Davin's Birth Story

I wrote Brenna's birth story when she was 4 days old.  Davin is 16 days old.  I guess that's what life with 2 kids is all about!  So anyway...
Jonathan's day off was Friday, June 8.  When we got up I noticed that I was feeling a little different than normal.  I was having some contractions, but they were actually hurting less than they had been that whole week.  But something just felt "off" most of the day.  We didn't do much that day - Jonathan went to the grocery store for me, which proved to be very helpful later on.  I talked to my mom sometime around 5:00ish and she volunteered to come for the weekend just in case I went into labor.  I felt bad for her to do that in case I didn't have a baby and she had to go home only to come back a few days later.  I let her make the decision and she decided to just go ahead and come on.  Again a very helpful decision!

Mom got here about 10:15 or so and I was still feeling pretty rough.  Drinking water and laying on my side weren't helping, which they normally did at night.  I called the hospital about 11:15 and just told them how I was feeling.  They told me that I could come in if I wanted, but to maybe take a warm bath just to make sure they didn't ease off.  I took a bath and it really didn't make any difference, but they still weren't really hurting too badly or getting closer together. 
I sent Jonathan and Mom to bed a little before 1:00 I think and told them I'd wake them if anything changed.  I slept for two 20 minute stretches but woke up about 2:00 and couldn't go back to sleep.  Finally at around 3:00 I fell asleep for maybe 5-10 minutes and woke up with excruciating back labor pains that were killing me.  It felt just like my (very fast) labor with Brenna so I knew it was time!  I went to the bathroom (another good sign) and called the hospital from there.  The lady told me they had been waiting for me to call back - ha!  I woke Jonathan up and told him to get his stuff together FAST!  About this time I start thanking God that my mom was in tune with her motherly instinct and came to our house that night.  I told Mom we were leaving and off we went!  The pain was horrible!  I was getting about 30 seconds max relief between them.  We got to the hospital around 4:10 AM and they were wanting all sorts of info and our insurance card and signatures, etc.  We pre-registered for a reason, people!!  I finally got to a room and got into a gown.  I seriously thought the pain would kill me, but it didn't.  There were about 6 nurses in my room helping get my IV started and all the other things hooked up.  My nurse Rita checked me and I was 6 cm and progressing FAST.  The (super awesome) anesthesiologist came and started my epidural before my bloodwork was back and before I had 2 bags of IV fluids - about 4:45.  It seemed like he took him forever!  The relief was definitely not immediately like it had been with my epidural in labor with Brenna.  They had to come flush out something in the epidural to get the long-term relief to work, but they did not have to redo it, thank goodness!  It finally kicked in maybe 20 minutes later, but then I had this lingering pain in my left hip that was really, really hurting.  They came back in and gave me 2 other meds in the epidural that finally took care of all the pain.  When the nurse checked me right after the epidural, she reported that I was 10 cm!  She wasn't surprised and neither was I.  The doctor, nurse, and I decided together that I would labor down for awhile since I had been having a lot of trouble with hemmorroids and he was still at about a 0 station.  At some point (I can't remember when), Dr. Highland broke my water and found a small amount of meconium 


Davin never reallly moved down past a 0/+1 station, so we decided I would just have to push him the rest of the way.  The new nurse, Teresa, told me she thought it might take a little while.  I started pushing sometime around 7:20ish.  I pushed for about 20 minutes and started feeling LOTS of pressure and pain that I never felt with pushing Brenna.  I wanted him OUT!  She told me that I would probably need 3 more contractions to push through before calling Dr. Highland.  I pushed one more time and she told me to stop and called for him right then!  He came in and I delivered him with the next set of contractions.  His head came out first at 7:51 AM and he didn't cry right away - but started right after they got him suctioned out.  The NICU people that attended the birth because of the meconium left not long after since he seemed to be doing great.  They laid him on my stomach and did everything with him right there.  He didn't get taken off of me for probably an hour!  It was awesome and such a special time to just take it all in.  It took the doctor awhile to sew me up but I'm thankful that the damage was even less than with Brenna - so not really much damage at all!  The nurses eventually took Davin and cleaned him up and did all the typical newborn stuff while Jonathan and I watched. 

Davin's birth was awesome.  I love that initial bonding time that we had that I didn't really get with Brenna.  They took Brenna away from me much sooner and then took her out of the room to bathe her, etc.  Dr. Highland was great and we had great nurses throughout our stay at the hospital.  I'm not sure if it's because this will probably be our last baby, but it's been a ridiculously emotional experience for me and I just cannot get enough of our sweet baby boy!  Here's to a healthy baby and more blog posts to document his early life!