After a very long, tiring, painful, and stressful labor process that ended in a c-section our baby boy arrived on July 4th at 10:40 PM. He weighed 7 lbs 11.8 ounces and was 21 inches long. He is just perfect and we couldn't be happier that he is here and we are now officially a family of four.
I will try and keep our story brief of his arrival as it was not only a long day but a long story :) We went to the hospital the morning of July 4th as we had discussed with my doctor the day before. I wasn't going to go if I still didn't have contractions or pain but sure enough I did. I didn't sleep well at all the night before. The contractions were painful and coming fairly close together. I finally woke up at 5 am and couldn't get back to sleep and they were timing about 3-5 minutes apart. So we went in. They hooked us up and my contractions were showing at about 2-5 minutes apart, however, I still had made absolutely no progress and Reed's head was still pretty high. They called my doctor and he fought against the nurses to keep me in and start some sort of induction. So we were finally admitted. We moved to L&D and got a room, they had me walk some, started an IV, and pitocin. It was a slow process. I held off on an epidural for a while so that I could move around and try and help the labor progress. My progress continued to be slow- so my doctor ordered that they would break my water. Holy pain! It would have been nice to have the epidural prior to that. It was extremely painful between that and then little did I know that they put the baby monitors on Reed to get more accurate readings as the ones on my belly were moving all over too much and his readings were becoming skewed. Immediately after all that was set up, I got my epidural- it is heaven. My progress started to speed up a bit but we were still slow. We tried a million different positions to sit me to try and help get Reed lowered, as that was the main concern at this point. We started moving along and it was really looking like I was going to be able to give birth to Reed without a c-section. We started pushing and that lasted for almost 2 hours and we were getting nowhere, he still wasn't dropping. The epidural had been turned off and I was in agony. Not only did I have the pain of each contraction but Reed's heart-rate was dropping. To even add to the issues, the Dr checked and believed that Reed wasn't facing in a desirable position. This could cause issues with dropping if he has a larger head and could mean no matter how long I push he could never descend right. Ben and I knew it was time for us to make our call and opted to go ahead and do the c-section now before anything worse happened to either of us. The Dr and nurses immediately went into surgery mode. It was honestly the longest and most painful 30-45 minutes that I have ever been through. But then we were in the OR and it was going to be a matter of moments before we would meet our little one. We are so happy that we made the decision we did at the time we did. Not only was his heart-rate dropping but it turns out that his umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck and was also pinching with each push. While it wasn't the route that we wanted to go, we tried, and we did what was right for our family. I also must commend my amazing husband for his support- he stepped up and saw more than either of us ever thought. He was almost a nurse's aide with everything he did and I truly appreciate him- I don't think that I would have made it through everything without him. With that said, I also thank my mom. She was a wonderful help as well making sure that Camdyn got to bed and being in the room with us helping when and where she could. After the OR I was in recovery for a while. Then we were in our room and starting our recovery and bonding with the new addition. We were released to go home on Saturday so we have now had 2 full days at home. We are adjusting pretty well, but we know we have more ahead of us.
So I guess I lied and that was a lot longer than I had originally planned. Even though we went through everything we did, we couldn't be happier. We are so blessed and happy for our family. We are enjoying every moment and Camdyn is such a great big sister! She is adapted very well to the new addition and has been a great big help. I must even brag for a second on her but tonight was her first time peeing on the toilet- maybe this is a sign that the two are going to be competing against each other down the road.
So if you made it through all of this I thank you. We wanted to update everyone. If you would like to see any pictures, I have posted them all on my photography blog.
We hope this finds you all well!
Love always,
Ben, Gabrielle, Camdyn, and Reed
