[WilliamLowe]

Totally forgot about this thread.

We had a boy on 2-19 5:45am - Ephraim Cloud

I went to bed around midnight on 2-18/2-19. Just as I'm laying down, my wife(Jessi) got up to go to the bathroom. I fall asleep right away and am awakened about 5 mins later by Jessi saying that she's pretty sure her water just broke. Not too many things in life will wake you up like that.

I immediately started running around getting stuff together and we made the five minute trip to the hospital. We got there and her water was, indeed, ruptured. However, she wasn't dilated at all. This was rather disappointing for us (her) as we(she) were dead-set on having a completely un-medicated delivery. The problem with the scenario is that once your water breaks, most hospitals will put you on a 24 hour clock for delivery as the risk of infection skyrockets the longer the baby is in the womb after rupture.

It's now about 1am and the nurse says that the will start pitocin at 3 if Jessi isn't making any progress. About 5 minutes later, contractions start coming...and none of this 30 second long, 20 minute apart stuff. They were pretty much constant.

Now, we were using the Bradley method for delivery. For anyone who knows anything about this, I(the husband) plays a big part in delivery using this method. Basically it's my job to massage/knead the hell out of her back while trying to talk her through each contraction. Generally, the guy can count on getting a little rest between contractions; not the case here.

The nurse walks in at about 3:15am with an IV of pitocin and goes to start it. We immediately stop her and ask if she is at least going to check and make sure there hasn't been any progress first. She gives us a "Oh, sure if you want me to" and we can totally tell that she is expecting to be putting a needle in my wife's arm in a couple minutes. She checks, and much to her surprise, finds that Jessi is 4cm dilated. No pitocin needed here.

The next two hours are pretty much a blur of trying to maintain some level of comfort for myself while making sure that my wife is as comfortable as possible. At 5am they come in a check, and she's 9cm dilated and they tell us that it's about time to start pushing. They spend the next 20-30 mins bringing all the stuff into the room and around 5:30 the pushing starts. About 10-12 mins in the baby's heart rate started to fall and the Dr. told us that he was going to have to use the vacuum on the next push; and that if the baby didn't come out then, he was going to have to go in w/ the forceps. Well, the vacuum worked and out came a 7lb 15oz boy. They spent about 20 minutes working on him as he had swallowed a lot of fluid on the way out(nurses said it was the most they'd ever seen). Meanwhile, my wife was getting stitched up. Since the pushing had been so short, she didn't have time to stretch enough and tore pretty badly. But she had done what she wanted, and made it through totally un-medicated. Let me tell you, I couldn't be prouder of her for this. It's great seeing other mother's faces when she tells them.

They kept us there for two days and then sent us home, only for us to return two days later as he had a pretty bad case of jaundice. Two days of him in an incubator under the super-duper tanning lights, and we had him home again.

He's two and a half weeks old now and is a pretty awesome baby. He generally only wakes up twice a night to eat, and I can think of 1 time when he wasn't in the hospital that he started crying that cry that makes parents want to rip their hair out. I know I'm only a little over two weeks in, but it's great to be a dad.

Pics for those interested are here:

peckfamily.myphotoalbum.com