I'm so excited that Owen is finally here, and he is such a sweet baby. I wanted to share his birth story like I did when Jack was born. I went into labor at the 41 week, 3 day mark on November 19th. I had been to the doctor that morning, and she was beginning to talk about what we would do if I got to 42 weeks. Wanting a VBAC, I was hoping I didn't make it to that point. The day I finally went into labor, my mother-in-law, Ann, was helping me do some of the natural induction methods. My ObGyn told me that she had patients who swore by caster oil, and she encouraged me to try it. When I got home, I made a caster oil smoothie where I put 2 oz of caster oil into a berry and yogurt smoothie to mask the taste. Right after that, Ann and I researched different pressure points, and Ann massaged and pressed on those points for about 10 minutes. Several hours passed, and I didn't feel anything from either method. At around 9:30pm, Ann did another pressure point massage, and the contractions started! By 9:45pm I was able to track a pattern of contractions :).
Jonathan decided to go get some sleep since we didn't know how long everything would take. Ann and I watched tv and walked around our block throughout the night probably 10 or more times. Jonathan came out to check on me around 2:30am, and he went back to bed at 3am. At 3:13am I went in and told him it was time to go to the hospital. I had called, and the nurses told me I could come in with contractions lasting one minute, two and a half minutes to three minutes apart. We drove over to the hospital, and they checked me into triage. I had not made ANY dilation progress from the 2.5cm I was that morning, but I had effaced a little bit more. Since I was set for induction on Friday, they let me stay and decided to augment the labor with pitocen. After my labor with Jackson with pitocen, 23 hours long, and no pain meds, I knew I wasn't going to go through that again. I decided since they were using pitocen and my progress was already slow, I would be getting an epidural....best decision I could have made!! Here I am after my epidural enjoying the numbness :):
I'm not sure what point it was since they didn't tell us until later on, but probably around 20 hours in, they turned off the pitocen since Owen's heart rate was dropping with each contraction. My contractions kept coming even without the pitocen, which was good. 23 hours in around 8pm they started mentioning the possibility of a c-section. I was at 8cm, but they were worried I wouldn't get to 10cm without Owen's heart rate staying where they would like it to be. Finally, at 9:45pm (24 hours in), I felt like I needed to push, and I had reached 10cm. They told me that he hadn't dropped quite as much as they'd like to start pushing, but they would let me try anyway. After 20 minutes of pushing, Owen was here! Owen Jonathan Nichols was born on November 20th, 2012 at 10:15pm at 7 lbs., 15 oz., 20 1/2 inches long, and 37 cm head.
They weren't able to put him on my stomach right away, because he didn't start crying immediately and they wanted to make sure he was ok. When he came out, the doctor cradled him in her arms, and he was sleeping :). He had a lot of mucous that needed to be sucked out, which they said can happen when the pushing phase doesn't last as long. Once he was checked out and doing well, we got our skin to skin time.
Though it was a 25 hour labor similar to Jack's birth, it was such a different experience. The epidural made the time bearable, and I had a great VBAC experience!
Jonathan got to cut the cord, and here he is snuggling Owen in the recovery room.
I was discharged on Thanksgiving morning, and we were able to make it home for Thanksgiving dinner. Here's Owen waiting to go home:
And us on our way out the door!
Since we've been home, there has been a lot of this:
It is taking Jack a while to warm up to the idea of having a brother in the house. When we first got home, he said "Awww" and was looking at him in the car seat. Once he realized he was staying, he hasn't been nearly as interested. You definitely cannot force interaction.
If you let him approach Owen on his own terms, he'll come see him in the morning or on occasion throughout the day. The other day Owen was crying in his swing while I was in the kitchen, and I heard Jack shouting "Stop!" When I walked into the room, Jack had removed Owen's blanket off the swing, and was holding his hand up in front of his face telling him to stop haha.
Jack does like to show Owen how to do "tummy time."
We washed Owen's hair for the first time a few days after he arrived home, and we got it nice and fluffy! We are loving the brown hair...we're thinking it'll fall out and turn blonde eventually, though.
We have a ton of pictures that I would love to share, but I'll try to do another post soon with some of the day-to-day stuff :).
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