Birth Story

I was induced at 5am on May 29th (5 days before my due date). We got the process started and things were going just fine. I had my mom and Sean at the hospital with me, while my dad was home with McKay. We spent the first few hours chatting, watching Arrested Development, and eating strawberry flavored ice chips. Then around 10:30am my contractions were starting to get pretty painful so I asked for an epidural. At that same time my doctor came in to break my water, and once he did things started to progress pretty quickly!

My contractions came on SUPER intense (to the point that I didn't know how any woman could possibly give birth without drugs!). Luckily (or so I thought) the dr came in to do my epidural. I'm not sure exactly what the problem was (he blamed it on my curved spine) but it took this guy 45 minutes and TWELVE pokes to get the job done. Imagine trying to be still that long and curved over your huge belly while having horrible contractions. Needless to say, I was hating that guy the whole time.

Right after my epidural was in the nurses starting becoming concerned because the baby's heart rate would drop each time I had a contraction. They quickly gave me a shot to stop my contractions and paged my doctor. Once he was there he told me that even though I was only dilated to a 6/7 I needed to start pushing and that we had a short window before they would need to do an emergency c-section. I pushed for around 20 minutes and then the doctor used his little suction vacuum thing to pull the baby out.

Max was very gray when he came out and I only got to hold him for a minute or two before the team of doctors from the NICU rushed in. They worked on him for a little while and then took him to the NICU. His cord was really twisted which was the problem. Sean went with him to the NICU while my mom stayed with me. I had to stay in the recovery room for 2 hours, which was really hard to not see him until then! Thankfully Sean would text me pictures and videos to keep me updated. 

We got really lucky and Max only had to be in the NICU for two days and was off oxygen after the first day. It was also really hard on McKay since he wasn't able to go see his new baby. He would get really upset whenever he came to the hospital! 

Max is now a month old and is doing great. Putting on weight like a champ and trying to survive all his big brother's hugs and kisses!