Our New Little Man

What an adventure we had bringing Ayden into this world. My water broke for the first time around 10:30pm on Monday April 20^th. I wasn’t 100% sure if it had really broke so I kept up the cleaning I was doing, took care of the kiddos, and packed a bag just in case. At 12:30am there was no doubt my water broke. I called Ethan and thankfully someone at work was able to leave with him to watch the kiddos overnight and into Tuesday. We headed down to the hospital.

Thankfully I was 35 weeks on Monday so we didn’t have to go to the big hospital. I was never put in triage and went straight to a room. I wasn’t really having contractions yet, and was maybe at 1cm, so they let us rest the best we could. By 11am I still hadn’t shown any progress so they started me on a very low dose of pitocin. Every hour that went by my dose was slowly increased since I was making no progress. I was having contractions but they were a walk in the park compared to the Braxton Hicks I’d been having for the past few months. At this point I was still on my way to a natural delivery.

Around 3pm or so my contractions really started to pick up and get strong, but I was only dilated to 3cm at the most. By 6pm I was completely miserable, exhausted, and in a lot of pain. My midwife checked me and I was 4cm at the most. Even being this low she thought I would likely deliver within the hour. I hung on for one more hour and then had to have an epidural. I was in so much pain and had no more energy to endure. I got my epidural around 8pm or so and instantly felt better. I was laughing and smiling again. They checked me around 9/9:15pm and I was already fully dilated and ready to push. By 9:37pm Ayden was here. 5 pounds 13 ounces, 19 inches long! *forgot to add the important stuff earlier *

It was a long 23 hours for him to get here. The nurses and doctors were wonderful as always. My midwife was wonderful and really worked with me through the whole thing. She worked with me during delivery and I didn’t need an episiotomy, I didn’t tear, and happened to need 1 random stitch. Recovery for me has been easy once my epidural wore off.

 Because I was only at 35 weeks Ayden had to go to the special care nursery for observation. They think he will do just fine. We had some scares early in the pregnancy with cysts on his brain and he looks normal as can be! Since we’ve been here we’ve learned that white males statistically have the hardest time when born early. Since Ayden is 35 or 36 weeks at the most his lungs aren’t quite ready. He’s doing great but is on a CPAP to help him breathe. The doctors are hopeful that tomorrow they can start doing some tube feeding from what I’ve been pumping for him. Then once he’s off the CPAP he can move onto bottle feeding and then breast feeding by the time we get to bring him home. He’s doing great but please keep him in your prayers that he can go home soon.