Our Baby Story

Okay, so pretty boring for anyone else but before I begin to forget.... pictures coming soon!

Once upon a time and a Tuesday not so very long ago (Dec. 4 actually) I went in for my routine prenatal check-up. I was about 38 weeks along and feeling pretty good. Okay, I was pretty tired to because I had spent the day trying to maintain order in a room of energetic 1st graders. The midwife said she was a little concerned because I was measuring a little small and they wanted to check my glucose levels again (3 hour fasting test - yay!) so she set me up with the glucose test, an ultrasound, and an appointment with one of the other midwives up at the hospital. Still all fairly routine and mostly just procedural caution.

So then Thursday came. I got Alicia up for school and tried to wake up Ryan but he started coughing and overall seemed desperate to get some more sleep so he got to stay home with Mark. About 8:00 I finished up trying to get ready for a house showing that would be later that morning and dying to get it all done with so I could eat some food I headed north to the hospital. I should probably mention here that I found out I had left my cell phone outside overnight in the van so thanks to the cold the battery was practically dead.

My first stop at the hospital was for the 1st glucose drawing and downing of the sugar drink. Then I rushed over to Ultrasound and even though the little guy was too big to really make for any of those cute pictures anymore I got to enjoy seeing his little bones and heartbeat on the screen as they measured everything. She told me that it looked like he was about 5lbs 10oz from the estimate so he was probably between 4lbs 10oz and 6lbs 10oz. Then I ran back over to have my 2nd blood draw. From there it was upstairs for the appointment with the midwife. She took all my vitals and started looking through the charts and decided to put me on their stress-test machine for a bit. I had to get off early to make it down for my 3rd blood draw then came back up expecting to be back on the machine, instead I got told that they had decided that I didn't need to go back on and I should just wait until the midwife could talk with me. Interestingly this is the same midwife that was the one to meet with me when I first discovered my miscarriage last time. She must be the one to handle the hard news because she told me that in the ultrasound pictures it showed that I had a low level of amniotic fluid and insisted that I head straight over to the birthing pavilion to be induced.

My reaction was probably stunned shock. All I could think of was that I had absolutely nothing on me - my bag was still at home, as far as I knew my cell phone had completely died by now, the car seat we were going to be borrowing from friends was still with them, I had no idea who would be available to take care of the kids and all in all, I just really wanted lunch! When I asked if I could go home to take care of everything and then come back in a couple of hours to start it I was politely but firmly told no. She took me out the back exit of the offices and pointed the way down the hall to the birthing pavilion. As soon as the door had shut behind her and I was sure she wasn't looking I played super spy and snuck back out to the car. I contemplated leaving anyways but behaved and just got my cell phone and my lunch. Mark's pretty sure I was making my own theme music while doing this.

So I got checked in and ironically it was the same room I was in when I had Ryan. I got through the initial stuff with the nurses and then breathed a great sigh of relief as my phone powered back up again. Hurriedly I copied off all the phone numbers I could think of that would be useful and then dialed up Mark. Because they had been so adamant that I not leave I had him rush to handle everything so he could be with me. In my dazed haze all I could think of was having the baby before he could get there.

Anyways, he rushed Ryan off to a friend and arranged for Alicia to get dropped off from school there as well. He even dropped off my hospital bag with them thinking it was an overnight bag for them! (Like I said... we definitely were not prepared!) About the same time he got there we finally got the idea for a game plan and I began to realize that it was going to be a very long night since my body wasn't in any kind of labor yet. They started the medicine for induction at about 1:30/2:00 but at low levels that they would up on the half-hour. I sent him back home to change out bags and take care of things.

That night was pretty much a droning. I actually did finally find something on the television that wasn't a soap opera or cartoons - A Baby Story. After that I got my overfill of TLC and DIY with weddings and extreme homes and home repairs and yeah, you get the idea. I was seriously upset I hadn't stopped by the library as planned the day before so I had a fresh supply of books to keep me company. The contractions started coming but nothing major. I was still convinced that we'd be done by like 9 or 10 that night at the latest. Didn't happen. Actually the only things that really happened was that thankfully our friend with the car seat drove all the way up so I could stop worrying about that. I also had another friend came on shift so she got to check on me through the night while I tried to sleep attached to the annoying pole and having to get up probably every half hour to use the bathroom because of all the fluids they were putting into me. Seriously have I mentioned how blessed I am to have such amazing friends!

Morning dawned and I said farewell to my friend as she clocked out, sure that the contractions had pretty much stopped while I was sleeping. Thankfully they'd either just been really light or I'd been more tired than I thought because the monitors showed I was still progressing. They began now in earnest upping my medication levels to get everything really going. Still there wasn't much change until after we decided to go ahead and break my water. After that things started to pick up a bit. I took a turn in their soak tubs and when I was done in there decided to stop pretending I was superwoman. See I had this idea that I needed to go completely natural. Well, that idea officially was written off as crazy talk. I decided that the only thing keeping me from at least some level of pain relief was pride and I was now over that. They started the epidural soon after. Not sure it actually got a chance to do anything though because I shot into full labor pretty quickly. Seriously about an hour (it's a little fuzzy) before I delivered I was only at about 4 centimeters dilated. It came on hard and quick and then all of the sudden at 3:07 we had our newest little man weighing in at just around at 6 lbs (still have to check the picture because she said 5 lbs 16 oz.) and 19 inches long. He was squirmy and red and absolutely perfect.

The roads were once again pretty bad so the kids didn't get to come up that night. Gladys and Matt did make it safely from NY though which was a nice surprise. Baby and I were super tired so I told Mark to take them home and get some sleep there while we crashed.

Next day was mostly just routine vital checks and testing for me and the baby. We found out that he loves to sleep almost as much as I do but he does prefer if he's being held. Mark, Gladys, and Matt came back that morning, the kids arrived with Zach and Wendi around lunch time. I think the best comment was from Alicia - "Mom so are you pregnant again yet?" umm... no.

It was a long hard wait for the kids after everyone left. When the pediatrician from the hospital came to check on the baby I asked how long before we could go home. She seemed kind of shocked that I was wanting to leave so early. Seriously though, I wanted my bed and my shower! At last my doctors and his doctors said that as long as nothing came up in the meantime that they would do all his checks at about 3 so he would be ready to come home. YAY!!! They came to do his checks somewhere around 3:15 but because it was a Saturday we ended up waiting forever to get the final okays. We also had to finally pick a name - Alexander Andrew Ostrom won out. I think it'll be Alex most of the time.

I just felt bad for the kids because we had assumed we would be going home so I kept waiting on trying to get them dinner figuring that the moment that they left to get something or we ordered up from the dining service (which was surprisingly yummy for "hospitial food") that we'd get the okay but then have to wait on the food. About 5:30 we asked if we could get some crackers and the kids raided the maternity kitchen. bringing back lots of crackers and juice. About 6:30 Mark went and bought some sandwiches.

Finally just before 7 we got the go ahead to leave. It was actually kind of weird. No one checked our bands on the way out the door, they barely checked the car-seat. We just went for it - feeling once again like I was breaking out and needed some spy music playing. 8:00 that night we were all home at last with our new little bundle!