Birth Story

First of all, let me thank you for all of your comments, notes of encouragement, gifts, and prayers. This has been one crazy, but awesome week.

Last Wednesday I went to the doctor for my weekly appointment and was sent over to the hospital to be monitored because my blood pressure was high, 140/100. This was pretty unusual for me because my pressure has been pretty good for the most part throughout the pregnancy. After 4 hours of monitoring on Wednesday, they decided to keep me and induce labor. So I started cervadil that night, and then we started pitocin at noon on Thursday. I was on pitocin for almost 20 hours with no change, and the contractions never progressed into anything significant, so at 4 am on Friday, our doctor scheduled us for a c-section Friday morning at 8:00.

Throughout the whole time that we had been there, I had managed to stay calm and not freak out, because I knew that God would take care of us no matter what happened.

A couple of things I was not prepared for, or never had heard about labor and delivery is that some people are not affected by pitocin ( I was one of those) and sometimes spinals don’t work (again, I was one). So my spinal didn’t take correctly and I could feel the doctor make his first big incision. What followed was a quick discussion between the anesthesiologist and my doctor about whether or not they needed to put me out and if Alex was going to be able to come into the room. The next thing I remember the ceiling tiles beginning to spin, and then I moved through a quick progression of out of body scenes, feeling like I was in some sci-fi movie, feeling pain on occasion, hearing Alex say something to me, hearing a baby cry, and then being moved off the table. When I finally started to come to, I realized that I had missed the whole thing, and I was really sad. I cried for probably about 20 minutes and asked a whole bunch of questions because I didn’t remember seeing the baby or Alex, and could hardly remember anything else that had happened.

They didn’t keep me in recovery for too long, and they wheeled me past the nursery to see the baby, however I don’t really remember that at all. The first memory I have of seeing Will for the first time was on my mom’s camera. Once I got back to the room, they wheeled him in and I was able to hold him for the first time, while fighting off the shakes from all the drugs I was on and trying to process everything that had just happened.

I ended up getting a spinal headache later on Friday which made it extremely difficult to try to nurse or do anything. Thankfully it went away pretty quickly and I didn’t need to have a blood patch done. My blood pressure, however, continued to be out of control for the next three days, and they sent us home on Monday with some medication to help me manage my blood pressure.

Monday thru Wednesday I was pretty out of it, sleeping most of the time because all the meds really messed me up and the blood pressure medication was making it difficult for me to eat and gave me what felt like a migraine. I felt frustrated because I wasn’t really good for anything beside feeding the baby, but thankfully, Alex and my mom have been here filling in the gaps and taking care of everything. Alex is a great dad!

Thursday I decided to stop taking my bp medication because it had come down and I felt terrible every time I had to take it. So far it remains to be in the normal range. The only problems I am having now are an occasional migraine type headache with pain in my neck and shoulders, usually after dinner time.
Baby Will is doing awesome! He is doing great with feeding, and he is such a peaceful baby. We had his first doctors visit with the pediatrician yesterday and he got a 10 from the doctor. I really like our doctor, he is like a cross between Andy Griffith and Foghorn Leghorn.

Well, that is all I’m going to post for now, I just wanted to give an update and share the story of Will’s birth to those of you who are interested. Keep praying for us as we continue to recover.

Jamie (Alex & Baby Will)