Owen's Birth Part Two

With Todd back in the room, we both slept for a couple of hours before the nurse came in and announced that I was fully dilated and ready to push. We tried for an hour, but baby wasn't budging. When Sarah, our midwife came in to check on us, she suggested turning down the epidural, adding pitocin, and rest. Not much rest happened with the epidural lowered, but the pitocin definitely increased the contractions and an hour later, we were back to pushing. At 3:32 p.m. on 1/12/11, Owen arrived, with no noise - the nurse had just asked Sarah if she should grab the suction when to our relief he let out a huge cry! They wrapped him up and passed him to me to snuggle, Todd moved to the other side of the bed to be close to Owen and then went with him as they weighed, measured, and took Apgars scores.

When Todd brought him back all swaddled, he held him beside the bed and said the two names, we had picked out - Owen or Liam. Each time, he opened his eyes when Todd said Owen and we both felt that should be his name. With that, the epidural was out, I was patched up, and we were off in a wheelchair to our new room. Along the way, we stopped at the nurse's station so Todd could push the button that sends beautiful bells tinkling over the PA system to let each floor know that a baby has been born.

Waiting in our room were Nana and Papa who took a ton of pictures, Todd called my family members, and I picked out some yummy food to eat. He was still pretty out of it so the nurses sent him back down to the ER for a cat scan. He had a killer headache and they gave him more hydrocodone which knocked him out. I tried to get comfy in the bed, but it kept moving back and forth, pressurized to avoid bedsores for someone who couldn't move. When I finally figured it out at about 2, I had the nurse fix it when she came to check on us, but at 4:30 in came the phlebotomist to draw blood from Owen, so back awake (just prepping me for the next year of my life:))

The next morning brought our midwife to check on us, lactation, and finally discharge and out the door mid afternoon. At home were Todd's parents and a yummy dinner provided by our neighbors, the Borders. The nurse had offered to help me shower at the hospital, but I wanted my own shower at home and I stayed in until I'm sure we were on the verge of running out of hot water!

Over the next few weeks, we had a crash course in parenting with poor latch, jaundice, more blood draws, lactation appointments, reflux, circumcision... poor Owen had quite the bumpy first few months! Lots of sleeping upright in mom's arms in a chair at night and being held in the Moby wrap because of reflux. We spent 24 hours holding him upright on our shoulder, chest, or tummy to manage the reflux - he was a pro at tummy time because of it!