Our Birth Story

It has taken awhile to get this posted because it is rare that I have two hands free these days. Here are all the details about how Desmond arrived.

It Starts
Sunday night (July 20th) before we went to bed, I noticed that my last few contractions were 20 minutes apart and actually felt a little bit uncomfortable. At 12:30 a contraction woke me up and I kept trying to go back to sleep, but they were waking me up almost every 5 minutes. Davin woke up at 2:30 and officially starting timing them. By 5 am we decided to get up and start getting ready because they'd stayed around 5 minutes apart the whole morning. We called labor and delivery at 7 am to see if we should come in or wait it out a bit. They said to wait especially since we wanted to go all natural. All throughout the day we waited for contractions to get more intense. Sometimes I'd have to pause what I was doing to have a contraction. We even walked around campus a bit to encourage things along. Of course, everyone who sees me still pregnant is like, "When is that baby coming?" This time we could say it would definitely be soon. We also took a nap that afternoon to get as much rest as possible. It was a bit hard for me to rest since every contraction was impossible to ignore.

Going to the Hospital
We went in for my nonstress test at 3:45. During one contraction baby's heart rate went down a bit so they sent me to labor and delivery to have extended monitoring. My midwife, Tom Lloyd was just ending his shift so he came in to talk to me. He said since I was so overdue anything like this is probably signaling that it's really time to get the baby out. He wanted to induce me. I was happy to tell him that I was already in early labor, and so off we went to get checked in around 6pm. Here we go! We called family and a few friends to spread the news. Gina came over and brought us dinner. They checked to see where I was at and I was 3 cm and 100% effaced. Great! Only 7 cm to go. (The longest little distance ever!)

Laboring Away
So things continued to intensify throughout the night and early morning. At 6 am on Tuesday morning they checked me and I had only progressed to 3.5 cm so they broke my water... which is a very weird feeling by the way. They found a little meconium staining. I told him not to poop before he was out, but he didn't listen to me. An hour later I was up to 5 cm. Whoohoo! Things are moving along. Contractions were getting very, very intense. I definitely couldn't move or talk when one came. At first I could relax with deep breathing, but by this point I was having to make a lot of noise to make it through. I'd focus intensely on just relaxing my forehead, hands, and feet (my tense areas) and moaning with as low tones as possible. If we were up walking around I'd lean on Davin. He and Gina were amazing at helping me through. I couldn't have done it without them.

Throwing the Birth Plan out the Window
At 2 pm they checked me again and I was only 6 cm. What? Hours of intense contractions and only 1 cm to show for it? They said my contractions probably weren't strong enough so they wanted to start pitocin. I nearly lost it at this point because I was really struggling through each contraction. They were definitely hard! I knew I couldn't take anything more intense so I'd need an epidural if we were going to do pitocin. So the all natural birth plan went out the window and they got me hooked up with an epidural. Wow. Why didn't I get that earlier? What sweet relief to not feel pain for the first time in a day and a half! I was able to sleep for 2 hours. At one point I kinda freaked out because all these people rushed into the room and they put an oxygen mask on me, had me flip to my other side, and they turned off the pitocin. Baby's heart rate had dropped from the 130's down to 80. With only 6 ccs of pitocin I had had 8 contractions one on top of the other and he was being deprived of oxygen. They got his heart rate stabilized quickly and we eventually started up pitocin again. An hour or so later I was finally to 7 cm. At 8:30 pm they checked me again and I was actually back down to a 6. My cervix was swelling shut. Our baby was going to be born by cesarean. Once I knew they were going to cut me open, I started shaking uncontrollably. They prepped me quickly and got Davin into scrubs. I was wheeled away to the operating room under all the bright lights surrounded by masked doctors and nurses. I was freaking out, but trying very hard to calm down. After some more prep they tested my feeling in my abdomen. Ouch! I could feel it! That's what I was worried about. After two more tries I was anesthetized enough for the process to begin. Davin was right by my face encouraging me all the while.

Our Son is Born
Soon I could feel the pressure of some strong tugging and I knew he was coming out. I couldn't see because of the screen they put up, but then at 9:44 pm I heard the sweetest cry ever. There was my baby boy! At that moment he was so real to me, and I couldn't help but cry tears of joy. They checked him out and wiped him down a bit and then handed him to Davin. Once he was next to me my shaking stopped, and I couldn't stop staring at him and saying, "He's amazing!" Davin went with Desmond to the recovery room and after they stitched me up (which felt like it took forever) I followed. We were finally checked into our postpartum room and showing off our boy to our parents and Gina around midnight. On July 22nd after a 48 hour journey, Desmond Eadric Danger Studer had made his entrance into the world. (9 lbs 6.1 oz, 21 inches long)