Ok, the long-awaited post is finally here. Corbyn is finally off the lights and is eating much better. He is such a happier baby now that he is over his Jaundice. Life is good.
As this blog is my journal, I wrote all of the details, so I won’t forget anything. I love reading birth stories, but I understand that everyone may not want to know all the gory details. So read this at your own risk. I’m sorry if you don’t think something is appropriate to share. So with that disclaimer, here is the story.
On Wednesday, June 16th, I had an appointment at 2:40 pm with Dr. Wolsey. He said that I was ready to deliver and scheduled an induction for Monday, June 21st, just in case I hadn’t gone into labor by then. He would have scheduled it earlier, but that was the soonest he was on call. He stripped my membranes again. By 5:00 pm I was having some contractions and by 7:00 pm they were a lot more painful and pretty regular. We decided to go to the hospital even though we thought they might send us home. I was dilated to a 2 and an hour later I was still dilated to a 2, so of course they sent us home.
We were getting ready for bed when suddenly my contractions moved to my back and became extremely painful. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep, so I went downstairs to watch some Gilmore Girls. As I was lying there, I felt a pop and then a gush of fluid. I went to the bathroom and confirmed that yes, my water had broken. I called to Rog and we hurried to get everything together and ready to go again. We had the same nurse as before and she said that she thought we might be back because my water felt tight. We got checked into our room about 11:30 pm and I immediately requested my epidural. By 2:00 am I was dilated to a 6 and by 3:45 am I was dilated to a 10. I couldn’t believe how fast I had dilated.
There was a girl in the room next door that was having some sort of an emergency situation, so all the nurses and doctors were in her room. We had to wait around until someone could come help me start pushing. At 4:15 am a nurse finally came in and got me started. At this point we decided to kind of let my epidural start to wear off, so I could feel where to push. This turned out to be a bad idea because at 7:00 am I was still pushing, I was exhausted, and my back was KILLING me.I didn’t think I could do it on my own anymore, so I started asking for the doctor to come in and help me.
7:00 am just so happened to be the time when the doctors switched. Dr. Thorpe was the one there, but Dr. Broberg was switching with him. So it took awhile for him to get in my room. He came in around 7:15 am and instead of helping me with forceps or the vacuum, he started getting everything ready because he could tell I was pretty close. Finally at 7:23 am after getting one shoulder semi-stuck, Corbyn was born.
Dr. Broberg’s reaction was priceless, he was like, “Wow, he’s heavy.” Corbyn needed a little help starting to breathe, so the NICU team was called in. They got him going and then they weighed him. No one could believe that I had delivered a 10-pound baby, without any help (other than the epidural), and with minimal tearing. I didn't have gestational diabetes or anything that would have led us to believe I would have such a big baby, so we were all shocked.
(My dad doesn't think I should post this picture, but it's my proof that he did indeed weigh 10 pounds.)
They let me hold him for probably 30 seconds and then they took him to the NICU to give him some medicine to help open up the vessels in his lungs. Compared to all the little babies in the NICU, he was huge! They called him the NICU Elephant. Rog went with him while I got cleaned up and then they wheeled me in to see him for a minute.
After being checked out in the regular nursery and having his circumcision, I finally got to hold him again. It is so unreal that he is actually here and that he is ours. We love our little boy!