IT'S A BOY!!!

I went into labor about 2am on Saturday, February 7th. I woke up to contractions that were about 5 minutes apart and was skeptical that they were real. After about 30 minutes I woke Jess up and we "labored together" for the next three hours. The contractions were pretty painful but not unbearable at that point and I was still in the excitement phase, so we had no intentions of going to the hospital any time soon.

And then... My water broke and my OB had said that I could labor at home as long as I wanted unless my water broke. So Jess and I headed to the hospital. When we got there, they assessed me to make sure that I was truly in labor. At that point I was 4cm and getting close to 100% effaced. We were transferred to the L&D unit (by this time it was a little after 6am). At first, things were progressing fairly quickly and by 10am I was "6-7cm". Jess was doing an amazing job coaching and encouraging me. He counted me through each contraction, which was so helpful because it reminded me that it was only going to last a limited time and then it would pass. But from there everything changed.

Over the next four hours nothing progressed in terms of dilation and the baby's station. Around 2pm the Dr came in and said she was concerned that I wasn't continuing to progress. They put in an internal monitor to measure my contraction intensity to see if maybe my contractions weren't strong enough to dilate my cervix. That appeared to be the problem so they needed to start pitocin. I started the pitocin at around 2:30pm and the pain got worse and worse with no rest between contractions. After who knows how long, they said the low dose I was on wasn't working and they were needing to greatly increase the dose. They also said it would take about 3 more hours, once they got the contractions strong enough, to get me fully dilated. I knew that I wouldn't be able to do that because I was already exhausted.

We eventually made the difficult decision to get an epidural, which was placed sometime between 3 and 3:30.


What a huge relief of pain, as you can see. It took about 3 1/2 hours before I was fully dilated and ready to push. Another roadblock...

Baby Caleb was turned sideways, and needed to turn face down before I could push. They had me lay on my side to turn him, but he turned the wrong way and ended up facing up. So then I laid on my other side and he turned back to the sideways position. The Dr decided that it was worthwhile to start pushing and see if that would turn him the rest of the way. I started pushing with each contraction. I was so excited after the second round of pushing, when we were able to see the hair on his head. Unfortunately, after several more rounds of pushing the Dr said that she was concerned with Caleb's heart rate. He was having "late decelerations" which indicate stress on the baby. She said that we could continue pushing for a while longer, but if it continued, we would be facing the C-section scenario. (From the beginning, she was concerned about Caleb's size in proportion to mine, and that C-section was not out of the picture.)

Sadly, the late decelerations continued and he wasn't descending at all, so the Dr said that we needed to go ahead with the C-section. At that point, I was moved to the operating room and prepped for surgery. Jess scrubbed in, and came in to join me as soon as the doctors were ready to begin.


To put it bluntly, they cut me open and pulled Caleb out. Then they held him up and said "call it daddy", and Jess excitedly shouted "IT'S A BOY!!!". After cutting the umbilical cord, they cleaned Caleb up and put him on the scale.


We were all amazed to see that he weighed a whopping 9 pounds and 5 ounces. How we made such a big baby we really don't know. It was then no wonder why Caleb got stuck.


Although it wasn't the labor/birthing experience that I had hoped and planned for (I was planning on a completely natural birth), we were blessed with a healthy, beautiful baby boy. As we look back, God had his hands on us through all of it, and He has continued to bless me with a quick and practically painless recovery


We can't even begin to put into words how much we love and cherish Caleb, and how gratefully we are that God would give us such an amazing gift!!!

We chose the name Caleb after Caleb in the Bible, who was bold and courageous, and followed the Lord wholeheartedly.