The Birth Story

Blake is finally here! Here is the long and detailed version of the events:

I was due on Saturday, September 10th and by that point was VERY done being pregnant! However, I woke up on the 10th with no signs whatsoever that labor was even remotely close. My dad was in town so Jon and I went in to Fort Collins to hang out with him. Jon and Dad spent the afternoon golfing while Mom and I ran errands. Unfortunately, the day continued with any excitement. Jon and I headed back home in the evening and I started having braxton hicks contractions pretty regularly. I started to feel hopeful and decided to go get some rest. I woke up Sunday morning disappointed that there was no baby and STILL having contractions. I continued to have them consistently up until Monday night. Tuesday morning I woke up super frustrated. I had signed on to cook this human until the 10th, this was now the 13th and I was SO DONE! Jon dropped me off at Mom's on his way in to work so I could keep myself busy with projects and didn't go crazy during the day. After work he picked me up and we went home to have dinner. While cooking dinner I started to feel a little funny. Jon and I decided to take a quick walk after dinner. We walked for about a half hour and nothing happened so I was sure it wasn't going to be that night. When we got back Jon went out to run some errands before he had to go to his night job. I was washing his uniform while he was out. I bent down to put his uniform in the washing machine and when I stood up I felt a little gush of fluid. Not enough to be sure I hadn't just peed a little. I went up to the bathroom to empty my bladder and change. I continued to leak fluid for the next 15 minutes and at this point I was starting to feel pretty excited. I was tempted to call my mom to tell her my water broke, but I was too scared it was a false alarm. I kept walking up and down the stairs because I noticed I leaked more when I was bouncing a little. I couldn't decide if I should call Jon and tell him to hurry home when my phone rang. It was my mom. I answered with a "how did you know to call me?". "Did you water break!?" she asked. I told her what was going and she got off the phone to put my sisters on alert. I called Jon but he didn't hear his phone so I sent him a text message telling him I thought my water had broken and to have him come home. At this point I had been leaking constantly for about a half hour but wasn't entirely convinced it was my water. So I called my friend Stacie to get her opinion since she had had a similar experience with her water breaking. She told me she thought it was probably my water but to wait it out for a little bit to make sure it didn't stop. While on the phone with Stacie Jon came racing in the door very excited. I got off the phone with Stacie and filled him in on what had been going on. My phone rang again and it was Mom telling me that her and Lizz were showered and heading over. Jon I picked up the house and then when Mom and Lizz got there we hung out for a little while waiting to make sure it really was my water. At about 9:30 after leaking for an hour and half and having non painful contractions every 3 minutes, I decided to call the on call doctor. He told me to go ahead and head over to the hospital. I showered and Jon tried to take a nap.

11:00 PM- We left to head over to the hospital. It was a really weird feeling to walk in to the hospital not really in pain. It was very different than I thought it was going to be. They put me in a triage room and tested to make sure I really was leaking amniotic fluid. The test was positive- I was officially in labor!

11:45 PM- They admitted me and I was moved to labor and delivery. However, I was only dilated to a 1 and 30% effaced.

1:00 AM- They finally got done with all their testing and Jon and I were instructed to try to rest. Mom and Lizz left to go get a little rest. I slept very little off and on while my cute nurse, Cindy, checked my vitals every 2 hours.

5:00 AM- My contractions had gotten slightly stronger, but not strong enough, so they had me get up and walk for a while. The contractions started to get much stronger while walking.

6:15- Mom and Lizz returned to the hospital after a very short night of sleep.

7 AM- My doctor came in to check on me. I was dilated to a 3 and 70% effaced. At least I was finally making progress!

8 AM- Jon and I went for a walk again to try to bring on stronger contractions. Contractions were starting to get to the point that I couldn't walk through them and after getting back to my room I threw up from the pain.

10:15 AM- CeeCee showed up to join the labor party!

10:30 AM- My contractions started to get really painful and I was having a hard time breathing through them

11:15- Courtney showed up to join the labor party!

11:20 AM- I got my epidural and became a much happier person!

1 PM- Dr. Guiroy came back to check on me. I was still only dilated to a 4 so they decided to put me on pitocin to hurry along the process

1:30 PM- My mom and sisters left to grab some lunch

3:15 PM- My mother-in-law arrived to join the labor party!

5:15 PM- They had to put me on oxygen because Blake's heart rate was dropping during contractions

5:45 PM- Nurse Amber checks me and I am dilated to a 7 and 80% effaced

8:00 PM- I started to go into transition and was sure I was going to die. I was shaking and very nauseous and had no idea how I was going to survive this delivery

8:30 PM- I was dilated to a 9 1/2 but still shaking so bad. I hadn't had anything to eat since Tuesday lunch (I was feeling icky and didn't want to eat dinner on Tuesday night) so my nurse, Amber, smuggled me in some apple juice. After that I started to feel much better.

9:20- Dr. Guiroy arrived and I started to push

After about a half hour of pushing I started to feel really defeated. I had no idea how I was going to survive this. They gave me a mirror so I could watch and know when I was pushing correctly. As time progressed, I started to see more and more blood because I was tearing pretty badly from the inside. After about an hour he was so close but couldn't make it out so they ended up cutting me. The next contraction, out came his head. I could feel his head come out and wanted to continue to push to get the rest of them out but Dr. Guiroy had me stop for a minute. My sweet baby boy had the cord wrapped around his neck once and then across his body. She had to turn him quickly and pull him out the rest of the way. He was born at 10:31 on Wednesday, September 14th. I looked down to see my sweet boy and was terrified to see the cord around his neck. He was blue and limp and all I could ask was "Is he ok? Is he ok?" Everyone assured me that he was find they told me they needed to take him straight to the heating lamp. The plan was to have Jon cut the cord, but since we were in a bit of a hurry Dr. Guiroy quickly cut it and handed him off to the nurse. They whisked him away to the heating lamps and I waited to hear the only sound that could make me feel better- his cry. Finally (after what felt like forever but I'm sure was only a few seconds) he started to cry. As soon as he started to cry his skin pinked up really well and he became a very normal looking baby. I sent Jon over to be with him while they stitched me up. It took them over an hour to stitch me after the tearing and about half way through that I was able to hold me sweet baby boy. I was so in love with him already! We passed him around and everyone got their chance to love on him and I was FINALLY able to eat something. At around midnight they moved us into our recovery room and we were left with just our sweet little family. Jon changed Blake's first diaper and we spent very little of the night actually sleeping, and most of it loving on our sweet baby.

We are so glad to finally have him here and are slowly learning how to be his parents! Hopefully he'll forgive us for all the mistakes I am sure we will make. Thank you to everyone for your support and love as we've gone through this crazy adventure!