Labor and Delivery

Well, here is Jacob's birth story...  My water officially broke early Thanksgiving morning between 6 and 7am.  After a call to the doctor, and a quick shower, we were off to the hospital!  Here is a pic of us right before we left, the last as a family of 3!

Once at the hospital and checked in, I was doing pretty good.  Contractions were very tolerable, but I was progressing slow...

 

My doctor then decided to start me on pitocin...a slow dosage at first.  Soon I started to spike a fever over a 101 degrees, which is not good.  I took tylenol and antibiotics to help with that, and it only brought the fever down for a bit.  It kept going back up.  Also my contractions were starting to hurt a little as by this point, I had been at the hospital since 9:30am, and it was now 6pm.  The pitocin was working, but I was still only dialated to 3cms.  Here is a view of my contractions on the monitor...

It was rough not being able to eat on Thanksgiving...Chris had a nice Thanksgiving meal plate brought to him by his parents.  I sat there and dreamed of the pecan pie I made the day before while I watched him eat it. :)

Sometime after 7:30 our doctor came in to see us.  She shocked us to say she thought we should do a c-section right away.  Because of my fever (caused by an infection of some sort), and every time I had a contraction in the past hour or so the baby's heart rate would drop were the two reasons she gave together that she thought it would be best for the c-section.  Within 30 minutes I was in the operating room!  It happened so fast.  Here I am right before Jacob was born...

Jacob was born at 8:48pm...it was wonderful to hear his first cry when they got the head out!

Meeting Jacob for the first time...

As Jacob was being tended to by the great team from the NICU, my doctor told us we had angels watching over our baby.  She explained that I had exposed blood vessels from the umbilical cord to the placenta running through the bag of waters.  If any of them would have burst, we would have lost him.  It can happen anytime during the pregnancy, but especially during a natural birth.  So the call to have the c-section probably saved his life!  It is a condition called velamentous insertion.  We are still marveling at God's sovereignty and protection over Jacob. 

Pics with Jacob in the recovery room...