Birthday July 20, 2008

Connor James Lawson arrived on Sunday, July 20th, 2008 at 11:16 am weighing in at 6 lbs 8 oz and 20 inches long.

How it all happened:
Saturday, July 19th, I woke up at 9:45 am and realized that I had slept 10 hours that night! It was amazing to sleep that long and feel that rested. But, I realized that I hadn't felt little Connor move all night. I got up and ate a really big breakfast: 2 nectarines, 2 eggs and 2 Pop Tarts (strawberry). Now, I was fully rested and had a nice full stomach. Now it was time to clean house.
It then was 11am and I woke up Ryan to tell him that I still hadn't felt the baby move. (I had felt hiccups once, but never a kick or anything since Friday.) He convinced me to page the doctor. The OU doctor on call told me to go to the hospital immediately to check it out. After hanging up the phone, I cried because I was scared and in my gut I knew that it was a God sign that I had a good nights sleep and a big breakfast...
I was able to wash my face and put on deodorant before Ryan was frustrated and said, "get in the car!" We arrived at the hospital around noon. My blood pressure was 140 something over 96. I still had swelling in my feet that didn't go away over night and I now had 1+ protein in my urine. It was only a trace just 2 days ago at my doctor appointment. So, within 5 minutes of being there the nurse came in to my room in triage and said, "We're going to have a baby today!" My first reaction, in a loud voice with bug eyes, "WHAT!" I didn't know what to think. I was not prepared for that statement, but in my gut I knew that was going to happen. After the nurse left I cried to Ryan saying "I'm not ready yet!" Ryan, of course, was so elated. He could not stop smiling. I could not grasp the situation forth coming. I started listing off things that still needed to be done at home....I didn't get to vacuum or do the laundry!
Within an hour I was wheeled up to a Labor and Delivery room. They hooked me up to an iv, after 3 tries in different veins. My cervical exam resulted in me needing to have Miso (sp?) put into me via a disolvable pill to make my cervix thin out and start to dilate. While they were hooking me up to everything and getting me situated, Ryan went home to grab all the hospital bags and bring Chief back to town for him to go to my parents house. In the mean time, mom came up to the hospital to be with me.
The miso was inserted at around 4p. It began to give me contractions, but they were very bearable. After the miso wore off (4 hours) they checked my cervix again (8p). I had dilated to a 2, but since I had contractions, they could not do another round of miso, instead they started pitocin. I was scared to labor on pitocin, but I did not want the epidural because I had to prove I could give labor naturally! I did get to use the hospital birthing ball. So, for the first 5 hours of being on pitocin, I sat on the birthing ball and had Ryan rub my back. The first 5 hours were bearable. I forgot to mention that every 30 minutes they would up the pitocin dosage. After about 5 hours I had dilated to 3cm...slow, but it was progression. My contractions started to become too uncomfortable and I knew I had a long road ahead since it took me 5 hours to gain a centimeter. I did take Stadol. I was warned that it is really only affective for the first dosage and it only lasts an hour. I wanted to try it and see how it helped. Stadol made me feel drunk and it took the edge off the contractions. I was able to rest, with my eyes closed for about 30 minutes. Each hour, for about 4 hours, I asked for another round of Stadol, but looking back, they were right because it did not help ease the pain at all after that first dosage. Sometime during those 4 hours they said I did dilate to "barely 4cm." They decided to break my water. Thus far, the most painful thing is to lay flat on a hospital bed and have them poke and prod me. They broke my water and it was clear, but at the same time, they put in an internal monitor. I had no warning they were going to do this, nor did I have a real reason why. But, this monitor was able to tell them the accuracy of how strong my contractions really were. I think they wanted to make sure I was having adequate contractions to help me progress. But, during the water breaking and insertion of the monitor, I started shaking, crying and moaning really loud. It was SO painful.
Through the rest of the wee hours of the morning I still labored through the pitocin contractions but with moans and groans. Finally, at around 9:00 am on the 20th, I couldn't take the pain anymore. I asked for an epidural. Ryan was out of the room when mom and the doctor helped convince me to get it. He was glad he was not in the room because he didn't know how to handle that situation as the labor coach, knowing I didn't want to get an epidural, but also seeing how much pain I was in. It took about 20 minutes until the epi was inserted. Once inserted at about 9:30am, they said it might take about 10 minutes for it to take full affect. I finally was able to rest during my contractions and I fell asleep for 30 minutes. I woke up suddenly from my sleep to burning in my vaginal canal. The contractions were not bad, but the burning was horrible. I immediately said to the nurse, "somethings not right, the epi is not working right because I feel horrible pain down there." She had me sit up more to get the medicine to flow "down there." She did a cervical exam and within 30 minutes of being on the epi, I dilated from 4cm to 8 cm. As soon as the nurse left the room, I became very verbal with my moans and still insisted the epi was not working because I thought you aren't supposed to feel anything and I still felt horrible burning and stretching pain down there. I suddenly had the urge to push. Ryan called the nurse right back in the room and she did another cervical exam. I was now 10 cm and ready to push! It took 45minutes on the epi for me to relax and dilate from 4cm to 10cm. I didn't know that my body was too tense for the past 17hours to dilate.
The nurse immediately sat at the end of the bed and guided me to begin pushing during contractions. Ryan was on one leg and a nurse was on my other leg holding them up.(Later on, after birth, Ryan said that with the first pushes they could already see the head.) Basically the pushing was very painful, enough so that I said I might throw up, so they had a barf bag on standby. I pushed from 10:18am to 11:16am. Throughout the pushing they kept thinking that the next push would get his head out. In my head, I was horrified and didn't think I could "do this" because I thought I would have to push this hard, all over again, to get the shoulders out too. I screamed at the staff once because it was more painful to have them pulling apart my vagina, making way for the baby's head. They decided to finally do a small episiotomy. I knew it was happening, but it wasn't uncomfortable. After they cut me, he came out! And, 5 seconds later they said the shoulders were out. I was so relieved to know that I didn't have to push hard to get the rest of him out. Once out they took him over to the bed to get his measurements. Ryan went over there to him. I laid there and was stitched up. Getting stitched was painful too because I was so sore down there. It didn't help that I had some brand new resident doing the stitching. He was being trained as he did the stitching, so it took forever. Apparently, this was one of his first births too. While being stitched, I asked loudly, "It's a boy, right?!"
Now, we have baby Connor James Lawson, whom, based on pictures from Ryan as a baby, looks just like Ryan, only with my dimples!