AW: Aiden arrived! Birth story and PIP

timark99 · December 2010

So our little man arrived!!! A couple days late, but perfect!

We were due Dec 16th and had no progress to speak of over the last 3 weeks at the doctor visits. I woke up the morning of the 18th to do some last minute Christmas shopping with DH, a trip to the car dealership for car maintenance and plans to clean the house (again). We came home in the early afternoon and had a late lunch, I decided to take a quick nap before starting the cleaning and at 4pm was woken up by contractions. Labor progressed pretty quick, DH was a bit of an excited anxious spaz. I had packed our bags weeks ago and he was trying to pack from scratch and run laundry. The contractions had gone from 5 min apart to 3 min apart @ home within 20 min, so no 5-1-1 for me.

I live 10 min from the hospital so we made it there without any problem, I checked in. I was super uncomfortable from the contractions, bless DH, I didn't want much to do with him, just kinda paced around or squirmed around on the bed once I got hooked up to the monitors. I got checked and was @ 3cm when I arrived at the hospital. Since my contractions were frequent they kept me. I got there close to shift change so had to wait for a room for new staff to arrive to transfer out of triage. Longest hour or so ever. I moved into the LDR room, pretty much having contractions ever 1-2 min. Asked if I could get the epi sooner rather than later. She tried to check me but my bag had not broken yet and was bulging so far they couldn't tell how dialated I was. My mom was lost somewhere in the hospital by this point, I got the IV and the anesthesiologist was headed my way come put in the epi. The contractions were awful, but he became my most favorite guy. I was allowed to stay laying on my side, he didn't dig around and got it in and the meds going. Once it was in and I was starting to go numb they checked me again, still couldn't tell how dialated I was because of the bag of waters, but my contractions never slowed down according to the nurse. One scary part, they laid me flat to put in the urinary catheter and shortly afterwards baby had a decel into the 80s. I flipfloped sides and had some oxygen and IV fluids and he rebounded back to normal. The resident was there and when they checked me broke my water when trying to find out how dialated I was, there was meconium in the fluid so NICU was notified to attend the birth. I was 9-10 cm at that time and my doctor was on the way. I pushed for about 20 min, got an episiotomy and out Aiden came. Cord thankfully was only wrapped around a foot, he cried immediately. The doc let DH cut the umbilical cord. NICU checked out the little guy and gave him a good bill of health and we got our skin-to-skin time (a little delayed, but better late than never). He weighed 7lbs 3 oz, a surprise to me, I thought for sure he'd be pushing 9 lbs since he was past his due date.

We stayed at the hospital for 2 nights since he was born during the night (941pm), he's doing well with BFing, and have been home since Monday. DH has taken the week off and my mom has been staying with us this week to help us adjust. Its been a really good recovery and I love this little bundle more than anything.