Baby Conner Has Arrived!

The baby is here and what do you know, I'm still alive! Here's the low down on how it happened. Its going to be long and detailed for my own record so feel free to skim. On Wednesday morning I had a doctor's appointment and was dialated to 3 centimeters but had no other signs of labor. My doctor was going out of town for Thanksgiving so we set an induction for Sunday night, just in case. That night Cade and I decided to take a long walk to see if we could get things going. It worked. When we were getting ready for bed I noticed some leakage but I had been leaking all day thanks to my doctor's appointment. But this was a little more. I asked my mom if she thought maybe my water had broke and she didn't. So I kept getting ready for bed but was too anxious to sleep. Cade called the hospital and they said I should come in to get it checked. Here we are leaving for the hospital at 12:30.

I thought they would take a quick look and let me know, but I had to get all gowned up, get blood drawn, hooked up to monitors, and then they checked it out and my water had broke. Here I am waiting to find out if I'm in labor or not. Notice the happy face, I hadn't felt any contractions yet.

That didn't last long though. Within about an hour the pain had kicked in and I was soon moved to the delivery room. Time just flew by at that point. I was feeling contractions pretty close together and the pain was rapidly worsening. I found it pretty strange that the nurses were mentioning getting me pitocin to get my contractions coming more regularly/quickly. I was wondering how that would be possible. I was also dying of thirst and began asking for ice chips and they kept telling me they had to wait and see. I think they were waiting to see if I was getting the pitocin first or not, but I'm not really sure. Since the pain was getting so terrible I decided I wanted to know how far dialated I was in order to see if I should give in and get an epidural. (FYI: I'm not against using epidurals, but they really scare me so I wanted to avoid it if I could handle it. Plus we are self paying for this whole thing and I knew the epidural was an extra $600.)  I was told since my water had broke that every time they check it increases the chances of introducing germs and causing problems and "since it was my first baby I still had a long way to go anyway". So I gave in at that point and asked for an epidural. They told me that it would be about 20 minutes so they could give me some IV fluids first. In the meantime the doctor came in and checked me to see about giving me pitocin and what do you know, I was dialated to 10 centimeters. That explains the severe/rapid pain!!! It turned out the monitor wasn't on me right and hadn't been picking up all my contractions. I'm not sure why they couldn't figure that out just by looking at me writhing in pain every minute or two. The doctor also said it was fine for me to have ice chips. Finally, some relief! It was too late for the epidural but I was fine with that, I only wanted it because I was told I still had hours of severe contractions to go and I no longer did. Its funny how hormones mess with your body. The first half of labor I was FREEZING and my whole body was shaking (of course it still took 3 times of me asking for a blanket or saying I was cold before the nurses actually did anything about it). But then suddenly out of no where I was sweating like a pig. Anyway around 6:00 I started pushing. My blood pressure was high when we first arrived so they had me on oxygen.

I actually kind of liked the pushing part (compared to labor that is). It was a lot less painful than the contractions had been getting and I had more time to relax in between. All that didn't last long either. A little after 7:00 the doctor came back in and said it was time to get the baby out. I think more because he was busy with other things than anything. Once he started fiddling around down there things got really painful again. I was actually getting pretty mad at him. It felt like he was literally pulling me apart, but Cade has informed me that's not quite what he was doing. I did have enough strength left though to let Cade know that he now owes me the $600 I saved us. They kept asking me if I wanted a mirror to see the baby's head or be positioned so I could feel his head. I was wondering if they were insane. Of course I don't want to see, I'm pretty sure seeing yourself being pulled apart only increases the pain. Finally at 7:22 on Thanksgiving morning (one day past my due date) Conner Russell was born. He weighed 6 lbs 13 ounces and was 19.5 inches long.

They started to put him on me but I let them know I wasn't quite interested in that yet. I had torn and the doctor was still busy with the placenta and stitching me up. I don't know how other people can sit and enjoy the baby right then, I couldn't even think about holding him yet. I wasn't exactly cooperating while the doctor was trying to stitch me up. He kept asking me to open up my legs more but I figured since a baby had just come out of there that surely they were open wide enough. I kind of started yelling a little with all the yanking and pulling, partly out of pain and partly just to let the doctor know I was mad at him and wanted him to stop being so violent. Ok so I was a little delirious at this point and not thinking rationally. He then decided that I needed some narcotics to relax me. After that he finished in about one minute but I was out of it for the next hour or so. They gave me Conner but after a minute or two I had to pass him on because I wasn't sure I could hang onto him. Shortly after that I fell into a deep drug induced sleep.

When I came to again I finally got to really look at his adorable face.

I was very impressed with Cade's coaching skills. He did everything I wanted him to and instantly stopped doing anything that bothered me. Like when he and the nurses kept telling me with every push for an hour that they could see the baby's head and that I was "almost there" and I told them to shut up and stop telling me the same thing over and over again, Cade stopped saying it right away :) He also stayed by my side after the delivery while I yelled at the doctor instead of going over to see Conner. And even though I told him during labor that I no longer cared about having pictures, he knew that wasn't true and took what he could in the middle of it all. Since the delivery he has filled me in on a lot of missing facts. For some reason I kept my eyes closed almost the entire time. Closing my eyes and listening to the tv in the background helped to relax me but its made my memories a little fuzzy.

Emma

Russ (Grandpa Johnson)

Getting ready to go home. (Before you bother commenting Carol Ann, I do know that I came and left in the same outfit, but don't worry, I had only put that outfit on after my midnight shower for an hour and its different pants).



Hair Today...Gone Tomorrow

I've been wanting to cut my hair for a long time, but to appease Cade I didn't. Well I couldn't stand it any longer. I heard that Luxe Salon and Spa will give free haircuts to people donating their hair to Locks of Love so I went there. It was great. The lady cut my hair, shampooed it, and then styled it for me and the salon sends off the hair so I didn't even have to pay the postage. She spent an hour on my hair and it was free (except for the tip)! She also said that my hair was so thick that I was donating twice as much hair as most people. Here is a picture of it. I had a before picture but it turned out so ugly I couldn't put it on here so you can look at previous posts to see what my hair looked like before. I didn't measure but it looked like about 11 inches that I cut off.



D-day (Delivery Day) is almost here...

Baby Conner is due in 17 days! Everyone keeps saying to me "Oh you must be so excited/ready to get that baby out." But the truth is, I'm not. Besides a little throwing up and nausea in the beginning, this has been a perfect pregnancy and I enjoy having Conner right where he is. Once I got used to sleeping on my side I haven't had much trouble sleeping and even now I'm only getting up to go to the bathroom once a night, if that. I keep reading about what should be going on in my pregnancy now like not being able to breathe, being jabbed in the ribs by the baby, needing to go to the bathroom continuously, having an aching back, indigestion, and heartburn. I've had a little heartburn and am a lot more tired than normal, but other than that I feel great. And what comes at the end of pregnancy? A baby? Maybe to some people, but all I can see is pain and lots of it trying to get this baby out of me. Its very possible that my heart could just give out and die from all that pushing you know. I mean, lets be honest. I'm not in shape, I wasn't in shape before I got pregnant and after months of not lifting a finger and craving sweets like never before I'm in even less shape. How is my body supposed to handle such a physically demanding task? Even if I do force myself to see past that whole point in time, I still mostly see a crying baby that I don't know how to take care of, no sleep, no alone time, life forever changed with no going back. I don't know how to take care of a newborn. What temperature should the bath water be? What is baby powder and baby oil used for? How do I take care of his circumcision? What do I do if he has a fever? Better yet, how do I take his temperature from his behind?! You don't learn this kind of thing from babysitting. I've had nine months to get ready for this, but what did I do? Nothing. I focused on my new job and kept the pregnancy at the back of my mind. Good going.

Ok, so I'm being a little dramatic and pessimistic. Its just my nature, what can I say. And since I can't say all of that when people tell me how excited I should be to be "done" I had to say it somewhere. And just in case you are starting to wonder if there is seriously something wrong with me, I would like to say that we are both very greatful and excited and nervous for this baby. Let's just skip ahead to Christmas when I've recovered from the pain (if I'm still alive) and somewhat figured out what I'm doing!