Happy Birthday Curtis! & A Labor Story

As most of you know, our sweet little boy decided to surprise us last Friday night by coming 5 weeks early. As far as surprises go, this may be the best one we've ever experienced! Without going into too much detail, here is the story of how our sweet little man came into this world.

We had our 35 week appt on Thursday, everything looked good, nothing out of the ordinary took place. In fact, the entire pregnancy has been pretty text book, nothing unusual, no complications, nothing concerning to make us think he would be here early. 

Friday, I volunteered at the CPC all day, not a busy day, nothing too out of the ordinary that day as well. Isaac had duty, so I went home and had some things to do to get ready for friends coming for dinner Saturday. As I was making dinner rolls Friday night around 2100, I began bleeding. I tried not to freak out, but I knew it wasn't normal. I sat down, put my feet up, tried to rest, but of course I was scared. By 2130, I was still bleeding and decided to call Isaac on the ship. Now, I have never done this before, I only have those numbers in case of a true emergency. I am not one of those wives who thinks just anything is an emergency. I mean, I'm a nurse, I don't get scared too easily and know most of what I can handle without Isaac. So, when a pregnant wife calls the ship at 2130 it's pretty much always gonna be an emergency. I say all that because Isaac's friend that answered the phone, who knew me, knew I was pregnant, first told me Isaac wasn't there, then questioned me as to whether this was really an emergency or not. I wanted to crawl through the phone and punch him. Luckily, he did go find Isaac. Isaac called back, told me to find someone to drive me to the hospital. I literally looked through every name on my phone. Luckily, my friend Michael (Angie's dad) was home and came to drive me. We met Isaac at the hospital and went to L and D triage. I was hooked up to the toco monitor, and then examined, where I was then told I was 3cm dilated, 80% effaced and the toco monitor showed I was contracting. Apparently what I thought was Curtis just moving very vigorously the last few weeks, were contractions. I'd been having them pretty often during the day, and they showed up on the monitor. They decided to keep me and give me some fluids to try and stop it. At 0130, they checked me again, realized my water broke, I was 4cm dilated and in active labor at that point. So they admitted me. The next 15hrs were a crazy whirlwind. Curtis seemed so ready to come, and then even with my contractions 2-3 mins apart, I did not progress. They decided to give me Pitocin, and still did not progress. When I got checked again about 2 the next afternoon, the doc saw that part of the amnionic sac was still intact, so they broke it and that was all it took. I started having very productive contractions. Up until that point, I really thought I would do this without an epidural, I was actually good and while I had been in pain, it was minimal. By the time they broke my water a 2nd time, I had been in labor for at least 15hrs. I was exhausted and didn't have it in me to continue laboring without an epidural, and boy, was I glad. God knew what I needed to be able to get through the rest of the night. I got my epidural at 5cm, and almost as soon as it took effect I felt the need to start pushing. The nurse checked me and I was 10cm dilated, fully effaced and ready to go. I spent the next 3 hours pushing. I did get to rest 3 times for 10-15mins because Curtis just didn't want to come. By shift change that night, they decided that 1 of 3 things were going to happen. I was exhausted and that was visible, so my options at that point were to continue pushing, use forceps to help pull him out, or if that didn't work, we would have a c-section. We decided to go for the forceps in hopes that it would work. This is why I am so thankful for the epidural. I don't know how I would have handled that without it. Once the forceps were in place, I think I pushed 3 or 4 times and he was out. Because he was so early, I was not able to do skin to skin at that point. But Isaac went to take pictures of them working with him, and we both just cried because our little boy was so perfect. I got to hold him for just a min and then they whisked him away again to the observation nursery. They then proceeded to stitch me up for the next hour, again, super thankful for the epidural.

Our life has been a blur since then, but a wonderful, wonderful blur. We have had a few problems; his blood sugar dropped that first night and because of his gestational age, he wasn't really interested in feeding, so they had to give him formula. His respirations were too fast at one point, so that delayed him from coming to our room for a few hrs. And generally, him breast feeding has been a difficult and frustrating process.But we are blessed. Even though he is a bit of a wimpy white boy like I wanted to avoid he is absolutely perfect. I love having him in our room, that first night was killer having to go back and forth to see him. I love all his little coos and spasms as he sleeps. I love how when he falls asleep breast feeding, he puts both his little hands under his chin. I can't wait to be able to take him home and start our life as a little family of 3. God has blessed us so much through this whole thing, from the time I went into labor till now and I'm so very thankful for it all.

One of his first little pictures. You can't see it well in this picture, but he got pretty beat up by the forceps. He has bruises on his eyes, under his nose, on his collar bones, on his shoulders and one on his rib cage. He had kind of a rough first few hours in this world.

I couldn't stop crying, I was so incredibly happy to get to meet my little boy after all that work

Proud Papa holding Curtis for the first time

Yaya getting to take a turn

Isaac is the best dad ever. He's been so incredibly amazing through this entire process

Skin to skin is incredibly good for any baby, but esp a baby born early.So pretty much, any time we hold Curtis, we've become a naked family from the waist up.