{Becker's Arrival:: Part 1}

Here is the story of how little Beck came to be:

I woke up Wednesday morning (3/14) not feeling too well; feeling achy and crampish...

I had a feeling that following these feelings would come a baby!  Or so I hoped.

Normally we go to Bible Study on Wednesday mornings, but decided it best to stay home, in jammies, and snuggle down with my little girl, knowing that these would be our last alone moments. 

I was able to do a couple of loads of laundry, finish last minute packing decisions, and get all the childcare lined up.  It was a true blessing the way this all came about. I had been so stressed about how Chase's care would all come together, and in the end, everything was lined up just perfectly.  I called everyone involved and told them that I thought the time would be soon, not sure of how soon though.

Around 2:00pm, I started feeling stronger cramps, which after this happened for maybe an hour, I thought, maybe these are actual contractions (but I'd forgotten how they felt and they weren't painful)

So around 3:00 I decided that maybe I should start timing them.  They were getting slightly stronger, to the point where as the hour wore on I called John and told him he needed to wrap things up at work and Chase was starting to wear on my nerves awfully quickly.

I called my OB and spoke to her nurse, I told her contractions were about 7 minutes apart and lasting 30-45 seconds for 2 hours.  Usually they advise waiting to go to the hospital until they are 4 minutes apart lasting 1 minute for an hour. But because I wanted to try having a VBAC(vaginal delivery after cesarean), they wanted to be able to monitor me closely so they had warned me not to labor too long at home.  She thought I should probably head over soon, but not hurry.

John got home about 4:30 and meanwhile I'd gotten in touch with the C's who would have Chase overnight, and Mrs. C was able to pick Chase up on her way home from work around 5:00, perfect!

John and I decided to walk around the neighborhood a bit.  Up to Monday of this week I'd been dilated to 3cm, so even though laboring for the day was slow and easy going, I had no idea where I'd be once I got to the hospital to be checked.

About 5:30 we hopped in the car and drove the 20 minutes over to La Jolla.  I made some phone calls along the way letting a few know what was going on.  Still unsure of how things would play out, they could easily send us back home.  When we got there, they stuck me in a little room, checked my cervix, told me that I needed to have changed since my last check.  I had been at 3cm on Monday, when the nurse checked me I was at 4cm, so I won a ticket of admittance.  They did all the behind the scenes stuff, put me in a luxurious labor and delivery room, got me iv'd (which was almost the most painful part of this process and blood squirted everywhere, I could tell even though not looking), hooked up the fetal monitor and the contraction monitor...they basically told me that I needed to be hooked up to the monitors the whole time (I think they considered me high risk due to my age and the VBAC thing).  So once I knew I couldn't move anymore, I decided to get my epidural.  That was probably about 9:00pm.  The anesthesiologist came pretty quick, and got started.  Again, I must say, the poking here about did me in.  I remember with Chase the dr. was calm and gentle and I don't remember it hurting going in.  This dr. hit some nerves and seemed to take forever and it (again) was not a favorite part of this process.  Up to this point my contractions were not that bad.  But I knew that things would get worse, and really needed to have an epidural just in case I ended up needing surgery.

Next the midwife broke my bag of water.  Now the contractions started coming quicker and stronger.  One of my concerns of getting the epidural so quickly was that it would stall labor.  But in this case it did not.  At 11:30 my cervix was completely open and thinned so it was time to begin pushing.

Now, let me say, this pushing is serious business and is not for the faint of heart.  Literally.
I was doing serious mental battle the entire one hour and 20 minutes.  I think of myself as a strong person, but that pushing really kicked my butt!  I have never exerted so much energy in all my life, resulting in what felt very unrewarding because I couldn't tell that anything was happening.  The midwife had told me that until his head came out of my pelvic bone, he was just scooting down in tiny increments and then on the off contraction would kind of scoot back up.  UGH!  Disheartening!

At 1:20am, finally his little big head came out.  Then it was smooth sailing from there.  After a few more minutes/contractions, his little big body slid right out!  The funny thing that happened when they pulled him out was that all the amniotic fluid that was around him came crashing out as well.  I mean, like someone took a gallon bucket of body fluids and threw it at the midwife.  It seemed like a large amount of fluids!!  She looked like a crime scene gone bad by the end of it all.  Amazing!  Whoa did that feel better once he was out.  He cried pretty much right away.  These days they don't bathe them until at least 4 hours after birth, so they just wiped him off and wrapped him in a blanket.  I got to hold him for a while then they took him to the other side of the room and weighed and measured him and did the APGAR test.
He scored 8/9.

I was pretty surprised at his weight.  8 pounds 7 ounces, 20.5 inches long.  That is a full 2 pounds more than Chase weighed.

The midwife got me all fixed up, I was able to eat a snack as I'd not eaten in 12 hours...and life went on!  It was so very different than getting a c-section with Chase.  I'm so thankful that it all worked out and that I was able to experience that once in my life.  I think!

At this point they wheeled me/us to a recovery room on a different floor.

I will stop my story there for now.  I know that was long, and maybe no one is interested in it, but I wrote it out mostly for my sake so as to not forget it all!!