Cody's Birth Story

Picture on top: 40 Weeks and 9 days.  This is the last picture of me pregnant!  Boy I was huge!  Cody was born two days later.  11 days late.

Picture bottom: Trying to see if Cody really looks like he could have fit in there.  It didn't work too well!   I definitely needed a photographers help on this one.

 And now...Here's the story...

Tyler and I arrived at the Hospital at 6 pm on Wednesday, January 15, 2014 to begin the induction.  I decided to go with the balloon to be induced rather than start on Pitocin right away.  I slept with the balloon in all night at the hospital due to the sleeping pill they gave me, thank goodness and in the morning it came out and I was at a 5.  I still had not had any contractions and I decided to get an enema as well.  After that was done they started Pitocin.  By then it was 9am. They upped the Pitocin slowly since they knew I wanted to go natural.  This went on ALLL day.  We watched a movie, played some cards, I was off and on the birth ball all day with consistent contractions due to the Pitocin, but they weren’t too bad.  I was also able to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner thankfully.   

They broke my water at some point later in the day after dinner and I had a TON of fluid.  I continued to gush for the next couple hours with every contraction and they started to get harder.  By 9 pm I was so tired of hard contractions.  They were harder than what I remembered them being with Blake when I was at a 7, so I had them check me and I was at a 6 or 7! I was so discouraged knowing how much farther I had to go.  So I said forget this give me the epidural.  I had the epidural put in and went numb right away and ended up numb up to my armpits...the anesthesiologist was very concerned I couldn’t feel her pinching my all the way up my rib cage.  All I could feel were my arms, shoulders, and neck.   I started having a hard time breathing and really had to concentrate to get the breaths in, and she took the epidural out right away.  It probably was only in for about 2 minutes total, if that.  It all happened so fast.  My blood pressure dropped very low and I was shaking from my waist up and I couldn’t get myself to stop.  I got an oxygen mask and meds to get my blood pressure up.  They had to put the blood pressure cuff around my leg because they couldn’t get a reading from my shaking arms and they were taking it about every 3 minutes.  Finally it leveled out and she said the epidural should wear off in an hour.  The baby monitors would also not register the baby since I was shaking so much so my midwife put an internal monitor on Cody’s head and she put another monitor (who knows where) to monitor my contractions so they could see how strong they were.  The decided to drop the Pitocin in half at this point to make sure it didn’t bother Cody until I was back to normal.  Through this entire process, Cody never got stressed which was a huge blessing!  I laid there and shook for 3 hours with thoughts of being paralyzed going through my head!  I know, I was a bit dramatic but this scared me a lot and I didn’t want them to take my oxygen mask away since I felt more secure with it on.  

3 hours later I started to get my feeling back little by little and it was such a relief to move my toes again.  I also started feeling contractions again but couldn't move my legs that well still. My nurse came in and said she would put the Pitocin back where it had been and start increasing from there.  This was probably somewhere around midnight.  I was still shaking a bit, but when I was contracting I was able to concentrate on breathing through and not shake.  That was an improvement!   I started to feel the contractions strong and hard again and asked them to check me.  I was at a 7 or 8. Ugh.  Not much progress that entire time I was numb.  As they continued to get harder all I could think was this is better than an epidural.  I was also insistent to Tyler that he just put his hand on my leg which helped me not shake so much.  They said I could get another epidural, but I was not going there again. So I really focused now and just breathed through the contractions and kept my legs as relaxed as I could. And really what got me through was not wanting the epidural.  I also just continued laboring on my side since I did not feel like getting out of bed.    

Finally, around 3am I was ready to push. I screamed bloody murder and he was out by 3:20am. I seriously was the crazy screaming lady at the top of my lungs.  It was so hard to push this big guy out. He was officially 9 lbs 15.4 oz...Which rounds up to 10 lbs in my book! He had the cord wrapped around his neck but my midwife was able to pull some slack and unwrap it. He wasn’t crying when he came out and they rushed him off pretty quick after the cord was cut. I asked if he was ok and my midwife just said, “Oh he's just a little stunned.”  She was a great calming influence.  He started crying not too long after. Relief! And he's been very healthy since. I delivered on my side which was awesome! I highly recommend it.  I didn't tear and only needed 2 stitches.  It’s been an awesome recovery and it may convince me have more kids.  During labor I specifically thought I am not doing this again.  My labors keep getting longer! But who knows. Time makes you forget.