Birth Story

So a few of my friends have been posting their birth stories and it made me realize that I really should document mine. If your not interested, just skip this post please!

So it all started Monday, May 11, 2009. My due date wasn't until June 16th which made me 34 weeks and 6 days. That Saturday before I had done everything around the house that I needed to do and since Kade was farming at the time, I was pretty bored, so I decided I might as well pack my hospital bag, or at least start to pack it. Kade made SOOOO much fun of me because we still had 5 weeks left. So Monday I went to work and worked a full day. My brother JDee had instant messenged me and asked how I was that day and I told him I felt like crap. I actually scheduled a massage for the next day because I was in so much pain with my back. That night I came home and mowed the yard, cooked dinner and did some laundry. Then my sister Amanda called and I preceeded to tell her how I didn't know how I was going to make it another 5 weeks because I was so miserable.

I went to bed that night around 10ish and just as I was drifting off to sleep I hear, and felt this big POP! I screamed at Kade and told him my water had broke. I swear, he was up and dressed before I even knew what happened! We went to the hospital in Pocatello, and on the way I called my mom. She had totally jinxed me. She was supposed to be leaving to go to Pittsburgh the next morning with my sister-in-law Jamie for a check up. My mom told me that day not to have the baby while she was gone...I promised her I wouldn't! Ha...I kept my promise, just not exactly how I thought it would work out. Within a minute of getting off the phone with her, my sister called and said she was leaving to come see me (she lives in Rigby and has 3 kids of her own). By the time we got on the freeway I started to have contractions about 7 minutes apart and by the time we got to Pocatello they were about 2 minutes apart. So by this point I am freaking out because I knew he was way too early, and of all the things I was worried about, I was so worried about getting into the hospital with only a towel around me!

So we got up to a room and I am preparing myself for delivering this baby when the nurse who checked me told me she didn't think that was the head she felt. So in comes a resident with an ultra sound machine and yep, he was definately breach. OH CRAP!!! This meant a c-section. Since my water had already broke, there was no chance of turning him. So they told me I was dialated to a 4 already, and since it had only been about an hour since my water broke, I thought was pretty good, not that it mattered anymore since I had to have a c-section. So they take me back to the OR while my mom and sister try to console Kade. They gave me a spinal while I moaned through the contractions and then they let Kade in. My anesthesiologist was so great. He sat right above my head and talked me and Kade through all of it. I realized there was a problem when he told me less than a minute and the baby will be out, and 5 minutes or so had gone by. Finally at 12:26 AM Paxten Joel was born. He weighed a hefty 5lbs 15oz and 19 inches long.

This is when it got really scary. There were three NICU nurses there waiting for him and they took him over to their station. He was so purple and wasn't breathing. At this point I was a mess. I couldn't tell what was going on at all, and then they took him to the NICU. Kade went with Paxten while they finished up with me. The Dr. told me I was in so much pain this whole time because Paxten was pretty much in a ball up in my ribs. His legs were up by his ears and then the cord was wrapped around his body several times. If I went full term, I probably would have still had to have a c-section. I remember his legs wouldn't go down like normal when they first took him out and Kade asking them if they ever would go back to normal. :)

When they were done sewing me up I went into recovery where I had to get the spinal to wear off. I've never felt so trapped in my life. I couldn't move anything except for my arms and head. I had to let it work down at least to my belly button before they would let me out of recovery. This took a couple hours. FINALLY they wheeled my whole bed into the NICU so I could see Paxten. My poor mom and sister were still there at this point, and it was EARLY in the morning! I remember being so excited to see him, but so scared too. He was hooked up to a CPAP, oxygen and oximeters. His whole little body was so bruised up from the delivery and being so curled up in me. I remember thinking that he was way worse off than what I had imagined. They took us back to our room and got us kinda settled for what was left of the night. The best part was, our nurse had to, literally, crawl over Kade to get to my machine...so freaking funny.

Paxten ended up getting down to 5lbs, they put in a feeding tube after a couple days and started giving him food. He came off the CPAP after about 3 days, which is amamzing since his pressure was at 6, which is where we start adults a lot of the time at my work. He was on his oxygen for a little over a week. Now it was getting him to eat. He had to finish every bottle on his own, without the feeding tube for 24 hours. What a chore!! What baby finishes every bottle? It was total disappointment when he missed one feeding the day we thought we were going to bring him home. The Dr. decided to keep him one more day. Finally on May 28th we got to bring our sweet little boy home. You would never know now that he was a preemie. He is a very healthy, happy little boy who is developing so well. We love him so very much dispite all the trouble getting him here. I've never cried so much as I did those few weeks when I had to see my baby in pain, or had to leave him every day at the hospital. But, he was SO worth all of it!