Better late than never right...? Parker Brian Skaggs made his way into this world on June 17th, 2011 @9:49 am. He weighed 7 lbs 13 oz (10 more oz than Preston!) and 20.5" long. He shares a birthday with my Dad!! Here is how it went down...
June 16th Danny decided to take work off because I was having a lot of braxton hicks contractions (not to mention I had already been to the doc that week and was 3 cm and 80% effaced). I wanted to get this labor ball rolling so I decided to do some of the old wives tales. I ate spicy food for dinner, and I played the wii fit doing the obstacle course with some family at my parents house. Danny and I got home around 11pm and went to bed around midnight.
At 1 am on June 17th I woke up with back pain and cramping. Having been through this before I knew that this was it. Now just had to start timing the contractions. I busted out my cell phone and opened the contraction timer app (yes, theres an app for that!) and for about 30 mins they were coming every 4 mins or less, but bouncing up and down. So I calmly woke up Danny and said "Babe, I'm in labor. I'm getting in the shower, get up." HA.. so I hopped in the shower to shave my legs and called my mom to come and stay with Preston.
Danny and I left for the hospital around 2:45 am and got to triage at about 3. To our surprise our nurse was Courtney, the same one we had with Preston!!! Same triage bed, same nurse. When she checked me I was 5-6 cm and 90% effaced so I knew they would keep me. My contractions were coming every 2-2.5 mins by then and they were EXCRUTIATING!! When I had Preston, I never got to that super painful point. I had gotten the epidural before I got really uncomfortable, so this was new to me. It was so intense. Luckily Courtney got me into my room really quickly and I got my epidural at about 4:30 am. It was not painful at all, which it wasn't with Preston either. However, I did get a few contractions while he was doing it and I wanted to shoot my foot off! It's hard to hold still when you are in that much pain!!
About 10 mins after the epi got started I was feeling GOOOOD! My new nurse came in and it was Jill, the same nurse that delivered Preston!!!!!!!! I was so excited! She checked me again and I was at an 8.5 and 100% effaced, so Danny and I tried to get some rest until it was time to push. It was hard to sleep with the noise and the blood pressure thing going off all the time so all I got were a few cat naps. Danny got some good sleep though, that guy sleeps thru anything (except the tones at the station of course).
My mom came down to the hospital after Danny's dad came to get Preston from her. At about 7:45 am she checked me and I was a 10. PUSH TIME! or was it...? The nurse told me that the doctor was at Chandler Regional delivering and would be here soon! Turns out it was a doc that covers for the docs in my practice when they aren't on call so I had no idea who she was. But, she came in around 9:20 am and broke my water. She turned out to be a really nice and fun lady so I didn't mind that I was meeting her for the first time with my pants down. haha! She told me to do a practice push and then said, "WHOA ok hold on!!" Another nurse popped her head in and said that someone else was also ready to push and my doc said "Don't worry, I'll be right there. This girl is gonna have this baby out in 3 more pushes!" And I'm thinking, riiiiight. I pushed for 2.5 hours with Preston so I would have been happy with an hour, but it turned out Parker was well on his way and sure enough, 3 contractions and 10 minutes later Parker was here!!!!!!!!!!! I couldn't believe I did it that fast!!! It was an incredible experience.
They do this new thing now that they didn't when I had Preston, called Kangaroo care. If your baby came out healthy with good apgar scores (he was 9 and 9, Awesome scores) then you get to hold your baby for an hour or so before they do all the weighing, bathing, and all that jazz. So as soon as he came out they put him on the towel on my stomach, rubbed him a little clean, slapped a diaper on him right there on me and put him under my gown on my chest. It was so awesome to be able to hold him and bond with him and keep him warm. He got to nurse right away, and then after that they came back in the room and weighed him, did the ointment, and gave him a bath. It was so amazing! Unfortunately, there are not a lot of pictures this time. Everything went so fast that we kind of forgot! But we have a few cell phone pics as well as video that my sister in law Cara took for us! So far, he has dark brown hair and dark blue eyes. It looks like we might have a little Kelly look alike this time!!!
We feel SO blessed to have a second healthy son, and Preston loves Parker so much!!!
