He's Here! The Story of Shiloh's Arrival

My son is here!! I've been waiting so long to be able to post that blog title!

I'm so excited you have no idea... I am also SO exhausted and sore, but that's just the name of the game. He did wonderful his first night. He has been a nursing champion just like his sister and I took advantage of the nursery last night and got a decent night's sleep, so I am feeling much better. Because I went into labor Tuesday night, I never slept and so by the time I pushed Shiloh out I (and Jon, Mom, Court and Abby) had been up for almost 36 hours. I was EXHAUSTED last night!

So yes, he's here!

And here is the story of his arrival:

It started around 5 or 6pm on Tuesday. I had been feeling pretty blah all day and had spent the day laying down. I noticed around then that I was starting to get a good pattern of contractions. They were actually pretty hard and were getting closer together. After dinner, Jon went to play drums and my contractions were continuing. I started to think that this may be it as I had never had contractions like this before as they weren't necessarily really hard, they just felt different and seemed to really wrap around. I talked to my mom, Courtney and Abby and put them on alert just in case. I told them not to get their hopes up as I was just SURE they were going to go away. Around 9, my mom suggested that I start doing stuff, so I cleaned the kitchen (scrubbing pots, cleaned the counters and swept), folded and put up 4 loads of laundry and picked up the living room.
After doing all that my contractions that were pretty consistently at 5 minutes a part, went to about 8 minutes a part. At that point I figured it was just false labor, but that was ok because I knew those contractions were doing something.
So Jon gets home around 11pm and by this time my contractions (that never went away) were getting closer together again. We went to bed and by 12:30a my contractions had gotten to consistently 4 minutes a part and they were starting to really hurt.
So we called my mom and decided to go up to the hospital to at least get checked out.
It was a little crazy because our plan was if something came up in the middle of the night, we would call the Lowries and then one of them would come over and stay at the house while Lyric slept until she woke up then when she woke up she would come up to the hospital with us. Of course I went into labor one of the nights that Liz was out of town and I was just so sure I was going to be induced that we never even talked about a back up while Liz was out of town.
SO we scrambled a bit that night, but then decided that since we didn't know for sure if I was in labor, my mom and Courtney and I would go up to triage and Jon would stay home. If they admitted me, he would drop her off at either Christina's or Courtney's house.
So we get up to the hospital and get evaluated and I was having really consistent contractions, but she checked me and I was just at 3cm, but 90% effaced. She had me wait around an hour and I was still the same dialated and effaced, but my contractions were getting a lot stronger. Because my contractions were still consistent, the nurse called Doctor Moseley and she said that she wanted me to walk around the halls for awhile and then get re-evaluated. She wanted me to wait till 5am and if I hadn't progressed anymore, then she would send me home.
All this time Courtney and Abby (who came up there shortly after we got there) are in the waiting room because the triage was packed and so it was just mom and I in the little curtained room. Courtney and Abby were totally and completely delerious and were making videos of themselves and laughing. When I went to walk him out in the halls, they all came with me and were making me laugh so hard that 1. I kept having horrible contractions and 2. we got in trouble for being too loud :)
So it was time for me to be re-evaluated, but right when I get back into triage they had a massive emergency involving a lady pregnant with twins, her placenta ruptered and the twins were injesting blood and were 4 weeks early, etc.. There was a massive blood transfusion needed and it was all hands on deck. This caused there to be NO nurses checking on triage for almost 2 hours. During that 2 hours, my contractions all of a sudden started getting hard and were hurting. It was about 4:30am by this point and that is when I consider myself to have actually gone into labor.
The contractions started getting really hard and it was difficult to breathe. It was so crazy because it felt like life was normal and I was just sitting there, then all of a sudden I would feel the pain start rolling in and it was suck the breath out of me and I would hurt so bad I wanted to crawl out of my skin! It would last for about a minute, and the world would right itself again.
Now I'm a wuss, so this was not very great at all for me! I have a whole new realm of respect for those of you who do natural child birth. OUCH!
So by the time the nurse finally got back with me after all the crazy drama going on, she checks me, I'm in a lot of pain my contractions are about 2-3 minutes a part and am a little over 4cm. So they admit me since I am now in labor.
Well it takes awhile to get into the room because at this time the hospital is rockin' and so busy (it's about 6am when I get settled). I get in the room and they tell me it will be a few hours before I can get an epidural. Fabulous! So they bring me a birthing ball, which actually is really nice. It helped me really be able to move through the contractions, but dang they hurt. Some would be worse than others and when those really hard ones came, OMG, I just wanted to give up. It's that kind of feeling that you just want to do whatever it takes to make it stop.
Jon gets up to the hospital at this point after dropping Lyric off at Christina's house.
My doctor comes in around this time and checks me and I'm 5cm and she offers to break my water. I was going to say yes, but then my mom gives me very sound advice. She told me that since I was already wanting an epidural and was NOT wanting to do this natural, she reminded me how horrible your labor gets after your water breaks. And since the Anestheseiologist was still an hour or two out, I may not want to do that.
I was like, you're a genius mom as I was already dealing with enough pain. So we waited and by 8:15 the anesthesiologist was there.
I've had an epidural before, so I knew what to expect and I know that although it's not the most pleasant experience, the lovliness of not feeling pain far outweighs the momentary pain you feel getting the epidural. SO we get started.
Right away something felt a little different. He seemed to be really digging into my back and trying to make that pocket of air that they need. It took him a really long time and I could actually feel him pressure shake from pushing so hard. He gets it in once and nope, nothing, it doesn't work. I just was feeling burning pain down my right leg. I knew that wasn't good.
So then he has to redo the entire procedure, once again it takesthis time he thinks it works, so they do the small test to make sure the medicine goes into the right place. Immediately something was really wrong. My blood pressure skyrocketed, so I felt like I was going to pass out, then a second later my ears were ringing so loudly and then a second later I started having a shooting pain down my leg that hurt SOOOOO bad! Then my leg started cramping really bad and I yelled, but he is telling me to sit still because he has to pull it out and doesn't want to damage anything and I am writhing in pain holding onto my mother for dear life and squeezing her shoulder and a nurses fingers so bad. I bet I bruised my mother. So then he has to start all over again, but this time it works perfectly. It goes in easily and is over in a flash. It totally worked; third times the charm I guess.
I almost said forget it at one point in the procedure, but knowing what I know now, I am SO glad I didn't because that would have been too much without pain meds. I don't think I could have done it.
So that really hurt. My back right now is so sore from all the pokes and prodding. I got 3 epidurals people! OUCH! And let's not forget that even through the 3 epirdurals, I was still having REALLY painful contractions. Ya, that whole process was SO awful! But I sure enjoyed the benefits afterwards.
So then after getting the epidural, my labor started to slow down a bit as it sometimes does when your body totally relaxes (tho with Lyric it was the opposite- after my epidural everything sped up). So my doctor/nurse suggested that I take a VERY low drip of pitocin to keep my contractions consistent. Like a level 4 of 42. I said no at first, but after waiting, my contractions were just staying at 5 minutes a part instead of the 2-3 minutes a part they were before the epidural. So I agreed and we started the low drip of pitocin.
It worked like a charm and within minutes my contractions were back at 2-3 minutes a part.
Throughout the entire process, really once I got into active labor around 4:30am, Shiloh's heart rate had dropped to be a baseline around the 110's. It's lower than normal, but he was being very reactive and so the nurses were just keeping an eye on it, but weren't concerned. My big concern with the pitocin was that since his baseline was already low, it could possibly affect him even more and cause his heart rate to go down further. Fortunately that didn't happen and Erin, my nurse, was really supportive and sensitive to my concerns.
Sidenote: Erin was my nurse when I was in labor with Lyric! She was the nice one who brought Austin surgical masks/hat/gloves and the bed pan full of ice for our champagne. She is SOOO sweet and I felt so comfortable with her. She had a trainee with her and it was Veronique who was my ante-partum nurse both times I went into the hospital for preterm labor. She was switching to Labor and Delivery in January and we joked that it would be hilarious if she was our nurse when we had Shiloh and sure enough, she was! So we had great nurses all day and they were very cool and didn't kick out people or anything like that (As we had a bunch of people in my room all day). It was just a fun time!
Ok, so anyways, by 11am (ish) I get checked again and I was 7cm and the baby had dropped a whole lot. At this point things were moving really quickly and we were hoping to have a baby in the next hour. My doctor was coming after 12 and was going to break my water. So around 12 I was checked again and I was at 8cm and while the nurse was checking me my water broke. So there you have that!
However, when she checked me at 8cm she realized something that I had been wondering about for the last few weeks. Shiloh was OP/Posterier/Sunny Side Up whatever you want to call it. His head is supposed to be face down (looking towards my butt), however he is face up. This makes it harder for him to come out of the birth canal and as he drops causes extreme back pain. Well if you have noticed with my rantings the last few weeks, my back pain has been bad and so my mom thought he may be OP. Anyways, well he was.
SO my nurse had an idea. Although I had an epidural, it was not SO numbing that I couldn't move my legs. I actually could still feel the tightening of my uteris when I would have a contraction, I just couldn't feel the pain. It was a great epidural. So anyways, with the two nurses help, I flipped over in my bed, got on my knees and layed down on the pillow with my butt sticking up. The point of this was so that he would come a little out of the birth canal, but while he was doing that, the contractions would keep pushing him down and there was a good chance that the contractions pushing him down would turn him.
Well we don't totally know if it worked, but after 30 minutes of being in that position, his heart rate picked up and it appeared that he had turned and I was at 9 1/2 cm. So he quickly slid down into that birth canal and we were almost ready to roll.
Obviously I got to that next 1/2 cm really quickly and it was time to push.
As they were getting everything ready, I was just sitting there trying not to be too nervous. But I was! Jon was so nervous too it was cute. He was just pacing the room. My hands were shaking a little bit. It's just the strangest feeling in the world when they tell you, hey, it's time for you to meet the kid you have been carrying around for the last 9 months. It's terrifying, it's exciting, it gives you anxiety and extreme joy in the same emotion.
So I started giving a few pushes and when I was doing it it is very normal for a baby's heart rate to drop 10-20 points below the baseline since they aren't getting a lot of oxygen bc of the pressure, the placenta doesn't always get enough time to reoxygenate. Well since Shiloh's baseline was already in the 110's, his heart rate kept dropping to the 90's and sometimes 80's. So we had to push every other contraction and they gave me oxygen in order to give Shiloh the best amount of time to breathe and get enough blood/oxygen. Finally my nurse just called in Doctor Moseley early (normally the doctor doesn't come till the baby starts crowning) because she said she would just feel more comfortable with her there just in case something went wrong (Love Erin our nurse by the way).
It was crazy though, once Doctor Moseley got there, Shi's heart rate started to go up, even during the pushes. My mom commented that he must really like Doctor Moseley (or mosey as Lyric calls her).
This was when my cheerleaders really came in handy. He wasn't sliding down like he should so I was going to have to REALLY push hard. Courtney, Abby and Tiffani were in the room sitting at the couch and mom and Jon were on either side of me by the bed. Every time I pushed you would think I was in a track race or shooting free throws or something. Everyone would start yelling "Come on Destiny! You can do it! Push harder! Come on!" Jon was even trash talking me a little bit like "You can do better than that Des, come on!!" At points I wanted to laugh because everyone was yelling so loud! It was great and gave me so much energy. And boy did I push! But even though his head would start to come out, it just wouldn't get past a point. I was pushing so hard (and have the injuries to prove it). At one point earlier on, while I was pushing my nurse said outloud, "what did he just do" as she thought he did a funky move while I was pushing. Well anyways, after a small episiotomy during a REALLY hard push, he shot out and when he came out we all saw why it was so difficult, he came out sideways looking at his cheerleaders Aunt Coco, Abby and Tiff (I think he wanted to say thanks for their enthusiasm).

Yes, you read that right, I pushed an 8 1/2 pound baby out sideways!

He was so big! I couldn't believe it! But he was perfect! They laid him on my chest and Jon cut the cord. Just your perfect Baby Story moment. Everyone was balling their eyes out! I mean, he was here. The little man that we have been so consumed by was here! I finally was able to hold my first born son and see who it was that I have been praying for all these months. To actually see with my eyes the fruit of my labor and to know that every worry, every pill I had to take, every time in the hospital, every sleepless night, everything I went through to get him into the world healthy and whole was totally and completely worth it. This was my son and he was perfect. It was overwhelming and I just wept.

So he is here. All 8.6 pounds and 21 inches of him! He has blonde hair, blue eyes and is just adorable!
The poor kid has had a rough time of it and the back of his head is completely purple and he has abrasions on his face, all from being squished out sideways and getting scraped up on my pelvis. Also his whole head was really swollen. He looks SO much better today, but still has some marks on his face and bruising.

So that is his story! I'll post a blog later with all the gorey details for those of you who like the gross stuff and then post another one later just more about Shiloh, but I wanted to get his story out there for all of you! :)

I'm in love :)