The week Killean was born, I was contemplating driving up to Omaha every day that week for a meeting for work. Monday of that week I had a doctor's appointment. At that appointment, the doctor said we were about 4cm dilated. At that point we were certain Killean would be born that week, so I opted out of driving to and from Omaha for work. Instead I figured I would wrap things up at work and then get geared up for a day or two of phone duty before he was born. Well Killean had other plans, I ended up working the full week...and getting more frustrated every day that we were STILL pregnant. I was over it and ready to be on leave. Instead, Killean decided he wanted to stay on the inside for a while longer.
I came home on Friday knowing that I was not going back to work on Monday. I had no more work to do, and I didn't really feel like asking for more work to do from my coworkers, so I decided to start my maternity leave...even if Killean wasn't born for a few more days.
We spent that night just hanging out. I went to bed around 11:00 that night. I woke up at 1:00am (yup, 2 hours later) and had to go to the bathroom. I was very confused when I went to the bathroom because my shorts were wet. After my brain woke up a little bit more, I realized my water had likely broken. I stayed up for a little bit longer to see if my water had actually broken...and yes, it had. I told Ian (who hadn't been to bed yet) that it was time for us to head to the hospital. I woke my mom up and let her know we were headed to the hospital.
We got to the hospital and checked in and were all ready to go. The nurse did have to verify my water had broken, and in doing so discovered that there was meconium in my amniotic fluid. That of course made me a bit nervous. The nurse explained that having meconium in the fluid meant we would have a larger audience during delivery-a couple of NICU nurses and a respiratory person would be there in addition to the normal nurses and the doctor. If Killean cried at delivery, there wouldn't be anything different about his care after birth. If he didn't cry, he would have to have some extra care. Nothing was mentioned about a potential NICU stay, but I figured that depending on what the evaluation after birth showed, that a NICU stay was possible. My first thought was "Great, both of my boys are going to end up in the NICU after birth" Everyone was very calm about the fact meconium was in the fluid though, so that helped me calm down and know it doesn't mean anything bad was going to happen.
Even though my water broke at 1:00, my contractions weren't really regular even by 4:00. So we decided to start walking the halls and see if we could get them going. The doctor wasn't feeling like we had to get going on pitocin right away (awesome) so we had time to get labor going on our own. Contractions started to pick up a bit, but they still weren't that close together. After about an hour and a half of walking the halls we were checked and were between 5 and 6 cm. The contractions were only about 7 minutes apart, but getting fairly intense. I went into labor not 100% convinced I'd had an epidural, but not 100% against the idea either. At this point, realizing contractions weren't that close together and not sure when pitocin would be administered, we opted to have an epidural. It went in smoothly and I started to go numb pretty quickly. Contractions were picking up at that point, even though I just felt some pressure and no pain. Killean was not dropping quite yet, so the nurse had me lay on my side to try and get Killean to drop down. Nurse also told me to let her know when I was feeling pressure down by my rectum as that was an indicator he was in position.
We didn't have to wait long (we only got about half way through Wreck it Ralph) before I was feeling pressure. We buzzed the nurse and she stopped in for a minute. She had to go and get something...or check on someone else..or do something...I don't know, but she left and said she's be back. Well the pressure started getting greater so we buzzed again after about 10 minutes. They checked and we were ready to start pushing. They got everything set up and I pushed through a contraction and a half before they told me to stop and called the doctor. Doctor came down after about a minute and I pushed through one more contraction and Killean was there at 9:29 am on a beautiful Saturday morning. He cried (best sound ever!!!!!) and we knew he was going to be just fine. The longest umbilical cord known to man was wrapped around his belly and neck (twice!), but we eventually got him untangled from the cord.
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| Checking out my beautiful baby boy |
The nurses put him on my belly/chest immediately which was awesome. We had requested skin to skin time with Rowan, but didn't really get it. This time we got it right away. It was amazing. Killean started nursing and stayed latched for a long while. We didn't find out his weight/length for a while and that was A-OK. We headed up to the recovery room with no mention of checking his blood sugar or anything. I was so grateful that Killean's color was good, lungs were working, temperature was good, and was all around healthy so that we didn't have to go through another NICU stay. Though I was a little nervous about bringing home a 2 day old baby since we didn't have to worry about weight loss in the first week of life with Rowan, but we guessed we'd figure it out.
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| Mr. Bright Eyes |
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