Pregnancy is a miracle. Birth is a miracle. It's a miracle that we as a man and wife have been gifted with the power to create life. It's a miracle that a woman's body is divinely designed by our Heavenly Father to carry that life for a 9 month period (or longer) and for that life to grow and develop into a tiny little human being, a perfect mix of a mother and a father. It's a miracle that the tiny life and the life of the mother can survive the stress of labor and delivery, despite the fact that there are so many things that could go wrong and often do. Birth it's this miracle of pregnancy and birth that brings us so much closer together as husband and wife, as a family.
Over this last week, I've had a lot of time to think about our experience with bringing our son into the world. And I've realized I have SO much to be grateful for. I have an amazing husband who was with me the entire time during our son's birth, praying with me and for me. I have two wonderful mothers who were supportive emotionally and physically throughout the whole day. I have amazing friends who texted me and helped me feel reassured, who visited me, and who encouraged me all along the way. Best of all, I have a beautiful, healthy baby boy who is now an entire week old. And I feel wonderful. I wouldn't have it any other way.
This is Joshua Timothy Peterson, OUR little miracle.
He weighed 10 lbs. 2 oz. at birth, and measured 21 1/4 inches long. He took quite a while to get here...so long in fact, that I was growing extremely impatient and anxious for him to arrive, more so than I had been for the last few months.
In this post, I plan to detail our 21 hour labor and delivery experience. I hope you don't mind all the detail.
Let's start where we last left off. I went past my due date. And I was extremely bummed about it, as most of us are. Induction date was set, and I was set on trying to have this baby without the use of pitocin. We tried a lot of things, but there were some extremes even I didn't want to go to--Castor oil for example. Yucky stuff is what I've heard about it. But lots of walks, lots of pineapple, lots of cleaning the house and baking. Mostly just trying to keep my mind off of the upcoming induction date and the fact that I hoped I could go into labor on my own. I just wanted to know that my body was capable of getting started on its own.
Wednesday night, I asked Danny, my Dad, and my brother Cameron to give me a blessing of comfort before the big day. I was beyond nervous and worried about things going wrong, or pitocin not working. After the blessing, I felt comforted and at peace, and felt that things would turn out for the best the following day.
September 19th:
The next morning, I woke up around 7AM to use the restroom (which I did every 2 hours pretty much on the dot every night), and realized that I was bleeding. Quite a lot more than I would have expected for it to be normal pre-labor spotting, or even what they call the bloody show.
On top of this and not knowing what it meant and worrying it could be the worst case scenario (placenta detachment prior to birth), I couldn't feel the baby moving.
Danny and I quickly got the last of the things together for the hospital, and started driving to the hospital. The whole drive, I was guzzling water and nudging around on my belly to try to make the baby move. I just needed to feel a kick or two that were strong enough for me to feel like he had only been sleeping. Despite my worries, I eventually did feel him move and felt instantly relieved, but still a little nervous that something might be wrong.
We got to the hospital, went into triage, and learned that we would just be admitted without going through triage because my induction was scheduled in 2.5 hours. My wonderful friend Merri (a labor and delivery nurse herself) was kind enough to find me a brilliant labor and delivery nurse, named Erin who was with me through all of the day on Friday.
(Now, I was going to type lots...and maybe I still will. But my internet was being silly....and I made the mistake of accidentally deleting most of my post...lovely right? So here goes for round two...)
8:00 AM -- Right about this time, I got hooked up to all the fun monitors that tell you about baby's heart rate and the frequency of my contractions. Imagine my surprise when Erin tells us that I'm contracting about 3 times in each 10 minute interval, which is very good. It meant that I had started to go into labor on my own, which I had been hoping and praying would happen.
The other good news? The bleeding was simply my cervix continuing to efface. I was at 2 cm and 90% effaced when Erin checked me then.
9:00 AM -- Since we left in kind of a hurry, I didn't eat anything for breakfast, and neither did Danny. So I was hungry. Very hungry. And once they start you on pitocin, you're not supposed to eat anything except clear liquids. Thankfully, Erin took pity on me and let me have a light breakfast before hooking me up to the IV and starting pitocin. What did I eat? Some french toast, bacon, fruit, and cream of wheat. Yummy!
She checked me again, determined there was no change in my progress, and then proceeded to prick and stick me with the IV to get some fluids going and start up the pitocin. And then we were off, increasing contractions by the hour.
11:00 AM -- By this time, my mom and mother in law had both been informed that we were at the hospital. I still wasn't sure at this point if I wanted them both in the room during delivery as well as Danny, but I was glad to have their company nonetheless. My mom had come around 10:30 or 11, and my mother-in-law was working until later in the afternoon (which she couldn't do cuz she was too distracted lol).
We got to meet the doctor on call, Dr. Baulk, who was very pleasant and optimistic that before her shift was over at 5PM, we could have my contractions strong enough that she'd be comfortable breaking my water. The consistency she could see in my contractions was a good sign that this might be possible.
11AM - 1PM -- My mom, Danny, and I settled in to watch Star Trek. That was my labor surprise for Danny--I got both of the new Star Trek movies for him and I to watch during labor. We put it up on the laptop, and I got on the bouncy ball to ride out some of the more uncomfortable contractions.
That was a downside to pitocin...you're hooked up to an IV, and because of the pitocin, you also have to be monitored the whole time, so you're basically tied up and can't move around. Of course, I could use the restroom and whatnot, but I had to get unhooked from all the monitors and drag the IV with me. The most annoying part of juggling these monitors was that when I'd take the finger pulse thinger off, it would beep really annoyingly and wouldn't stop until I put it back on. Very frustrating.
During this period, my contractions started to get strong enough that I needed to find other ways to relax because they were making me nauseous, emotional, and uptight. Danny was such a big help in trying to get me to relax and get into positions that would be more comfortable. Eventually, I moved to the rocking chair and that seemed to help a bit more than the ball, but contractions suck. And mine were about to get worse.
1PM - 4:30PM -- Throughout the morning, Erin had been upping my pitocin slightly to move the contractions along. Unfortunately for me, my body seemed to respond by having contractions one on top of another, they way they're supposed to when you are in the transition period. I was shaky and miserable, nauseous, and definitely crying a lot. I tried not too, but my mom told me if I didn't let it out, then I would be making my body fight against the contractions, which would make it worse.
My contractions were literally feeling non-stop. Erin felt terrible, and they tried to stop the coupling of the contractions, but I just couldn't seem to get a break, even with the pitocin lowered a lot. My mom and mother-in-law tried to help as much as they could.
We did breathing. I had Danny push on my back a lot. I tried to move. Nothing seemed to help, and it was getting to the point that I couldn't stand it anymore. I'd been at this for nearly 10 hours and just wanted to be able to relax, to sleep. I could hardly catch a break, because the contraction would end and another would start right after it.
It was hard to admit that I wanted an epidural. I wanted to be strong enough to last without one. But I wasn't about to feel like a failure for getting one either.
Erin came in and asked us if I wanted to try some other pain relief options. I didn't want any IV pain meds, cuz they go to the baby. So epidural it was.
4:30PM - Dr. Thomas was the anesthesiologist on-call that day, so Erin called for him to come down. Thankfully, I didn't have to wait long, but it felt like the longest wait of my life.
He needed me to sit up. I didn't want to sit up, or move, or really do anything at that point, but I knew I needed to in order for him to administer the epidural correctly. He was so patient and kind, very reassuring, which was good because I was half-way freaking out, even though I didn't want to feel anything anymore.
Danny helped me sit up, and what felt like a million years later, Dr. Thomas was finished pricking and sticking, and taped me up good and tight. Now we just had to wait for the epidural to take effect.
Within 30 minutes, it was working very well. I couldn’t feel anything. I was able to sit up and talk with everyone in the room, and just enjoy the labor and delivery experience.
5:30 PM – Thanks to my lack of feeling contractions, I was very keenly aware that my stomach was empty. Very empty. And I couldn’t eat anything…no fun and no fair because Danny’s mom brought him Subway and he could eat it whenever he wanted, which he did. :p
6:45 PM – My new nurse, Julie, came in to check on my progress. The status? 5.5 cm, 90-95% effaced , and baby was at a -1 station. He needed to move down to a +3 to be delivered. But we’d made it to where we could have the doctor break my water, which was a good thing. He was in a delivery at that moment though, so I plugged in the iPod headphones and settled down to rest for a while. Definitely a good thing I did considering how much longer I had to go.
7:45PM – We got to meet Dr. Alperin, who would later deliver our baby. He was pretty awesome, not gonna lie. After his assessment, I was at 6.5 cm, 90-95% effaced, and baby had nearly made it to zero station.
Throughout the last while, I’d been feeling pretty shaky and nauseous. Definitely felt like I might throw-up every now and then, but thankfully I didn’t. Julie and Dr. Alperin thought that it was most likely because I was in transition, so despite how icky I felt, it was a very good thing.
Dr. Alperin broke my water right around this time, which was clear and perfectly normal. I didn’t feel a thing. It was kinda funny because he got up to leave and I asked him if he was going to break my water yet. He laughed and said he just did. Nice, right?
9:20PM – Status: about 8 cm, 100% effaced, and +1 station. I had been sleeping off and on throughout most of the last hour or so. Sleep was definitely a good idea.
By 11PM, I was about 9.5 cm dialated and the baby was at a +2 station. We were nearly there, but not quite ready to push. Obviously, our little boy didn’t want to be born on “Talk Like a Pirate Day” or else he would have come by midnight.
Sometime in there, my mom and dad had both come back into the room (though my dad didn’t stay during any check-ups), and one of my fathers-in-law had come to hang out with him in the waiting room. Little did they know just how much longer they’d be waiting.
Midnight. Officially September 20th.
10 cm.
We did a couple of practice pushes, and then got going. And it was a long while that we worked. Danny, my mom, and mother-in-law were all helping me, and Julie was keeping me going on when to push.
But somewhere between midnight and 2AM, my contractions started going wonky. They were only showing up on the monitor every 8-10 minutes, sometimes longer. And even stranger, only half of my uterus felt like it was contracting when we tried to go by feel. Definitely a strange phenomenon; baby was holding up well, but I wasn’t having regular enough contractions for pushing to be very productive. We kept at it anyway.
Around 1:45AM, Dr. Alperin came in to see where we were at. He watched and told me that I was doing an excellent job—very strong pushing. But the baby wasn’t clearing my pelvic bone. He just kept bouncing on it.
After we told him that the doctor in the office had estimated the baby wouldn’t be much bigger than 8.5 or 9 pounds, Dr. Alperin let us keep going for another 30 minutes with the Pitocin increased to try to regulate my contractions better.
The implication was pretty clear though: I needed to make adequate progress for him to feel like we could proceed. Otherwise, we’d need to do a c-section.
Now, I’d read enough of my friends birth stories to know that things don’t go the way you plan during labor and delivery. Not at all. So I had determined early on that I wasn’t going to have any expectations. I wanted to go into the experience expecting that things would happen the way they needed to for baby and I to come out of it healthy.
So a c-section wasn’t exactly the most ideal situation, but I wasn’t going to let myself get discouraged and freaked about it. And I didn’t. But I prayed like crazy.
Danny said there were a lot of prayers going on in that room. I believe him.
Over the next 30 minutes, we continued to push. But I had a funny feeling to start paying better attention to when I could feel a build-up of pressure on my pelvic area. As soon as I started feeling for that, we were pushing every 2-3 minutes, pushing 4-5 times each contraction. The monitor still didn’t show much, and only half of my tummy felt hard, but my pushing was working. It was working well enough in fact, that I ended up having some pretty intense tearing that freaked everyone out for a few minutes. Haha
3:00AM rolled around and Julie told me to stop, sounding very excited. She paged for the doctor and we had to wait for just a minute or so before Dr. Alperin came in and we started up again. I was exhausted, but utterly relieved. It looked like the doctor and nurse both thought I could do this without a c-section.
Around 15 minutes later, pushing 5-7 times each contraction, Dr. Alperin asked if I wanted to feel the baby’s head.
I was thrilled! I didn’t have mirrors, but that’s what cellphone cameras are for right Debbie? ;) He had hair and he was definitely on his way into the world. It was a huge motivator to keep going!
At 3:26AM, the best miracle of all happened. I became a mother to Joshua Timothy Peterson.
It took 3.5 hours of pushing, and all the stamina and endurance I had in me, but he was finally here. And all I could think about was that I hadn’t heard him cry.
Time seems to slow down at times like this, when you’re anxiously waiting for something to happen. I knew it really had only been seconds, and that it takes up to a minute, sometimes longer, for newborns to grasp how to open up their mouth and inhale a gulp of new air, but it felt like ages that there was all kinds of silence to me, because I hadn’t heard his frantic crying yet.
And then, I did. He cried, and boy did he cry loudly! He screamed and screamed, and was weighed, and pricked and poked and prodded, and then finally laid up on my chest.
He was beautiful. I couldn’t imagine him looking any different.
His hair, curly (mostly because it was wet) and reddish blond.
His eyes, grey-blue.
His hands and feet, giant and long!
He was perfect. He was mine. And now I get to keep him forever and ever.
Best. Day. Ever.
Second to this feeling was watching Danny hold him for the first time. I can’t think of a time up to that point that I’ve felt more in love with my husband than I did while watching him carefully hold our newborn son.
Now we’ve had a good 2 weeks to adjust to life with Joshua. (More on that another day). Danny is an incredible father, and such a supportive husband. And Joshua is incredible—so fun and silly to watch and interact with.
We love that we get to keep him forever, thanks to the covenants we made with each other in the temple on our wedding day. We love that we have a perfect new addition to our little family. We love everything about being parents (though the whole lack of sleep thing is kind of an adjustment, haha).
