Birth Story

This is what I was doing one year ago today. :-) Do those circles under my eyes scream, "I'm tired!"?

I said last week that I wanted to tell the story of Caleb's birth because I wasn't blogging back then. This is probably going to be long, be forewarned.

The 9 months preceding Caleb's birth, hubby was working away from home. First, he lived in Lousiana, and then moved to Corpus Christi about 4 months before Caleb was born. He would work ten days and come home for four days, so basically we saw each other every other weekend for.a.whole.year. The entire time I was pregnant (save for a few weeks after I finished teaching in May and before my doctor made me stop traveling, which was really early but that's another story), this was our situation.

So, my husband is only home every other weekend and at the time of Caleb's birth was living about 3 1/2 hours from home. You might then understand why we made the decision to induce labor. My doctor had told me that if I was 39 weeks and dilated (I was at a 3), I could choose to induce. Since Justin was home the weekend I turned 39 weeks, we chose to induce labor on Monday, September 19. (Given other circumstances, I would not choose to induce labor. But, being sure that my husband would make it for the birth was very important to me!)

I went in to the hospital about 5:30am, and they started labor at 7am. My doctor's office was just upstairs from the labor and delivery floor, so she was able to come check on me a couple of times during the morning. Around noon, she was there a lot. Caleb's head was not dropping at all. He'd been head down for weeks, but since we entered the hospital and I was in labor, his head had not moved.

They came in and said they needed to change to an internal fetal monitor because they weren't getting a good reading on Caleb's heartbeat. They weren't sure if it was the machine or if something was really wrong. So, they did that and the doctor watched for a while longer.

About 2pm, she came in and sat down on the side of my bed and told me (very calmly) that the baby was under some stress and they were going to go ahead and prep me for a c-section. She said the baby and I were not in any danger, yet, but they did not want to wait any longer for it to get to that point. I said, "so it's going to happen?" She said, "yes, I'm sorry."

That was the end of the calm. She walked outside and started barking orders to everyone in sight that I was next in the operating room and all scheduled c-sections were to be bumped. They prepped me and moved me to a stretcher. The anethesiologist said, as I was trying to move to the stretcher, "Don't mess up your epidural." Yeah, that's my concern when I can't feel my legs and have to get myself from one bed to the next! They wheeled me into the operating room and let hubby in a few minutes later. By that point, hubby said he saw a whole new side of me...the inside!

One of the doctors said to hubby, "Get your camera out, the baby's coming." And the next thing I knew the doctor was holding Caleb up for me to see. He was born at 2:18pm...less then 20 minutes after they decided to do the c-section. The first words out of the doctor's mouth were, "You're not going to need a baby monitor. The neighbors will come and tell you the baby's crying." He was that loud!

I spent the next few hours in the recovery room, trying to wake up enough and move my legs so they'd let me go to my baby! I had given the family strict orders, in case of a c-section, not to hold that baby until his momma could hold him first! (This was advice I got from a friend at school who'd had a c-section and all her family came and told her how precious the baby was and all about his first bath, which she didn't get to experience.)

The next four days we spent in the hospital while Hurricane Rita was approaching this area. By the time we left, it was all anyone was talking about. My doctor had asked my husband to make sure we had bottled water and dry clothes for me and the baby. After Hurricane Katrina the month before, people were very concerned about food/water supply and dry clothes. My mom and husband went to collect supplies every day. They also spent the week, off and on, at our house, taking down all the pictures and moving furniture away from the windows. We knew that we would not be able to leave town after just having a c-section, since it was taking people 12 hours or more to get out of the city. Some people spent 12 hours on the road and didn't even make it out of the city. We just didn't have the option to sit in the car for that long. We would have to weather the storm at home.

We left the hospital on Thursday, September 22, even though my doctor wanted me to stay until Friday (she wasn't there that day!). All of the nurses, doctors, and their families were going to be spending the night at the hospital that night because many of them lived in low-lying areas and it was the safest place to be. If it's not already apparent, I was stressed out by the time we left! I just wanted to take my baby and go HOME!!

Our normally 20 minute trip from the hospital to our house took 2 1/2 hours because so many people were trying to evacuate. I was hurting pretty bad by the time we finally reached our house, but Caleb slept through the whole thing!

The hurricane turned at the last minute and we were spared everything but some wind and rain.

Thank the Lord!

"Therefore I will praise you among the nations, O LORD; I will sing praises to your name." ~Psalm 18:49