Introducing: James Glazier Aitken
Born Sunday March 21, 2010, 7:55 pm--12 days early
Weighing 6 pounds 9 ounces
19 1/2 inches long
And apparently in a HUGE hurry to get here. So here's the story:
***Let me just preface the story with a warning. If you don't want the details unfiltered with a little mild language, then please don't read***
Let me start this story on last Tuesday (the 16th)...
I went to my weekly doctor's appointment and I was dilated to 4 cm. I had been contracting on and off, and just feeling "different." At dinner I still wasn't feeling right, and my contractions were becoming more regular. I threw up my dinner, and...long story short, we went to the hospital at midnight, they had me walk the halls for an hour to see if my contractions would get to be 2 minutes apart and my cervix show a change (I was still a 4). We walked until 2 am, and while my contractions were definitely 2 minutes apart, there was no change in my cervix, so they sent me home. (With the sage advice to not come back until the contractions hurt! Yes that is said with sarcasm, and you'll see why.)
Well, I threw up the next morning and was still having contractions along with upper intestinal cramps. And then, everything calmed down for a few days. So my theory is I had some sort of intestinal "bug" that caused the contractions, which ended up being false labor. I had been so uncomfortable and contracting so much that I was just really bugged that they sent me home. My doctor had scheduled an induction at 39 weeks, which was the 26th, so I was just planning on not having a baby until then. I did not want to go back to that hospital until they couldn't turn me away...what can I say, I was pretty bitter. So we enjoyed the rest of Spring Break with the girls home and Trevor's brother Brett in town.
Sunday we went to church as usual. It was pretty uncomfortable to sit through 3 hours of church, and my swelling was getting pretty unsightly, but I felt like I needed to be there since I was going to have the baby on Friday at the latest. At 5 o'clock I went to choir practice because I was playing the piano. I had started having contractions, but they didn't seem regular enough to time, so I went to choir and was EXTREMELY uncomfortable. We got home at 6:30, and started figuring out dinner for the kids, and I decided that I better sit down and start timing the contractions "just in case", since they were starting to hurt a little bit. They started out at about 9 minutes apart, then they jumped to 5 minutes apart. But this didn't make me nervous because I had had contractions that close before and they had just sent me home. Well, I think I only had 3 contractions that were 5 minutes apart, and then they went kamikaze on me. They were one right on top of another. I could tell Trevor was starting to panic and started getting my purse and telling me we needed to leave. He had to pick me up off the floor and push me out the door. We were getting in the car at 7:47, and my water broke. Then I started to panic. I knew I was definitely in labor and they couldn't send me home, so as we were racing to the hospital, the contractions got even crazier. Trevor likes to say I was my own siren. And all I kept thinking, and saying was, "I just want my epidural, I just want my epidural, I can't do this, I don't want to do this." Poor Trevor was listening to all this babble in between the wails of pain, while running stop signs and racing through traffic. Luckily the hospital is pretty close, and it was a Sunday night so the traffic was low. Well, we pulled up to the ER, and Trevor raced inside and said "my wife is having a baby!" But, if you know Trevor, he's not really a "freak out" kind of guy, so I don't think the way he told them really motivated them to move. My window was down (still can't remember how that happened), and my screaming "he's coming out...oh $#!T", I think that motivated them to move. I felt all this downward pressure, so I laid my seat back, and all of the sudden he was out. I kept saying, "oh that feels better, that feels better!" Seconds after, the nurses showed up and got him the rest of the way out, cut the cord, rushed the baby inside, put me on a gurney to take me inside, gave me the baby and walked us up to Labor and Delivery. And that is where they delivered the placenta, and stitched me up, etc. For several hours after that, Trevor and I just kept saying "I can't believe that just happened." It never even crossed my mind that I would be having my baby in the car until I was having the baby in the car! And I can now say that I have experienced natural childbirth. I don't know how women do that for hours and hours. But what I think is really funny is that nurse that told me to wait to come when the contractions hurt...I told the on-call doctor that, and she said "Not when it's your 4th baby, and you were already dilated to a 4!" (Well, she was the same on-call doctor that had sent me home the Tuesday before! So Trevor and I just rolled our eyes at each other and smiled.)
(the next morning before the girls went to school, they came to meet their baby brother)
So that's our story of how our amazingly cute and precious baby boy came to our family. Sorry it took me over a week to post it, but I have a new baby...give me a break!
THE END
