Our little bundle of joy that we prayed for entered the world on September 20th at 3:58pm.
He came out perfect as can be and screaming to let everyone know that he had arrived. It would be another hour or so though before I even knew he was here, because I was asleep during his birth….as in completely knocked out 100%.
Labor and birth didn’t go as planned, but I was told not to set my heart on anything because you never know what’s going to happen.
I’ve told y’all about my struggle with not being able to get pregnant, my wish to be a mom and finally after years of praying we were finally able to share our pregnancy announcement and birth announcement with ya’ll this year! This post is for everyone that’s asked how the birth went. Well, y’all it was kinda traumatic and it didn’t go as planned but I’m so glad our little one is here and safe.
Beforehand
Tuesday, September 19th, was pretty normal. I was ridiculously uncomfortable and working on getting all of my client and blog work done.
I put in an order with a friend of mine for some decal shirts for us to wear home from the hospital. (Mama Bear, Papa Bear and Baby Bear shirts).
I cleaned our entire apartment, finished up a load if laundry and did the dishes. Thomas got off work and ran to pick up dinner because I was too exhausted to even think about cooking at this point. I was craving Chinese take out, so he made it happen.
After my perfect dinner of sesame chicken and fried rice, I settled into the couch to send off my last draft and photos for my sponsored posts for October. I wanted to get all of my work done for the month of October and most of November so that when our little guy arrived I would have plenty of free time to spend with him. Around 8pm I closed my computer, looked over at Thomas and told him that I was 100% complete with all of my work for October and 1/2 of November! I was ready to spend the next 2 weeks getting some last minute things done around the house before my due date hit.
My due date was October 5th but because my blood pressure goes insane when I have any type of procedure, we were planning on being induced on October 3rd. We had 2 weeks to just relax and mental prep for baby without any deadlines hanging over my head.
I took my shower for the evening and told Thomas that I was a little nervous because our baby hadn’t been kicking as much today, well not as much as he normally had been. However, my doctor had told me that the closer I got to delivering, the more he would roll instead of kick. So, I was trying to keep that in mind, plus I had a doctors appointment the next morning for my last ultrasound.
However, a few minutes later, our little guy to let me know he was still kicking as he beat up a few of my organs haha.
“Ok, ok, I gotcha, you’re still doing ok” I said as I patted my stomach to calm him down a bit. We were getting ready for bed and I didn’t want him to kick me all night haha.
So we crawled into bed around 10pm after a super long day and got comfortable. I swear we weren’t in the bed but 5 minutes when I felt it.
“OH MY GOD, I think I just peed the bed”
Thomas rolled over and looked at me with one eye one, with a “Really?”
Embarrassing. I mean I had heard of women doing this but UGH.
Then I moved and OH NO….that’s not pee.
My water had broke and it wasn’t stopping.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!
My water can’t break tonight. I have two more weeks to mental prepare for this. I’M NOT READY!!
Thomas jumped out of the bed and helped me get up. I literally stood in the middle of the floor shaking and telling Thomas that I wasn’t ready. He assured me that I would going to be fine, which made me shoot him the side eye because well, it’s not like he was getting ready to experience labor. 😉
Thankfully something had told me to pack my hospital bag the weekend before, so that was ready to go. We changed, grabbed my hospital bag, my diaper bag and headed for the car.
LADIES – if you haven’t had children yet, let me offer you a lovely piece of advice. Buy yourself a pack of Depends. YES, the mesh like, adult diapers. No I don’t care that they’re hideous. This is not the time to be vain. haha. When your water breaks at home, you’re going to thank me for this advice because when your water breaks, it’s going to flow out like Niagara Falls and IT’S NOT GOING TO STOP. I was in the hospital in labor for a good 6 or more hours before mine stopped.
So to the car we go….we’re lucky because we only live about 5 minutes from the hospital.
To the hospital we go…
We called my parents on the way to the hospital and then called my doula. We went to the emergency department and told them my water broke, a few minutes later, a nurse was downstairs and ready to wheel me up to Labor & Delivery.
They got me to my room, hooked me up to the monitors, stabbed me with an IV and we settled in for a night of lovely labor. Soon after we got there, my brother and sister in law made it to the hospital, followed by my parents. Not long after that, contractions starts, back labor set it and my blood pressure went through the roof as predicted.
So my nurse sent everyone home (except Thomas) because they needed to get my blood pressure down and gave me something to make me sleep. I woke up on and off again through out the night, droggy from the medicine and in pain from the back labor. A lot of that night was a blur, but I remember hearing people and talking to Thomas but I have no idea what was actually going on. Who knows what I said haha.
My nurses came in and checked on me a few times and that morning my doctor came in. She wasn’t on call until 1pm that afternoon but she came to check on me before heading into work.
She told me to relax, she checked to see how far I was dilated and told me to get some rest and that she’d be back soon. Since I was one of her appointments at the office that day she would make it back to the hospital even sooner because it’s not like I would be needing to go into my appointment haha.
I fell back to sleep and woke up around 10am in a panic when I saw the clock. I knew it has almost been 12 hours since my water had broke and I knew I couldn’t go past 24 hours. I also knew my doctor really didn’t want me to go past 18 hours after my water broke.
Back in 1984, my older brother passed away at 3 days old from an infection he got from staying in too long after my moms water broke, so that was always in the back of my mind.
Not only did I panic because I knew that meant I would be giving birth soon, but also because I was only dilated 2cm. I knew that if I didn’t go further, faster that I was going to end up having a c-section and that’s not what I wanted.
Back labor was killing me by now so it was epidural time. We had to watch a little video about it and then we waited.
I tried bouncing on one of those yoga balls. One of my best friends has actually given birth a few days before so I sent Thomas down to her room to get her yoga ball. haha
However, I had to get back in the bed because they couldn’t get a good measurement on his little heartbeat while I was out of the bed.
If I laid down they could get his heartbeat but they couldn’t measure my contractions. If I sat up, they could measure my contractions but not his heartbeat.
So guess what happened.
They had to put in internal probes to measure both. Yea….I’ll spare you the details but in short, they stick probes up inside to measure heartbeat and contractions and they don’t feel very pleasant…at all.
Oh wait? It hurt after the epidural? YES, YES IT DID.
I thought you weren’t suppose to feel anything after getting the epidural. Well, you aren’t but I did. I felt the epidural, I winced in pain as they stuck it in my spine and then after it was all said and done, I could still feel everything below my waist.
I felt the probes, I felt the catheter, I could feel everything AND IT HURT. They promised me that it would start working soon.
I was hurting but I managed to fall asleep and get a little rest. Next thing I knew, I woke up to Thomas sitting beside my bed and me telling him how hungry I was and I just needed to eat some dinner. haha I remember thinking to myself, “I just need to get up and go get some pasta”. I’m assuming it was the pain meds talking haha.
My doctor came in a little while later, I couldn’t feel the contractions in my back anymore but they had all just moved to the front and everything from my ribs down was killing me. We were getting a little to close to the 18 hour mark and I still hadn’t dilated any more. That’s when my doctor came over and told me that she thought that it was time that we should do a c-section. Even though we had wanted a natural birth, I knew that it wasn’t going to be an option at this point and for some reason I remember being very calm when she broke the news to me even thought my heart was hurting at the thought.
My doctor was amazing. She didn’t want to rush things and told me not to worry that we were going to take our time and it was going to be ok.
Well, this isn’t going as planned….
Well, that went out the window in a matter of minutes. Soon, while checking me out and prepping for the c-section, all of the nurses and my doctor started running around like crazy people. I was still kind of droggy from the pain meds but I remember seeing everyone rushing around my room. As they were taking me down to the operation room I asked my doctor what was wrong, she told me not to worry.
That’s when I looked up at her and said, “Something’s wrong, no one rushes around in a hospital like this when nothings wrong”. That’s when she told me that our little bears heart rate was dropping and they had to get him out now. Turns out that his umbilical cord was wrapped around him like a crossbody purse. The further he went down into the birth canal the more it was pulling him back and every time I had a contraction it was squeezing him and making his heart rate drop.
The nurses pulled me onto the operating table and told me they were going to give me something to speed up the epidural. I knew my epidural hadn’t kicked in because I could feel my contractions and my legs. One of the nurses ran an ice cold rag over the bottom of my stomach as the anesthesiologist put a giant breathing mask on my face. I was panicking so much that the giant bursts of air hitting me in the face were suffocating me more than helping me breath.
They stretched my arms out flat and put these heavy towels on top of them, which again made me unintentionally shake and go into panic mode.
The nurse asked me if I felt anything on my stomach and I told her I felt her run a cloth or rag over it, she asked me if it was hot or cold and I told her it was ice cold.
That’s when she turned to the other nurse and said these lovely words, “Her epidural didn’t take at all”.
That’s pretty much when I thought that it was over. HOLY HELL. How are they going to cut him out and not kill me if I can feel everything.
Then I heard, “We need to do a sample cut.” and before I could even process the words, I felt the scalpel cut into my stomach. That’s when I let out the loudest scream ever that I’m sure the entire hospital heard, the anesthesiologist said, “Knock her out now” and that was that.
He’s here!
Sometime within the next 5 or so minutes, our little boy came into this world screaming, the nurses told us that he came out and let everyone know that he had a good set of lungS on him. haha
They let Thomas come back and cut the cord and hold him. Yep since they knocked me out, poor Thomas could’t even be back there with me. However, I’m so glad that they let him come back as soon as Jackson was born and hold him, that meant a lot to me since I was out cold.
My doula, Catie, snapped some photos of Thomas with Jackson and then texted my family that was in the waiting room to let them know that he was here.
A little while later Jackson was in the nursery being checked out by the doctors and I was starting to wake up in recovery. I could hear things before I could open my eyes. I remember Thomas being to my right and my nurse being to my left. I heard the nursery music playing, (the song they play throughout the hospital when a baby is born) and I remember my nurse saying, “that one is for y’alls baby”. I remember Thomas holding my hand and talking to me but I don’t remember what he was saying.
Soon after that, I started to wake up and they moved me into my hospital room. Within minutes of being in there, a little hospital bassinet came rolling through the door and there was our little baby. A tiny little 6 pounds 13 oz baby boy that was all mine.
Recovery
It took me a little while in the hospital that evening to fully grasp what had gone on. I was still in a cloud from being knocked out, an hour or so ago I had this little bundle of joy in my stomach and now he was laying on my chest but since they knocked me out, I had no memories of him actually being born. I missed out on that special moment of him actually being born and I hate that. Even though he’s here, sometimes I feel like I’m still waiting on that event because I technically missed it. I also hate that I didn’t get that immediate bonding time with him the second he was born. I did get some skin to skin time with him when they brought him too me after I was in my room but it wasn’t the same.
I was in the hospital for a few days while I was recovery. Whew weeee, let me tell you something….people told me that if I had a c-section that it would hurt like hell afterwards but I didn’t quite grasp how accurate that statement was until I was in the hospital actually recovering from the c-section. If Thomas hadn’t been in the hospital with me to help take care of me I don’t know what I would have done. I couldn’t even roll over without his help. He had to pretty much pick me up when I needed to sit up or get out of the bed. For the first day I couldn’t even move my left leg, I could move my toes but my leg was pretty much dead weight.
After the first night, I switched places with Thomas as far as where we slept. I slept sitting up in the chair in the room and gave him the bed. It was much easier for me to get out of the chair with help.
I remember the first night after he was born, well I guess it was morning because it was around 2am, I was so tired of laying on my back that I decided to try and sit up. It took me 2 HOURS of slowly scooting myself into a sitting position while using my upper body and the controls on the bed to final get myself into a semi sitting position. I felt amazing to just be able to semi sit up, even though it hurt like hell. Then, I kid you not, I had been sitting up for less that 3 minutes when the nurses came in and told me that they needed to lay me down to check my incision. ARE YOU KIDDING ME! haha. So back to my back it was and I just decided to lay like that until Thomas woke up that morning to help me sit up again.
That morning around 9am I told the nurses I wanted to get up and walk. My doctor had told me that as long as I was careful, the sooner I got moving the easier it would be for me. So I was determined to slowly start moving. I did start slow though. That morning, it was basically me shuffling around one little corner of the room with Thomas by my side, but it was better than laying like a stiff board in the hospital bed.
One of my best friends, Nicole, had just given birth a few day before and was in the room next to me. She came over for a few minutes to visit and then she was out the door to do her walking around the L&D department, I wouldn’t make it out there to walk until the next day. The pain meds they gave me in the hospital made me kind of loopy but when the nurses would come to the room in the mornings to take Jackson for his daily check ups, Thomas would get me out of bed and help me walk around the L&D department as much as my legs could take.
After a few days filled with recovery, baby snuggles and wonderful visitors, we were finally able to be discharged.
Oh and you remember how at the start of this post I told you that the day I went into labor I had ordered some cute shirts for us to wear coming home from the hospital. Well I texted my friend Angie (yep same name as me haha), and told her that I still wanted the shirts but that I our little one decided to show up 2 weeks early so I wouldn’t be able to pickup the decals this week.
(She was making the decals for me and I was going to iron them onto our new shirts that week). Well, you know what she did? She came to the hospital, picked up our shirts and made them for me! It was so sweet! So we did get to wear our bear shirts after all!
Jackson’s jaundice levels were still up a little but they were low enough for us to take him home. We just ended up having to get him a little “glow worm” suit from the hospital and for the first week of his life we had to go to the hospital every morning to get his heel pricked and levels tested. Thankfully after a week, he’s level went down!
So we’re hitting week 4 today. He is almost a month old and we’re still adjusting to the insane schedule of a new born, I’m still recovery and still moving slowly but at least I’m moving! 🙂
The first night home I had to sleep sitting up in the living room and it sucked. I couldn’t even get off of the couch without Thomas helping me. Now thankfully I can get in and out of the bed and off the couch with little to no problem.
Last week, I drove for the first time in almost a month and it was super weird. I went to the grocery store by myself and it was pretty magical haha. (Thomas pretty much drove me everywhere the last 2 weeks of my pregnancy and I wasn’t allowed to drive myself until this week, doctors orders, so it’s been a while since I’ve been behind the wheel)
When I get frustrated with the pain or my lack of ability to do a lot, Thomas constantly has to remind me that not only did I bring a life into the world but I’m also recovery from surgery. It’s so frustrating sometimes! However, it’s getting better every day. I’m just glad that we’re all here, safe and sound. Finally, we’re parents! <3
Thank you to everyone that has called, messages, texted and came to visit! We love each and everyone of y’all. Parenthood is a new adventure for Thomas and I, but I’m so very thankful that after all of the years of trying/praying (and a special request from our Toni after she got to heaven) that we finally get to go on this adventure together!
Aly ~ Cooking In Stilettos says
I am so happy for you all Angie and wish you a speedy recovery! Jackson is just adorable!
Renee - Kudos Kitchen says
That’s quite a story, and I love how you’re able to document it all so you can share it one day with Jackson. He’s beautiful, Angie! I could not be happier for you and your new little family. Congratulations!!
Barbara Schieving says
He’s gorgeous! I’m so happy for you!
Damian says
I love reading your writing…always so engaging!
Nicole says
Whew! What a story girlie! But so incredibly worth it. That baby boy is so beautiful and you guys make the most precious family! <3
Crystal Light-Faulkner says
Oh, Angie – he’s so precious!!
Kirsten/Comfortably Domestic says
He is just the sweetest baby bear. I’m sorry that things didn’t go as you had planned, but I’m thrilled that you have a healthy baby out of it all.
Brenda Bennett says
Scariest thing in the world, I’ve been there! My hubby said he never saw anyone get shaved for a c section so fast in his life! We weren’t expecting a c-setion either but same thing for me my little guys heart was dropping fast and they had to work fast! But in the end a healthy baby boy and a healthy mom, sore, very sore but I’d do it again in a heart beat! You are Amazing and I’m so happy for you!
aimee says
So so happy your sweet boy is finally here! But so sorry it didnt go as planned. Thankful that he is here safe though and glad you are too! Good luck as you continue to recover!
DessertForTwo says
Wow, this is such an amazing birth story! Thank you so much for sharing it with us, and thanks for sharing your beautiful bundle of joy!
PS I will forever be haunted by the phrase ‘sample cut,’ but DANG, MAMA, you are TOUGH!! You’re ready to be a boy mom <3 <3 <3
Kayle (The Cooking Actress) says
Your pictures are adorable and Jackson is SO CUTE-I’m so so happy that you got your sweet baby.
But GIRL. I am 8 months pregnant right now and this story is a weeee bit terrifying…sample cut….ahhhh. You are a rockstar
Nancy | The Bitter Side of Sweet says
So happy for you guys!! Jackson is just precious and I am so glad you are recovering and hopefully you and Thomas are getting rest!
Liz says
I got teary reading about your birth experience. I’m SO darn happy for you and Thomas! You are already amazing parents and the fun has just begun. Jackson is just adorable! xoxo
Margaret Segee says
Amazing how we stumble upon real life stories! I wanted your Crock-pot Southern Style Green Bean recipe. I got that but so much more! I met a beautiful little family. Congrats Mama and Papa Bear and many blessing to Baby Bear!
Angie says
Thank you so much! So glad that you found us!
Catherine @ Whine and Dancing says
Congratulations Angie! He is so adorable! Also, checkout Loved by Hannah Eli, she makes Mama Bear, Baby Bear, Papa Bear shirts that are adorable.
Angie says
Thank you so much! I’ll check her out!
Kimberly says
Your baby boy is so cute! You guys are blessed. Hang in there
Linda says
Angie & Thomas,
Congratulations on your beautiful baby boy (Jackson). God couldn’t have blessed you with a prettier baby boy! Relax and enjoy every moment with your baby! You have 3 Holiday’s to celebrate ahead of you! Think of all the beautiful pictures you will treasure. Prayer’s were answered for you and Jackson.
Lunda says
Congratulations ! Now you have your Beautiful Family.
Thanks so much for sharing your Amazing journey of childbirth. Wishing you every Happiness !
Cheryl Howerton says
Just seen baby pics, so adorable
Angie says
Thank you!