Mason's Birth Story

Mason James was born on Sat Aug 21st at 11:07. 8 lbs, 12 oz.

My water broke on Friday at 9:45pm and there was meconium so we had to go right in to the hospital. And it GUSHED. And kept on gushing. I was admitted right away, but I wasn't feeling any contractions, and really didn't after a couple of hours. Since it was around midnight they decided to give me cervadil in the hopes that things would pick up by morning. I never got much rest of course, and the contractions intensified over the night and by about 4 or 5 am I couldn't talk though them, so my Doula came...just in time. I labored on my own for quite a while after the cervadil fell out (I was still leaking fluid this whole time as well.) My doula was fantastic, and I was managing just fine with movement, position and I labored for about an hour in the shower which was fantastic. I was really working hard, but my contractions were never really consistent, and I remained at 4cm till Sat afternoon. At that point they wanted to start pitocin because we were nearing the 24 hr point of my water being broken. Man that stuff is evil. They kept bumping it up and finally were able to get me contracting hard and regularly...it was mind-blowing but still I was managing- just barely. At one point they came to check me and I progressed to 6, so it was determined I could stay at that level. I really wanted to try to avoid the epidural, and even though it was crazy intense after each contraction i was like "I can do this." However, a couple hours later, still at six and losing my mind, I was running a fever and they needed to get serious about getting things moving. So after about 15 hours of very active labor and the fear of infection I agreed to the epidural so they could push up the pit more. I was able to relax (somewhat- the pain was gone but I had the awful itchiness for an hour and a half at least) and went from 6 to 10 cm in about 3 1/2 hours. By the time I was fully dilated I was feeling the contractions and pressure again, which I was very happy about because I was really able to control the pushing stage and not be completely out of my body.

The pushing was great- I pushed him out in 15 minutes!! His shoulders got stuck and after trying a few different maneuvers the Dr. did a small cut, and out he came. He was big and beautiful. Unfortunately because of the meconium I couldn't hold him right away, but he never left the room. There was drama with the placenta- the cord broke and went back inside me and my uterus clamped down on it and she had to go in and manually remove the placenta which shredded in the process. So, thank god I had the epidural.

I won't lie- the first few days are brutal. But now a week later I am feeling more like myself and most of my pain is gone. Besides the small episiotomy I also had a small tear, but it seems to be healing nicely. It was a rocky first week with the breastfeeding- Mason lost alot of weight (1 lb 4oz) and my milk took a little longer to come in than usual. So we had to supplement a little. He is also a very sleepy nurser, so it has been difficult getting him to take enough in at one time, but he's already gained a lot of the weight back and we are slowly figuring out how to breastfeed so I'm hoping we'll be phasing out the formula very soon.

I could go on and on, but this is long enough! Congratulations and good luck to all!

I am getting low on my picture allotment so if you want to see pics you can go to TTCYFC 6+ Months, or PGATTC.

 

Amber

Finally pregnant with our first through the help of donor eggs after close to 3 years of infertility! IT'S A BOY!!!

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