatively low} and was having decels quite often, so they kept having to decrease the rate and put me on oxygen. Pretty soon the nurse had to turn it off completely. My dr came by around 8:00 and was able to get the amniotic sac to snag a little bit, but they had a hard time telling if it was truly broken. I never had the gush of fluid that I had with the girls. They put in an internal monitor {which never would read correctly and eventually was taken out}, and he told the nurse to turn the pitocin back on. At that point I was 4cm and still 80%.

Just patiently waiting. This was after my epidural {I think} but I was starting to feel more pain from sitting up, but I was still fairly comfortable. Shortly after this picture was taken, however, I started to feel pretty rough.

I think it was around 9:30/10:00 when I finally decided to get the epidural. I was in significant pain by this point, so I was very glad to get it. It made me feel pretty loopy, which I don't remember it doing with the girls. It also made me itchy. Sweet John is so super helpful 99.9% of the time- but the delivery room would fall under the 0.1%. I think he just gets so nervous in medical situations that he's going to mess something up. I was asking him to scratch my back and it felt like there was a feather touching me. I'm sure he was scared he was going to dislodge the epidural catheter, but those things are taped like crazy to your back. Thankfully Christopher was in there, and she is great to have around in those situations. She scratched my back, watched the monitors, got my O2 mask every time he started deceling, and was just on top of things. John got me lots of ice chips and went in and out of the room a lot. :) {But what John lacked in the delivery room, he more than made up for in the postpartum room and at home!!}

The rest of the day was a juggling act with trying to get my labor to progress while also protecting the baby. He continued to have decels every time they turned up the pitocin as well as every time I had a super strong contraction, even on the lowest dose of pitocin. They basically had to leave the pit on 2 all day. I was pretty much just dilating one cm at a time- no big jumps- so it was a long day. We never had to think about a c section since I was progressing and since the baby was bouncing back from each decel, but it was just a very slow process. They sat me up in bed to help get him moving, and it did help, but he also went into distress every time we did it. Also, whenever I sat up the epidural medicine would go down towards my feet, and I had a ton of feeling in my abdomen. I was determined to power through the pain because I felt like sitting up was really helping me progress. I kept pushing the bolus button, but it did nothing to relieve the pain, so finally sometime mid-afternoon, they called the anesthesiologist to up my dose a bit. It helped for a while, but again, the sitting up caused the epidural to be fairly ineffective.

Finally around 4:30, my dr came back and checked me. I was sitting up and in constant pain at this point. I was completely dilated but there was still a bit of cervix around the baby's head. When he manually moved it off, the baby went into distress and was not recovering. They called a bunch of people in there and told me it was time to push. In clinic, I had told my doctor I really wanted to labor down before pushing, but at this point we had no choice but to get the baby out. He told me he was going to have to use the vacuum since he was still fairly high up there. Of course I said he should do whatever he needed to get him out! So I started pushing, and although I had feeling in my abdomen, I still couldn't feel well to push, so that was frustrating. It felt like I was pushing forever, but really it was only a few minutes. I could tell the dr and nurses were fairly frantic, but I didn't have the emotional reserve to be worried. I was just focusing on getting the baby out. We suspected there was likely a cord issue given all the decels, and indeed the cord was wrapped around his neck. His shoulder also got stuck, so a nurse had to climb on top of me to push from my stomach to get him out. His face was blue and he did not cry when he was born. The briefly put him on me but the nurse quickly told me they needed to take him. They took him to the warmer and thankfully got him to breathe/cry fairly quickly. I didn't know until Chris told me the next day, but they had called the NICU team at this point, but when they arrived, they thankfully didn't need them! Chris went to the warmer to be with the baby, and John stayed with me just crying and crying. It was at that point when I realized how scared they were. Christopher later told me she had been terrified and was shaking so hard she could not take any pictures of him being born. She said my dr had a look on his face that scared her to death. Even though I was anxious, I also just trusted my dr to get my baby here safely. Once he was born the floodgates opened and I could not stop crying tears of relief and joy. Finally I convinced John that we were all ok and to go over and see the baby. 

It was a stressful and scary ending to a long day, and we are so grateful that everything turned out just fine! My dr said that if the baby had been two ounces bigger, he's not sure he would have been able to get him out. He said he was so thankful I got induced when I did and did not wait any later. It made me feel SO much better about not waiting until the 26h. And as my sister said, as much as I really wanted to go into labor at home, he would have been in distress then but I would have had no way of knowing. That scared me and made me even more thankful that things hadn't happened the way I thought they should. They warned us that baby John was going to look awful, with lots of facial bruising and a huge caput.  They also said I was going to be in a lot of pain from that nurse pressing so hard on my stomach. But no one could believe how quickly he recovered and how good he looked, and I wasn't in any more pain than normal.

I don't want to include the first few pics Chris took of baby John because his face was still so dusky/bluish, but his Apgars were 7/8 which was not too bad all things considered. He was a healthy little lad at 8 lbs 0.4oz and 21"! {I put 22" on FB by mistake.} The girls were both 7 lbs 6 oz and 19 something in length.

This picture cracks me up because he looks so grumpy! I think one of the first things I said when they brought him to me was that he looked so mad. :)

This was them bringing him to me for the first time.

Just a tad emotional.

Skin to skin was not really a mainstream idea that was encouraged by the hospitals when I had the girls, so it's nice that the hospitals now just have it as part of the protocol. I held him for a bit and then nursed him before John went out to the waiting room to get the girls and our parents. 

The girls went to school like normal that day because I didn't want them waiting around not knowing what time he would be born. The Quinns ended up picking Curran up early at 1:00 after they got Sallie because she knew that was an option {We all kind of assumed he would be born by 1:00, being the third baby and all, so I said she would probably get to leave school early}, so I kind of hated the idea of her staying all day not knowing what was going on with us. She was very excited but also anxious about the day. They stayed at home until I think 4 something and then just came on to the hospital, but they still had to wait another two hours or so before they got to come to the room. 

Two excited big sisters!

I could tell Curran was pretty nervous. She came straight to my bed and just hugged me for several minutes. Sallie immediately asked in her matter of fact way, "How did everything go, Mom?" and inspected my ID bracelets and IV. :)

They gave him his bath and let him warm up before the girls could hold him. He loved having his hair washed. 

They were not so patiently waiting to get their chance to hold him. The nurses were sweet to explain everything to the girls as they worked, and made sure they could see what was going on.

Daddy holding his namesake for the first time.

First family of five picture!

Such a sweet little guy!

A few hours after the birth, we had to move down the hall to a postpartum room, and the nurse was trying to go over some things, and I told John to grab my phone so I could take a pic. I thought he looked so cute all snug as a bug!

It was not how we anticipated the day going, but all that matters is that at the end of it, we had our sweet, perfectly healthy baby, and we have never been more grateful for anything. God is so good, and we thank Him for watching over all of us.