Noah's Birth Story - Happy 4th of July!

Confession: I was hoping that Noah would arrive, just as Emily did, the day after the Waiting post.

And, he did. Noah Samuel made his arrival, July 4, 2011, at 1:06 pm weighing 8lb 13oz and 20.5 in long. He also has the most beautiful, highlighted, head of hair! I just love his hair!!!

As I said in the last post, the days and weeks leading up to Noah's arrival were full of "I can't believe how big you are" comments. So, I was on a mission to make sure I didn't go overdue and have to make the big baby induction decision. After Kyle's mom arrived two weeks ago, I decided to take it easy the first week since my doctor was out of town. After she arrived back on July 3, though, we were ready to get him out.

Kyle and I went on long evening walks the nights of July 2 and 3, telling our neighbors we were walking the baby out. The night of the 3rd, we went to bed quite late convinced it would be at least a few more days before Noah made his appearance.

I woke up frequently, as I did every other night, having to pee and having contractions each time I woke. This was nothing unusual, especially at this point, though. I was pretty much contracting just a few minutes apart day and night. At 6am, the morning of July 4th, I woke up to pee again. I noticed that my contractions were slightly more painful, but went back to bed.

Shortly after going back to bed, Emily started making noise on the monitor. This, combined with the contractions, made it impossible for me to go back to sleep. So, I got back up for a while and paced the bathroom. At 6:30, I woke Kyle and told him I might be in labor, but wasn't too sure. He suggested I get in the bathtub.

After a few minutes in the bathtub, Kyle decided to get up and take a shower. I still wasn't sure if it was the real thing. The contractions were getting more intense and were consistently 2-2.5 minutes apart, but nothing I couldn't easily manage. After about 30 more minutes, though, we realized this was the real deal. We got a few last minute things together and headed downstairs.

Both kids were up at this point and Kyle let his mom know what was going on. He heated my rice sock and I pressed it into my back during each contraction. Right before heading out the door, I was moaning through a contraction and Emily got very concerned. She wanted me to hold her, which I did, but did not want me to leave. She cried as I handed her over to Grandma and it broke my heart. Grandma explained to them after we left that Mommy was okay, but needed to go to the doctor.

We arrived at the hospital at 8:20. Kyle dropped me off at the front doors while he went to park the car. As soon as I got out of the car, I had a contraction. I walked over to one of the pillars and moaned into my pillow. A few women stopped and asked if I was ok or if I needed a wheelchair. I declined a wheelchair and one of the nice women led me to the chairs inside the cool lobby. I had one more contraction as people walked about the lobby while waiting for Kyle.

We headed up to the 3rd floor - L&D. Kyle called on our drive to let them know we were on our way. My doctor was on 24 hr in-hospital call, so no worries there. We headed in and a nurse greeted us at the doors of L&D. I stopped to lean against a wall through a contraction. The nurse asked if we were going natural and we said 'yes'. All of our worries about going natural in the hospital were immediately alleviated. The nurses were amazing!

As we were checking in, they hooked me up for my 20 minute strip on the monitors, to get paperwork signed,my hep-lock placed, and an initial internal (5cm and 90% effaced). After this, we were free to use the shower and tub since my water was still in tact. The water from the shower was amazing on my back, but I soon wanted to sit. The jacuzzi was also great. There were a few points early on where I felt like I was losing control a bit, but the water gave me enough of a break to recompose myself. I remembered from the many birth stories and books I read that one coping technique was to count breaths through the contractions. This helped me so much that Kyle actually asked me if I was even still having contractions.

After about an hour, at 10am, my doctor came in and told me if I wanted to get out of the tub, she would break my water to speed things up. So, after a few more minutes, I got out. She checked me and to my great surprise, I was 9cm! I was thrilled. I had made it to 9cm and wasn't even thinking about an epidural. Dr. L said she had another patient ready to deliver, so she didn't want to break my water or she would miss the delivery.

So, we waited about 30 minutes for her to deliver the other patient. She came back, broke my water, and everyone got ready for delivery. But...I was still 9cm....for a loooong time. Noah was posterior (face-up) and seemingly stuck. I panicked - thinking about Kason's birth (stuck at 9cm for 3+ hrs) and the back labor was getting to be absolutely horrific. Kyle later told me that my back had a large bulge where Noah was pressing on it. Contractions were 1.5 minutes apart, lasting 1 min+ each. With such little time to collect myself in between, I lost it. After being stuck for so long, my nurse suggested an epidural and I jumped at it. They pushed fluids quickly and the anesthesiologist arrived shortly after. This was my savior.

The pressure was excrutiating, but nothing I couldn't handle. Once I finally reached 10cm around noon, Noah still had not turned, so I chose to labor down instead of wasting energy pushing. My doctor came back in around 12:45 and Noah had finally turned. We started pushing and he was born at 1:06pm.

He was immediately placed on my chest as everyone exclaimed that he was sooo big! He was purple, though, and not wanting to breathe on his own. We immediately knew it was concerning when Dr. L clamped the cord and had Kyle cut it right away (she typically waits for it to stop pulsing and knew this was one of our wishes). Noah was taken over the the warmers where he still didn't want to breathe right away. His APGARS were 5 at 1 minute and 8 at 5 minutes. While he did perk up, they decided it would be best to be taken to the transitional care nursery right away to be monitored. I got to hold him fora few minutes and Dr. L convinced them to take his weight before leaving, though...8lb 5.8oz.

The TCN nurse didn't buy the 8lb 6oz, so re-weighed him in the nursery. Imagine our surprise when he was almost a half-pound larger at 8lb 13.4oz. This put him in the 90th percentile and classified him as an LGA (large for gestational age)baby, which meant heal pricks before every feeding to monitor his blood sugars for 24 hrs. After a couple of hours in the nursery, he got the all clear and was released to our room for the remainder of our stay.

We came home on Wednesday and are thrilled to be a family of 5.

Meeting Noah for the 1st time


First Family Pic


Ready to go home


Welcome Home, Noah!


I'm a cutie-pie!


Noah brought us a present (a water table)