Monday, June 8, 2009

Labor of Love

Connor is finally here! Dennis and I couldn't be more happy, in love, excited, exhausted, overwhelmed, and stressed. We're mainly the first three but the others follow a close second as we are adapting to life with a beautiful baby boy with HUGE lungs. His smiles are so incredibly sweet and make the screams easily tolerable. And, as you can imagine, we're learning every day...as I know Connor is, too.

Labor didn't like me very much. And to be perfectly honest, I didn't like it very much, either. So, I guess we're even. Here is the quick-and-dirty story: we pulled into the "Labor and Delivery" assigned parking at Northside Hospital Monday night at 7pm. We were ready to start the induction process. The plans were to check in, get settled, and then start with Cervidil Monday night and continue on with Petosin on Tuesday. We were prepared for a long road...but the end was in sight. We were going to get to meet our little boy.

As I mentioned, those were the plans. Oddly enough, they didn't work out. After we pulled into the designated parking area, my contractions began. We checked in and I asked Dennis to help me time the contractions and how far apart they were. After timing a few of them, he pointed out that we probably didn't need to do that since we were already at the hospital. And he was exactly right. So, no more watching the clock and counting seconds. Or so I thought.

Dennis took amazing care of me as my contractions continued to progress. They were occuring too frequently (every 3 minutes) to start the Cervidil. As I watched the clock, knowing what was going to occur every 3 minutes, the contractions continued to get stronger and didn't slow down. I was only dilated only 1 cm but when I got sick (several times) from the pain, the mid-wife that was on-call got me a morphine shot. After a few hours of no progress in the way of dilation or improvement in symptoms, I was then given an epidural. And... OH. MY. GOD. Epidurals are friggin' AWESOME. Within a minute (or possibly less), I was feeling relief.

Jumping ahead a few hours, nurses were being paged to the room that we were in and I heard something about there being "a lot of blood", Connor's heartrate dropping, and I saw Dennis literally shaking in the background. After a few minues, the doctor decided to rush me into an emergency c-section. One of the nurses tossed Dennis a "blue suit" and instructed him to put it on, pack up all of our belongings and follow everyone to the operating room. I received more medication in the operating room and everything from there on out is a bit fuzzy.

The important thing is not that it was a painful process or that I ended up NOT needing to pass something the size of a watermelon through my whooha, but the important thing is that we have this beautiful little man here with us safe and sound.

Seeing Connor for the first time was amazing, overwhleming, and the best feeling in the world.

I am so excited that Connor is here. FINALLY.

6 comments:

Jenny said...

Congratulations, Mom! He's adorable - love the babyhawk :-) Keep the pics and stories coming!

Bobby said...

It's amazing how similar what you guys have gone through is to what Steph and I did. The best is yet to come. Congrats again!

Jamie Massey said...

Wow! You are an amazing woman. I am so proud of you both. I can't believe you and Dennis are PARENTS!!!!!

Emmy said...

Way to go Krista and Dennis! I am so glad everything turned out well! I am claiming bragging rights for predicting the June second birth date! :) The first few months are a challenge but after that time really does fly by so enjoy!

the heaths said...

He is so sweet...congrats!

Erin said...

Congratulations, Momma! So glad you are all doing well. He is too precious. Can't wait to see more pics and hear more stories about all that you are learning!
;-)