I can't believe I have a four month old. He's been such a joy and perfect addition to our little family. Before, I forget the details of his birth (which I think I've already forgotten the pain because I literally googled "does a stubbed toe hurt as bad as labor" the other day when I stubbed my toe) I thought I'd come on here and document his birth story. We are one week shy of finding out we were pregnant with him a year ago!
Coopers birth story is actually very similar to Aspen's which you can read all about here but since I don't want to fall into the trap of comparing my kids (IT'S SO HARD NOT TO!), I thought Cooper deserved his own individual birth story documented.
I was induced again at 38w3d due to gestational diabetes. I know people are all about natural births and not having medical interventions but quite honestly, having a scheduled birth is rather convenient, especially when you have other kids! My birth plan was to get a baby out of me and that was about it.
We had to be at the hospital at 7:00am so we woke up at our normal time, got Aspen ready for daycare and dropped her off. I'm not going to lie, I got a little emotional dropping her off because to her it was just a normal day. And she was only 16 months old so she had no concept of what was going on. To us though, it was going to be documented as one of the BEST days of our lives.
We got to the hospital, checked in and got naked. If you haven't had a baby yet, your clothes are off in less than two minutes of being in your hospital room..... and its surprising how much you really just don't care.
I immediately told my nurse how terrified of needles I was so I wanted the BEST person on shift to do my IV. I'm sure nurses get annoyed with these type of request but she was so sweet about it and said "well you definitely don't want me then". I apparently have really hard veins to get an IV in and it ended up taking three different people and tries to get it in and had to go in right where I bend my arm, so I had to keep my arm straight the entire day which was rather annoying. We messed with the IV until about 9:30am and after that we could get the fun part started!
I had really convinced myself I was going to have Coop shortly after lunch so I would't have to miss a meal for the day. I was wrong.
I was only dilated to a 2 when I got there. They got me started on pitocin. The pitocin was really effective and I was having constant contractions. There was no break in my contractions, as soon as I'd come off of one, another would start. This was a good and bad thing. The pain was constant, and you do tend to just kind of get numb to constant pain. They decided to turn off the pitocin because my body had taken over and was doing it's thing.
My doctor came over at lunch time to check on me and break my water. I was happy and joking about wanting food really bad. All I could talk about were snickers, cupcakes and chipotle. He asked if I could feel the contractions since I wasn't breathing through them. He said he had saw a lot of women in labor but had never seen someone not breathing through contractions. This is when I decided I think I actually have somewhat of a high pain tolerance.
My nurse got off shift at 3pm and I was really sad that I didn't have Cooper while she was still there. The next nurse came in but told me she was only going to be there for a short time.I was only dilated to a 4 at this point so I didn't have high hopes that I'd be having a baby anytime soon so I went ahead and asked for the epidural.
The anesthioligist came in and I was of course terrified. I knew this would be the worst part of labor, but what I didn't know is how terrible it would actually be. With Aspen, the epidural only worked on my right side the first time it was given, I didn't think to tell the anesthioligist that ... until it didn't work the first time again. We spent 2.5 hours trying higher doses, different medicine, resetting it and nothing worked. I told the nurse I was fine, and I could do it with full feeling on my left side. The sweet anesthioligst said I had asked for pain relief so she promised she was going to get it right. She told me she was going to give me a spinal tap and I wouldn't have any feeling from abdominal down. Boy was she right! I also didn't regain feeling in my right side (that had been dosed like 7x) until mid the next morning.
My doctor came to check on me again after he was done with all of his appointments for the day. I was only dilated to a 5 so he said he was going to go home and eat dinner and then would come back up.
We decided to face time Aspen because we knew she'd be getting ready for bed soon and we didn't have any extra people in the room with us at the time (by that I just mean no residence, nurses, doctors, etc). A nurse we hadn't met yet came running in and said the baby's heart rate had started dropping so she wanted to check and see what was going on. Less than 15 minutes earlier I was only at a 5cm. I had jumped to a 10 and it was go time! She called in all the delivery team and paged the doctor.
I asked if I could sit up as all these people were entering the room and the resident asked if I wanted my doctor to be there for the delivery... I said yes so she told me I should probably stay laying down until he got there. That was the longest 25 minutes of my life. Literally holding my baby in me haha. As soon as he got there, I sat up and Coopers head came out... He asked me if I could give him one more push.... I literally had ZERO feeling so I asked if I was pushing.... it was effective because Coop came out! My doctor said he had never delivered a baby in street clothes before but there was a first time for everything. A similar event happened with Aspen but a different OB delivered her since mine was out of town.
Jud had strict instructions to have a snickers ready for me as soon as Coop came out. I don't think I had even delivered my placenta and was chowing down on a snickers. If you followed along during my pregnancy you knew we didn't have a name selected. We had it narrowed down between Breck, Cooper and Jackson. Before we went to the hospital we had eliminated Jackson. My doctor asked what his name was and we said we didn't know so we had the entire delivery team vote. Breck was actually ahead by one so my doctor declared him to be Breck.. But I asked if I got to vote and I voted Cooper... he said my vote counted as two so Cooper won. I still wonder if we should have named him Breck.
He was born at 6:46pm, 7lbs 3oz and 19" long. Cooper Carr Patty was here and our lives were forever changed.
Also, there's more happy to this story - I got chipotle to eat for dinner AND my OB brought my a cupcake the next day.
If you are here for the pictures - you've finally scrolled far enough. Sally Cavanaugh documented our first days as a family of four perfectly. She was also so good with Aspen who decided to have a meltdown in the middle of the photo shoot. I was so exhausted I didn't have the energy to snap her out of it and Sally did. You never would have guessed by all the smiles and energy in these photos that it even happened!
