Pictures to come soon in a different post for those of you (probably most of you) who could care less about all of the long, drawn out details.
Unfortunately, it took me a year to decide to record his birth story, so I’m hoping that I remember the details.
So, to make a long story really long...
Beckett was born in Mt. Pleasant, SC. Blake’s parents live in Oklahoma and really wanted to be there for the birth. My due date was Friday, April 8, so they came to visit the Saturday before, just to be sure that they arrived on time to be there for the birth. We were so relieved when they arrived, knowing that they wouldn’t miss it. On Saturday, we went to a CSU baseball game. It was a lot of fun, but sitting on metal bleachers at 9 ½ months pregnant isn’t exactly comfortable. It was my first time out in the sun for the summer in a sleeveless shirt, so I left with a major farmer’s tan (which the anesthesiologist would later laugh at…darn those backless hospital gowns). On Sunday, we just hung out and on Monday, I went to work as usual. My sister, Serah, came to visit on Monday telling us that Beckett was just waiting for her arrival. We ate Moe’s Monday for dinner (Mexican food), which I did not think about it being my last meal for two days! That night, as we were lying in bed, I kept telling Blake that I pulled a muscle in my back. I could barely breathe and kept thinking “great, I’m about to try to birth a baby with a pulled muscle.”
Needless to say it was back labor and the next morning (Tuesday) I got up early to get ready for work. Thankfully, my water broke around 7:30 am before I left for work (only 8-10% of women have their women break on their own. I’m sure that only 1% of those have their water break and not know if it’s their water breaking or not…that would be me). I paged the doctor on call around 8:00 but was told that they were in a staff meeting. I waited until 8:30 and hadn’t heard back yet, so I called again. I told the doctor “uh, I think my water is breaking??” and she said “you think it’s breaking? Well, come on into the office and we’ll check it out.” Blake had a staff meeting that morning, and we decided that it was best for him to go and act like everything was normal rather than telling everyone that I was in labor only for them to send me home from the hospital telling me it wasn’t time yet and him having to go back to work with no baby. My in-laws were still asleep and I didn’t want to wake them and get them excited, only to find out that I wasn’t in labor. So, I woke my sister up and asked if she wanted to run to the hospital with me for a few minutes. Side note: My sister packed the “perfect” outfit for Beckett’s birth since she knew we would take tons of pictures. The funniest part is that I didn’t even allow her to shower. I woke her up, told her to throw on some clothes and go.
It was storming outside, so I decided to drive since I knew how to get to the hospital (or so I thought). I got lost on the way there, but that’s a different story. We almost had to stop at a gas station to ask for directions, but I saw a hospital sign right before stopping. *Side note: I always drove to the doctor’s office from my job downtown, so wasn’t sure how to get there from the house. So, I went in and the doctor ran some tests and decided that my water broke and it was time to send me over to the hospital. I called Blake and told him to meet me at the hospital. I told him not to rush, that I was fine and he had plenty of time. Apparently, he interpreted that as “come fast or you’re going to miss it.” The hospital was about 30 minutes from our house and he made it in about 10. He called his parents and told them that we were at the hospital and I called my parents so that they could start driving from Columbia. Serah, my sister, asked if I wanted to swing by and get breakfast on the way to the hospital. I told her that I thought that they put pregnant women on a special diet during labor, so I probably shouldn’t eat until I got to the hospital. Big mistake…special diet = starvation. You can’t eat until the baby is born! I hadn’t had anything to eat since dinner the night before and wasn’t able to eat until lunch the next day!
I checked myself in and the admissions lady kept trying to convince me to take a wheelchair up to the maternity ward. I assured her that I was fine and able to walk myself up there. There was an older gentleman on the elevator who joked about how funny it would be if I gave birth on the elevator. Thankfully, it was a short elevator ride and Blake met me at the entrance to the maternity ward. I got to our room, changed into the sexy hospital gown, and got the IV. I was one of the only women in the hospital that morning and the nurses were thanking me for coming in so that they had something to do and wouldn’t be sent home. Little did we all know that they would fill up the maternity ward within a few hours and all of the babies be born around the same time!! The doctor decided to start inducing me around 10 am since my water had broken already and you only have 24 hours to get the baby out to prevent major infections. She told me that I could receive my epidural at any time. I didn’t want the epidural yet because I felt like I needed to experience a lot of pain to really appreciate the relief of the epidural (really? what was I thinking?) After that, we waited and waited and waited. My mom and mother-in-law watched the contraction chart on the computer screen all day. I began to get uncomfortable and finally gave in and got the epidural around 5:00 pm, mostly because I had a fear of all of the hospital staff, especially anesthesiologists, leaving at 5:00 like normal people. Then, we waited some more. Thankfully, my doctor was the doctor on call for the night, so there wasn’t a huge hurry to get the baby out. Around 9:00 pm maybe, the nurses put me in a sitting position hoping that I would dilate. I had been in labor since 7:30 am (13 1/2 hours) and was still only 2-3 cm. Well, it worked. Beckett just flat out fell down into the birthing canal, and later had some major bruises to show for it. I went from 2 cm to 6 cm within minutes of him dropping. Within 30 seconds of him dropping, all of the nurses on the floor rushed in and kicked all of our company out of the room. They pushed every emergency button in the room calling for help and threw me all over the bed. Throughout the entire pregnancy, Blake and I had a philosophy, "never freak out until the specialist freaks out." That was the entire philospophy so we didn't have a plan when the specialist actually did freak out, so we did what every parent would do and panicked. It was the scariest thing we have ever experienced. Apparently the umbilical cord had already been wrapped around his neck and when he dropped, he was basically hanging himself in utero. His heart rate dropped down really low, and they were not able to get it to come back up. They didn’t have time to explain to us what was happening and continued to toss me all over the bed without any instructions. They talked about getting the baby out right away, but I wasn’t dilated all the way yet. I was at 6 cm, and since it was my first birth, said that it wasn’t enough to try to get him out. After a few minutes, which seemed like an eternity, they were able to stabilize the heartbeat. They made me lay back down and gave me oxygen and kept an eye on the baby.
As I mentioned earlier, the maternity ward had filled up. Apparently big storms are similar to full moons and send all of the mothers into labor. I was the first mother to arrive and one of the last to deliver. Bummer. All of the women seemed to go into labor around the same time. I think that there were four of us who delivered within the same hour. There was another doctor delivering babies and my doctor had to deliver one of his patients while he was delivering another baby in a different room. All while I was getting ready to deliver in my room. It was pretty chaotic! The lady beside me was a screamer which had me completely terrified. Within 2 hours I was dilated the rest of the way. I started pushing around 11:45 pm. We had said all day that today, April 5, would be his birthday. I was born on September 5 and my dad was born on March 5. We were excited that Beckett would be born on the 5th, too. That was, of course, if I could get him out in 15 minutes! Wishful thinking, right? Beckett was born an hour later at 12:51 am. He was born sunny-side up (only 5% of babies are in this position at delivery). After delivery, the doctor told me that she had a feeling that he was sunny-side up (face up), but that she would let me try to deliver that way. She said that most first time mothers aren’t able to get the baby out that way since you have to deliver the largest part of the head first, but she was willing to let me try. Many posterior births take a long time for the mother to dilate, hours of pushing, and maternal exhaustion resulting in C-section. Thankfully, the doctor didn’t tell me these things and since I was a first time mother, I was naïve and didn’t know any better. I’m so grateful that the doctor gave me the opportunity to try. Thankfully, she said that she knew me well enough to know that I would work hard to get him out. I feel that if I had been at another hospital or had an on-call doctor, that they wouldn’t have given me the opportunity that she did and would have taken me in for a C-section. I think that the above scare really gave me an incentive to get him out quickly. I just wanted to hold him and see that he was okay and I felt like he was safer on the outside where they could work on him if they needed to. My mom and Blake were in the delivery room and played a huge part in the delivery. I had a pregnant nurse, who was wonderful. She played tug-of-war with me with a towel to help pull me up enough to push. I knew that I couldn’t let go of the towel for fear that she would go flying across the room. When Beckett came out, the cord was wrapped around his neck. Thankfully, I didn’t see this, but unfortunately Blake did and is still traumatized from it. I can’t imagine seeing what he saw and having to watch our son come out not breathing. I knew that there was something wrong when the nurse called in the NICU nurses. His APGAR score was a 6 of 10. They worked on him for a few minutes and then ran a few more tests on him to make sure that everything was back to normal. I had told the nurse that I didn’t want to hold him until he was cleaned off. I was unaware that there were any major problems because I thought that they had just taken him to clean him off before giving him to me. Then, they finally let me hold my little baby. He was ready to eat immediately!
After he ate and was stable and cleaned up a little, the whole family came in to visit. By this point it was around 2:30 am. They were troopers. They didn’t bathe Beckett until around 4 am, and were nice enough to do it in front of the window so that the family could watch his first bath. I didn’t get to see them bathe him since I was taking my own bath. They were gone for a really long time and I remember watching the Top 10 sports plays on ESPN cycle through at least 5 times. Blake said that it took so long for him to pass his hearing test because he kept pulling all of the cords off and was not cooperating. After they finished and we were both bathed, it was time for us to switch to the post-partum room. We got into the room around 6:00 am and sent Beckett to the nursery around 6:30 am. Blake and I got settled and laid down for about an hour, when we heard a knock on the door. Apparently, the doctors were trying to round at 7:30 am and out of all of the babies, Beckett was the only one awake and disturbing the rounds in the nursery. We assume that the nurses didn’t get the memo that we were in labor all night, but as new parents, we didn’t feel that we could say “can you take him back, we don’t want him right now.” Both families came back to the hospital fairly early that morning and we had plenty of friends stop by to see our precious boy as well. It all kept us very busy until late that night when we finally crashed.
The good news about Beckett being born at 12:51 was that it also earned us an extra night’s stay in the hospital which we took full advantage of, finally going home on Friday. We returned home to a decorated house full of excited family and neighbors. Blake and I were so thankful for our families who split time staying with us the next few weeks to help us out (and let’s be honest, start the spoiling process).So, that's our story. We are beyond blessed to have such a healthy and happy baby, and so grateful for the Lord's protection throughout our entire pregnancy and childbirth.
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