Jordan's Birth Story


Wednesday morning I woke up around 5:30 am. I didn't notice anything at first, just went to the bathroom and was hoping to go back to sleep. Shortly after that I noticed a contraction that was more than just a BH. They were coming every 7 minutes. At 6:30 I went and told dh that I thought I might be in labor but I wasn't sure. I decided to get in the shower and that's when I noticed some bloody show... a for sure sign for me that it's the real deal so I went and told dh again that I was pretty sure now. Still contractions weren't bad and I told him to just get the kids ready for school and plan to send them in anyway as the contractions hadn't gotten closer at all. Worst case we would just pick them up on the way to the hospital (they wanted to be there for the birth). So I got in the shower and noticed a few contractions. After I got out I started timing them again and they were now every 5 minutes. At that point, we decided to just keep the kids home. I called the dr's office to tell them that I thought I was in labor and they sent me to the hospital. We dropped off Asher with a friend and headed to the hospital. We got there about 8:30-ish and they hooked me up to the monitors. The contractions slowed to every 6 minutes and I was afraid that maybe I had been wrong about really being in labor. They stayed at 6 minutes the whole time I was hooked up. The on-call midwife checked me and I was 4 cm and 70% effaced. So off I went to a L&D room. I was still afraid I wasn't in labor. Contractions had slowed even more to every 6-7 minutes and stayed the same intensity. They put an IV in since I had stated that at some point I would want the epidural. So I labored like that all morning. The midwife came to check in on me around noon. I told her that things had pretty much stayed the same so she wanted to break my water to see if that sped things up at all. Before I did that, I told her I wanted the epidural. The anesthesiologist came around sometime before 1:00 to put it in. After it was in, I started to feel really off. I was dizzy, felt like I was going to throw up and my ears were ringing really bad. Apparently I got really pale too. Obviously, my blood pressure had dropped. She gave me some meds in my IV to help and they did for a little bit but then it started falling again. At one point it got to be 60-something/40-something. She gave me more of the meds. After about 5 minutes I was feeling okay but it took me some time to recover all the way. At 1:30 the midwife decided to come break my water. She checked me again and I was 5.5 cm. She didn't want to break my water because he was still pretty high up and she was afraid of cord prolapse so we decided to start some pitocin instead. I was happy that even though my contractions had been far apart and not very strong, that it was real labor. So we started the pitocin and that's when I decided it was okay for the kids to be in the room. I was feeling all better and thought it would be cool for us all to just hang out. Travis and Brett were playing a game on the 2 Nintedo DS's together and MIL was hanging out with me. Krysta was watching TV. It was like we had all just gotten together to hang out. They kept having to bump up my pitocin because my contractions didn't want to stay close enough. Around 4:30 I got a contraction and felt a small gush. I told my nurse that I thought my water broke. Sure enough it had and it kept gushing. The first time ever my water has ever broken on its own. She called my midwife in to check me but I was only at 6 cm. She said that with a contraction I would go to a 7. But I knew that now that my water had broken, things would got a lot faster. After that, Jordan's heart rate started dropping with my contractions which really scared me. They had me put on the oxygen mask to help with that and it worked for the most part. I'm not sure when I started to feel the urge to push but it wasn't much later. A little after 5:00 maybe. The nurse called in the midwife again. She checked me and said that I just had a small lip left and she held it down during my next contraction while I gave a little push. And then I was complete. I really had to push but I had to wait for them to be ready. It was really hard. I pushed for about 15-20 minutes and at 5:35 pm, little Jordan was born weighing in at 7 lbs, 12 oz and 21.75" long. They placed him on my chest after he was born and of course I started crying. Krysta watched him being born but Brett was more interested in playing on the ds. Jordan has been our smallest baby by 4 oz but all 3 of our other kids were only 20" when they were born. Over all it was a good experience. It was my 2nd shortest labor at 12 hours and was relatively pain-free.