Birthday

Drew took this picture of me in the hospital bed at 12:07 pm.

5 hours and 5 minutes later I was a mom.

My labor and delivery story is a pretty uneventful one - give or take a few scares. After arriving at the hospital I was pretty much immediately put on several drugs. I was hooked up to a blood pressure monitor that took my pressure every 15 minutes. I had a magnesium sulfate drip for 24 hours which is to prevent seizures and/or a stroke, common side effects of preeclampsia. I was also given pitocin to keep contractions coming more regularly. Evil stuff that pitocin! I breathed through about 5 contractions and then called for the epidural. True to my birth plan, I had no intentions of being superwoman. Give me the drugs. With the added motivation that my platelets were a bit low due to the preeclampsia and any additional decrease would mean an epidural would not be possible, I wasted no time in calling the anesthesiologist.

The administration of the epidural wasn't nearly as bad as I feared. In fact, the 3 contractions I breathed through while getting the epidural were WAY worse than the needle in my back. When Drew took this picture, it was 3:18 pm, I felt no pain and was just ready to have a baby. I asked for a popsicle and figured I'd have hours and hours to kill.

A mere 30 minutes later, at 3:45 pm, I was 10 cm, 100% and told it was time to start pushing. Then people flooded into the room. In addition to the regular staff of doctors and nurses, we also had extra nurses from the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) on standby since I was only 35 1/2 weeks and would be delivering a premie.

The pushing was the hardest part. While I didn't exactly feel a huge amount of pain (thank you epidural) it was exhausting. I pushed for almost an hour and a half. Drew was awesome. He never left my side and was encouraging me the entire time.

At the very end it started to get a little scary. The baby was under some stress and Dr. Estrin told me that he needed to come out. She said he was close enough that she could "go get him herself" if she had to, but she really wanted me to get this baby out on my own. That was the motivation I needed and 2 pushes later he was born. The first thing I heard was that the cord was around his neck. There was some quick scrambling and then I saw him whisked away to the NICU nurses. Finally, I heard a whimper and then a cry.

Drew and the nurses were giving me updates and while the baby looked good, they wanted to take him to the NICU. I told Drew to go with the baby.

Just before they took him away I got a quick peek of little Jackson...and in an instant my life changed forever.