In my head I was having a February baby, so the fact that he’s been here for over a week is still mind boggling to me! Here’s the fun, medically dramatic story of my sweet Peter coming earthside. 💙
One week before delivery! 36 weeks 5 days
The last 2 months of this pregnancy were intense. From weekly blood draws to find answers for my chronic itching at 32 weeks on, to getting a cold and being convinced I was never going to be free from the intense chills, overheating and dizziness that was non stop, only being able to sleep 20-40 minutes at a time (averaging 3-4 hours a day) mixed with a sore throat and sinus infection- WOW I’m so happy we made it through all of that. I have never ever had a medically complicated, high risk pregnancy. They have always been by the book boring, and I like them that way!
IV at the ER- this IV hurt real bad!
After all of the “fun” I explained above, Wednesday (Jan 26) at 2 am I felt so sick that we decided I should go to the ER. They checked my blood pressure, temperature etc and everything was apparently “normal” but they also pumped me with fluids and that helped a lot so I’m thinking I must have been fairly dehydrated. They couldn’t find anything wrong with me so I went home around 6am and felt better for a few hours, then started to feel awful again.
When I went to my doctors appointment the next day, Thursday, at 37weeks +5 I felt so so awful again, so it honestly felt like a miracle that my body finally showed how sick I felt through my blood pressure. At the appointment they told me I apparently had preeclampsia and needed to be induced immediately. My blood pressure at the beginning of the appointment was first at 150/90 and then at 174. (Not sure how the ER missed that the day before 🙃) All I had ever heard about preeclampsia was having extreme swelling- and I was swollen, but it didn’t seem excessive. Apparently I also had protein in my urine and all of that mixed with the wicked high blood pressure meant that home boy needed to come out asap.
I felt so relieved to soon be free from the pain I had been dealing with but WOW we were also just not quite prepared for things to happen so fast and early. Ready or not, I texted Kyler and told him the news- it was time to have a baby!
Thankfully we have a great crew of neighbor friends who came together to help take care of our kids since we needed to be at the hospital asap. I felt very embarrassed over the messy state of our house though ha ha cleaning was not a thing I had been doing while feeling so miserable so the house was disaster city. One of our sweet friends Carol cleaned quite a bit of our home for us while we were gone- angel on earth!
Around 12:30pm Kyler and I headed to the hospital and a nurse checked us in. We went to our room, I got gowned up and we met our nurse for the induction- Julia! She was lovely! Very professional and clearly great at her job, very empathetic and just got the job done. She also put my IV down lower on my arm instead of on my hand and it was the first IV I’ve ever had that didn’t hurt going in or bug me too much having in. It was awesome!
Dr Cowles from Valley Womens OB came in and he and Kyler realized they actually knew each other which was kinda fun! He taught Kyler in the MTC and Kyler also helped him close on a house recently ha ha small world. He was incredibly kind and easy to talk to.
They started me on pitocin around 1pm and about 45 minutes later I asked for my epidural and then I tried to rest a little bit. After June’s labor I didn’t want to feel pain at all this time! Then they checked me and I was a 2, so they bumped up the Pitocin a bit. Maybe an hour later the nurse checked me and Kyler noticed some blood. The nurse checked under my blankets and I had lost a lot of blood and apparently had passed a huge clot that was 355 grams (around 12 oz.) She checked me again and I was still only at a 2. This part of labor was honestly a bit scary because the nurse got so serious and so quiet. She started paging the doctor and then moved the baby monitor (it has gotten bumped off when she went to check me initially) all around my belly trying to find his heartbeat but it was tricky to find. It was a very serious 3-4 minutes and all I could do was hold tight to Kyler’s hand and pray for comfort and that all would turn out well. Doctor Cowles and his nurse walked in and immediately started to help. Dr calmly explained what was going on, saying that sometimes due to high blood pressure things like placental abruptions happen where the placenta tears from the uterine wall. The blood was coming from that but he said if it’s minor enough it will still be okay and the birth can proceed vaginally, but if it got worse I’d need a c-section. It was concerning to hear, but Dr Cowles seemed really calm and positive and that helped put me at ease. If I needed a c section to keep baby and I safe, so be it. It was in Gods hands and I knew it’d be okay. Plus the nurse found the heartbeat so that helped a LOT ha ha
I still had my weird, intense chills during labor so they kept piling heated blankets on me which felt quite lovely!
They ended up turning off my pitocin to let my body naturally labor at a slower pace while they kept watch. I tried to catch some sleep and Kyler got some work done. After a couple hours, the bleeding had lessened so they broke my water and I immediately went to a 4. They had me continue to labor on my own so we didn’t put too much stress on the placenta and baby. Baby boy was taking a long time to progress though because he hadn’t dropped yet by the time I was induced so he was slowly moving down the birth canal. They had me stick a peanut yoga ball in between my legs to help him move. After a few hours I got to a 6 and the tear seemed to be maintaining well so they increased the pitocin again. The epidural had been working great but as the contractions got further along, baby boy seemed to be hitting against my right hip bone or something because I’d get terrible contraction pain just right in that spot. It was a bummer because I hadn’t wanted to feel any pain this time dang it! Ha ha everywhere else was numb but my dang hip, and it felt like I was feeling all of the labor pain right there in that concentrated spot. I didn’t want to increase my epidural too much because I didn’t want to be completely numb at the end and unable to move once he was born. After a bit of painful, close contractions I asked them to check me and he was 10 with his head right there! They paged the doctor but he was at Timp hospital in Orem with another delivery. The same thing happened when I was delivering June but I could wait that time because I was totally numb. This time around I had that terrible hip pain so I asked the nurse if I had to wait for him. She said we had an on call doctor and I asked if he cost extra and she said no, so I said call him ha ha I was ready!!
Hadn’t eaten all day so this was my dinner ha ha also- I had a weird red splotch on my cheek for whatever reason
His name was Dr Girly and he was quite old ha ha but he came right in and everything for the birth was set up and he said “oh wow yep there’s the head!” And then he asked if I want to feel it and you know, I sure didn’t. Ha ha so I said no and he looked at me like I was crazy. Then he said okay baby is coming out! And Peter literally just slid out without any pushing from me and as he pulled his head and shoulders out he asked if I wanted to pull the rest of him out myself and I said “no that’s okay” and again.. he looked at me with shock and like I had 6 heads ha ha I was getting some serious old man judgment for not wanting to pull my own baby out. Now is not the time dude! Just get the baby out and then judge me later ha ha anyway, eventually baby boy was put on my chest as they rubbed him clean but he wasn’t really crying or anything. They kept suctioning his mouth and nose and he started to make some noises and a cry eventually came through but he still seemed to be struggling. They took him from me to check him and a respiratory therapist was there to help as well and Kyler filmed him and all that while I delivered the ol planceta. I just tried to focus on what was happening to me in the moment and knew that if I needed to worry about baby boy Kyler would let me know. (Trying all this anxiety mindfulness and it really does help.) Peter soon started crying louder and I knew it was all going to be okay. Also, about 60 seconds after I delivered my actual doctor came in ha ha sorry, couldn’t wait!
I had no tearing and everything looked great so they cleaned me up quick and then I got to do skin to skin with baby. All day in the hospital Kyler and I had been arguing over baby names. I had wanted Noah for ages, and all of a sudden Kyler had a list a mile long. 🙄 ha ha the staff would ask baby’s name and I’d yell Noah! And then Kyler would add his 6 options and they’d all laugh. Anyway, after they were done cleaning things in the room and I was shoving my birth sandwich into my mouth (shout out to my nurse, she grabbed one for me and made sure it had cookies and that the meat was turkey!) Kyler was holding and looking at baby boy and just all of a sudden said “you’re Peter.” And at first I was so annoyed because Peter wasn’t even on the dang list at all this time! Ha ha but it had been an option when we had Eli. So at first I fought it but then he said it again, and it reminded me of when we brought Eli home to the kids and Henry said something like “remember when we thought it was Peter but instead it was Eli?” and he clearly meant it in a way that Peter was a person who was coming but instead Eli came first you know? And thinking about it that way I felt like maybe he really was our Peter and this was his right time to come join our family on earth. ❤️ So in conclusion Kyler won a massive battle and I gave up on Noah and now we have our Peter. 😉 Ha ha
I just can’t believe this precious boy is already here. He is very quiet and content, a lovely eater and sleeper and he smells so delightfully sweet like heaven. Even though it was one heck of an ending to this pregnancy, it was 💯 worth it for this precious boy.
My sweet nurse Julia!
I still had the chills after he was born so I was wearing my full out coat while trying to nurse him
