Jackson Ray makes his debut!

3 weeks early! We are all home and doing well. Here's how it went down.

Monday, March 6^th was my mom’s birthday. We celebrated at our house. I made clam chowder and we had ice cream cake. Earlier that day I had a doctor’s appointment with Dr. Van Horn. The week before we had an ultrasound and the baby was breech. At my appointment though, he had turned head down, and I was 1 cm dilated so Dr. Van Horn stripped my membranes. After that I went grocery shopping, came home and got ready for the party. I did buy a bottle of castor oil at the grocery store, and took some when I got home. With Dan, I did the same thing (had my membranes stripped then took castor oil) and he came that night. So I figured, what the heck? Let’s give it a try again. It worked.

Throughout the afternoon I had been having contractions. After the party was over, they started getting painful, but weren’t coming at regular intervals. I wish I could say the same for the reaction to the castor oil! That had me in the bathroom every half hour all night. The contractions were still coming, hurting so that I couldn’t get to sleep and they didn’t go away with change in position. They were about 6-10 minutes apart. So I finally got up and watched some TV, then went back to bed. I was considering saying something to Gary about them being more strong & regular, but didn’t want him to think I was making a bigger deal than it was. So I waited. I really wasn’t even sure I was in labor until I went to the bathroom (again) and there was mucus and blood when I went. I wasn’t sure if my water had broken or not, but I went and told Gary that I thought it had. I called the Labor & Delivery nurse and told them what had happened, and she said to come in. Gary got up and we started getting ready to go to the hospital. While we were getting ready, my water gushed, so I knew it was time. I called my mom to come and watch Dan and we were ready by the time she got to our house.

On our way to the hospital, we got puked over. It was pretty funny at the time because the same thing happened at about the same time in the morning with Dan. The cop comes up to my window and asks us whose car this is. We tell him ours, and he says “Just one of you or both of you combined?” We tell him combined, wondering what in the world is going on. Then he tells us that he isn’t used to seeing cars pull out of our street at this time in the morning and that he had run our plates and the car wasn’t registered on that street (it’s registered at my parents house), and we were going a little fast. So we tell him we’re on our way to the hospital to have a baby and he lets us go. We really weren’t going all that fast though.

My water broke at 12:30 and we made it to the hospital at about 1:30 am. Mom had called ahead and warned dad we were coming. He sits at the front desk at the hospital at night. So we walk in, said Hi and made our way to Labor and Delivery. I told them my water had broken and they took us into the evaluation room. They were acting like my water had barely leaked or something, until one nurse checked and she was like “Oh! Your water has grossly broken!” I was like “Duh, I told you it had!” They made me get dressed again and go walk around the hospital for an hour since I was still only dilated to a one and less than 70% effaced. I didn’t want to go walking, I wanted to lay down, get my epidural and have the baby. But I didn’t get a choice. So we went back down and talked to dad and walked the halls. We weren’t the only ones walking the halls, waiting for our turn to have a baby. I must admit, it made the contractions easier to bear. We had an adventure trying to find a vending machine that accepted dollar bills. That took up a chunk of time.

We finally went back to Labor and Delivery at around 3 am. They checked me again and got me a room this time. They got me all changed and into bed, still only dilated to a one so they decided to start me on a pitocin drip. I asked to get my epidural before the drip, since Dr. Van horn told me I could get it at any time. The anesthesiologist was in surgery though, so I had to wait. The nurse started the pitocin on the lowest level and the anesthesiologist came in not too long after. Getting the epidural hurt a lot more than I remember with Dan. I could totally feel it going down one side of my spine. After he got it in, and for the next hour and a half or so, it only worked on one side! They had me lay on my right side for a while to see if they could get the medicine to migrate, but had to flip me over because the baby’s heart rate was doing odd things. They said he was probably laying on his cord. So I’m going through labor with the pitocin drip, only feeling the contractions on one side. That was so weird! Finally, when they saw the medicine wasn’t migrating they let me flip back over to the right side and gave me a stronger dose. That worked thank goodness. Then I was able to rest. The earlier contractions had gotten me too wired to sleep, but Gary was able to get some and I just closed my eyes.

They didn’t check my cervix very often. When they checked it for the second time, hours after the first, the baby’s head was only an inch or so from crowning. That was at about 7:30 am. The nurses paged my doctor and had me do some practice pushes. Only two practice pushes though, because they didn’t want to deliver the baby. Dr. Van Horn came in, checked me and was so surprised at how far progressed I was. The nurses had to rush to get the room ready. One told me she thought the cord would be wrapped around his neck. Now there’s some something you tell a woman who’s delivering! The stronger medicine they had given me through the epidural made it a lot harder for me to push, that at not getting any sleep. They took it out when I started to push so I could get more control. I only pushed for about 15 minutes and the baby was here! It was so different than Dan’s birth. With Dan I was lying flat on my back and they dropped the end of the bed so I couldn’t see anything (not that I wanted to). But here, I was sitting up and the baby was born right on to the bed, where I could see. It was so cool. Dan was also screaming by the time his had was out, but this time the baby didn’t even cry until he was all the way out, and then some. Even after that he didn’t cry all that much. He was smaller than Dan, I could tell that from the minute he was born. He was 5 lbs. 12 oz. And 19.5 inches long (his length was the same as Dan). He had more hair than Dan, and it was darker too.

We couldn’t choose a name for a day and a half. We were thinking Jared as we were in labor, but finally ended up going with Jackson Ray. I guess I won the name game, now I can call him Jack.