I think I forgot to mention in the last post that yesterday we went to the park for my cousin Nathan’s college graduation (he is a dentist) and we went there with your cousin Bryson and Aunt Nicole. The reason this is important is because we told Bryson that since he still speaks baby he needed to tell you to come out. We left Nicole’s place at 8PM. Your mom’s water broke at 2:30AM so 6.5 hours later you were on your way out. Remind me to thank Bryson.
Anyways, picking up where we left off at noon - The natural birth is out! The nurse came back and said that the contractions were far too weak and your mom needed a little help. So we got the drugs hooked up shortly after 12:30PM. From that point on it was a long waiting game.
We watched a couple movies, visited with Aunt Nicole who came to bring me a sandwhich, visited with Aunt Ali and Charlotte as well as seeing Grandma and Grampa Perkins for several hours. Not a whole lot happened until 8:30PM. Between getting the drugs hooked up and 8:30 the contractions did get more and more strong. Your poor mom went from barely recognizing or feeling them to the point of pretty good pain when they came.
Every time the nurses and especially when the doctor came they asked how hard the contractions were. What their rating was on a scale of 1-10. Your mom started out around a 5 and by 8:30 had worked up to an 8.5 or a 9. So she thought.
At 8:30 the doctor checked your mom’s status and told us how far along we were. She said we were about at the point where you normally hear of people going into the hospital. She estimated another 14 hours of labor and said she would come back at 12:30 to check up on us.
This is when the pain really got bad. To help ease it we tried soaking your mom in a hot bath, that wasn’t good because it was hard for her to breathe. We tried just toughing it out but your mom had been up since 7 or so that morning and didn’t get the nap she wanted during the calm hours. She was getting very tired and frustrated and it showed when the contractions got really hard.
Around 10 Grandma and Grampa Perkins came back to drop some more food off for me and tried helping calm and soothe your mom. They weren’t able to do so. Not because they weren’t good at it, but because your mom was getting irritable with fatigue and pain. At 10:30 she decided to get the epidural and go pain free for a while so she could rest.
The epidural was interesting enough. The anesthesiologist came in and numbed up part of her back basically gave her an IV in her spine full of pain killers. She had to be very still and relaxed during the process which wasn’t easy considering the pain from contractions was the most severe to date and wasn’t going away in between contractions. Your mom was such a trooper. I don’t blame her for doing it at all.
After she got the epidural she was able to sleep and that is what we did. She got checked every couple hours until we were almost ready to start pushing. At 5:45AM on June 7th 2010 the doctor came and said we were ready to start pushing.
Pushing was pretty uneventful. With the epidural your mom felt no pain except the exhaustion of having to push every couple minutes three times at for ten second intervals (30 seconds of pushing about 90 seconds of rest). We were told that first time moms push for one to three hours. We reached the three hour max and were asked if we wanted to keep going with the unlikely outcome of natural birth, or if we wanted to forgo the risks associated with continuing to push and go do a caesarean section (C-Section). We opted for the C-Section much to your mom’s dismay.
Your mom was set on wanting to have you without the epidural naturally and now she did the epidural and had a C-Section. The C-Section makes for longer harder recovery, but we didn’t really have much of a choice. Your mom dealt with it amazingly well considering her hormones and expectations.
Off to the operating room we went. The surgeons sliced your mom open, pushed you out completely negating the work your mom had done, and there you were screaming!
The doctors and nurses say that you had actually gotten really stuck inside your mom. One of the doctors said that you definitely wouldn’t have been able to come out naturally. I was able to be in the OR for the procedure and got to see the doctors and nurses cleaning you off and got to hold you while the surgeons finished the procedure. Your mom and I both cried such tears of joy to finally get to see you. It is one of the happiest days of my life. Right up there with getting married and going to the temple for the first time.
And now here you are. Born 9:32AM on the 7th of June 2010. You weighed 8 pounds 7 ounces. You were 20 inches long and had short dark hair all over your head. The nurses said you were uncommonly good looking due to the C-Section. You head was nice and round. One said you had cute ears.
Now I have to say something about you getting cleaned. I mentioned you didn’t like it and that isn’t uncommon. You got suctioned and wiped down all just seconds after being born. All babies cry for this and you were no exception. What stood out to me is your lower lip quivering. You continued to do this even after we left the OR and came back to the mother’s room. It almost looked like you were shivering cold and then your mouth would open and you would wail! It is rather cute and endearing.
Brooklynn I love you so much and I am so glad you are here! I can’t wait to share all the forthcoming experiences of life with you and share the memories. I hope that I can be an amazing dad so you can have an amazing life.
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