David's Birth Story

Where to begin?

Let's start with the weekend before David's arrival. We were 2 days late and getting antsy, so took advantage of our company's box seats at the Eagles game. Not wanting to be named "Shady" or "DeSean", our little guy decided not to arrive during the game :)

Mommy & Daddy's last prego pic together

Fast forward to Friday, October 5th (1 week past due). We arrived at our doctor's appointment to assess how our little nugget was doing & make sure he would be OK to wait another day/week inside my belly before coming out. All signs looked good - Josh and I were both convinced things were moving along and my body was gearing up for a nice natural birth; our first non-stress test showed our little guy was moving like crazy, and had a nice strong heartbeat; I was still about 2cm dilated and 80% effaced, meaning my cervix was ripening nicely (even though there wasn't much progress over the past few weeks). But one final test - showing the levels of amniotic fluids surrounding the baby in-utero - showed that my placenta may be aging a bit and may not be providing enough cushioning (fluids) for the baby. Then the doctors (yep, plural; 2 doctors were called in - I needed some major convincing) recommended... er, strongly urged us to head to the hospital for induction.

One last u/s of our little guy

I was so upset - I had dreamed of and been preparing for a totally natural birth for the past 4-5 months, and now I was faced with heading to the hospital, unplanned and unready, to get induced unnaturally. Even the thought of finally getting to meet our little guy/gal wasn't much consolation - the experience I was hoping for was not going to happen.

When I finally resigned myself to the fact that this was actually going to happen (after lots of tears and hugs from Josh & Franklin), we packed our bags, packed Franklin's bags, and headed to the hospital. Here's one last shot before leaving home.

We got to the labor & delivery triage around 4pm. After one final check by another ultrasound tech (convincing me that the fluid levels were indeed too low), we settled in and got presented with a few different 'soft' induction methods by our doctor. We decided to go with the foley bulb - a catheter would be inserted into my cervix, and a balloon at the end would be filled with saline, making it about 4cm in diameter. The bulb would sit next to the baby's head right on top of my cervix, causing some additional pressure that would (hopefully) get some more prostoglandins and oxytocin naturally going in my body to get my cervix dilated to 4cm. Once I got to 4cm, the bulb would just come on out.

We got our room (lucky #3) just after 7, and the doctor inserted the foley bulb. Not knowing how long it might take, we tried to catch some zzz's. Apparently my body was ready (just like I thought :) ) and responded pretty quickly - the bulb came out around 9 and I was magically 4cm dilated, and started feeling some minor contractions. We tried snoozing again from 9-12, and waited to see if my body might go into labor on its own. Unfortunately the nurse had to come in and check my monitors (one for contractions, one for baby's heartbeat) every hour, so I didn't get that sleep I was longing for.

At midnight, the doc decided my contractions weren't strong enough to put me into active labor, so they started me on pitocin. Luckily we started off with a pretty low-dose, and they increased it slowly through the night. The cramping got a little more uncomfortable around 4am, then at about 4:30, I heard a loud pop during one contraction - no gush or trickle of water followed, but I was pretty sure my water bag had just broken. A few more contractions later and the leaking water confirmed it. Now is when I consider labor to have really started... and our Dr confirmed I was now at 5cm.

Our doula, Naomi, got called in and arrived around 5am. Contractions started coming more regularly and feeling more like that tightening I read about, versus just some minor cramping. Around 6am I remember thinking, so this is what it's all about! I had a few thoughts about asking for pain meds, but Naomi coached me through every contraction, and I just kept convincing myself I could do this, reminding myself that I didn't want an epidural, and telling myself it was time to get my big-girl panties on (thanks to my friend Janel who had completed an Iron Man over the summer and shared her motivation through the toughest parts - if she could do an Iron Man, I could get through this labor!).

Around 7am I threw up. I was drinking a few sips of water after almost every contraction, so I unleashed a good gallon of liquids onto the delivery floor. It was pretty gross, but from what I read, all signs were pointing to me starting to enter "transition" - when you open from 7-10cm and basically lose the possibility of getting pain meds.

Around 8am after the Dr's shifts changed, my favorite Dr in our practice (Dr. Murphy) came in to check me out. I was ready to hear 7 or 8cm, but he confirmed I was still only at 5! None of us could believe it (Kristin Roddy, a friend of my cousin Karen, was our nurse after the 7am shift change; Karen made sure we requested her when we checked-in since she's great with natural births - I really had the best labor team (including Josh!) I could have asked for). So we just labored on, convinced I was further along than what my cervix was showing. 

Around 9:30am, the doc came back in for another check before he went off to do a c-section, and I was at 9cm! Woohoo - 4cm change in 1.5hrs! Now the end was in sight and contractions were coming on strong and with each one, I started to feel the urge to push. I'm pretty sure they turned the pitocin off at this point, since the doc was still in surgery and it was clear things were moving pretty quickly.

At about 11am, the doc came back into the room, confirmed I was at 10cm, and the pushing commenced!  

After 1.5hrs of pushing, at 12:37pm, wa-lah, baby David arrived - and it was amazing. Within seconds he was crying and wiggling all around. He went right onto my chest, where Josh and I just stared at him completely mesmerized that this is who was in my belly these past 9 months. A baby boy. David Theodore. 7lbs, 6oz, 20" long. 

I was overcome with love for everyone in the room, most of all for my son, who was snuggled up on my bosom for the next hour (while they delivered the placenta - long story short my placenta was bi-lobe, and was connected to my uterus in 2 places; after an hour of waiting for it to come out on its own, back-up troops (i.e. dr with small hands) were called in to manually extract it - luckily I don't remember much of the procedure!). To top it all off, I was able to meet my goal of going natural (with the exception of the pitocin induction) - an amazing experience :)

Here's our first official family pic together :) 

And more first pics with David's new family:

Mom-Mom McSorley

Aunt Lauren

Nana and Grandpop Funt

Uncle Jason

Here we are enjoying the confines of our hospital room as we get acquainted with David:

And now leaving our little cave after 48hrs with baby David (scary!):

We are completely in love with our little guy :)  

And I'll try to do better going forward with more timely posts! But next up is David's homecoming and David's Bris. Stay tuned!