I'm sitting in the hospital. Brent is singing Jingle Bells to Colson while rocking him and I have never been happier.

He is perfect and sweet and every second of pain was absolutely worth it! We were scheduled for induction on Wednesday night, but ended up going Thursday morning. We got to the hospital at 8am and they began Cytotec at 10am. I immediately began contracting, which was good because I was only dilated to a 1 and 20% effaced.... Within 4 hours, I had dilated to a 3 and effaced more (can't remember how much) The doctor said she was impressed and usually it took 2 doses of that to get things started. At this point, I thought I was going to be lucky and have a breezy labor. Ha!

I kept having regular contractions. They had me walk the halls of the hospital and this made the contractions worse. They were 4-7 minutes apart on Thursday evening! The contractions were not comfortable, so I opted to get the epidural at this point. I slept all night and woke up at 2am when the doctor came in. She checked me and I was STILL only dilated to a 3! At this point, she stripped my membranes- NOT comfortable, by the way!  I went back to sleep and woke up the next morning.... still at a 3....

They started Pitocin at this point to help the contractions along. With the pitocin, I dilated to a 6, then back to a 5..... It went this way all afternoon. At 3:00, the nurse came in to talk with us. She said that it looked like my body didn't want to dilate past a 6, and I would more than likely end up with a csection within the next 2 hours. There are many, many reasons why I didn't want a csection and many reasons the doctor would rather me deliver vaginally.

The nurse said she wanted to try one last ditch effort to get me to dilate. They put in an internal monitor to measure the strength of the contractions and then they started the pitocin at high levels to try and get the contractions to a level where it "should" dilate me. At this point, I realized that the epidural wasn't working so well on my left side. It hurt.... a lot. We got the anesthesiologist in there and she readjusted the catheter in my back. Then they kept giving me bolus' of extra medicine trying to numb those 2 spots I could feel. It didn't work very well and I thought I would just have to suffer through it. I was crying in the hospital bed and Brent was just rubbing my head through each contraction. I started to feel TONS of pressure and I told Brent I had to push really, really badly. He went to get the nurse and she checked me. She said I was dilated to a 10, but still had a lip on my cervix. She asked me to hold on for another 45 minutes and then we would start pushing. At this point, I was in so much pain. I couldn't stop my body from pushing. The anesthesiologist came in and gave me more medicine which helped TREMENDOUSLY. Soon, I was feeling just fine. We watched about an hour of television and the nurses' came in. I told them I was still completely numb and couldn't even figure out where to push. They set me up and had me do a practice push. Well, I was able to. By this point, Colson was down to +3!!!!!!! So, we began pushing.

I forgot to mention the all day, everytime I would lay on my left side, Colson's heartbeat would become unstable. I had to spend all my time on my right side. During the pushing part, Colson's heartbeat kept going down. I had been pushing for an hour and 10 minutes.... half of his head was out, and his heartrate went down to 30! The doctor told me that we HAD to get this baby out on the next contraction. They discussed the use of forceps with us. We weren't entirely comfortable with this route, but the alternative was to push baby back up and do a csection----- We went with the forceps. The doctor tole me to push with everything I had.  I pushed so hard! There were at least 8 people screaming at me to push harder! When they saw I wasn't going to be able to do it, the male doctor jumped on top of me, told me to push and pushed my belly down as hard as he could until Colson came out.

During this push, I was picturing planning and attending Colson's funeral. It was very surreal.

Colson was taken immediately to the NICU bed once he had been born.  They didn't let me see him. He wasn't crying when he came out and I knew he was dead. (This is what happened with Kailee. I wasn't able to see her because they took her away so fast). I was sobbing and asking why he wasn't crying. The nurses' kept telling me everything was okay, they were just checking him out, but I didn't believe them. Brent finally came to my bed and showed me a picture of him on the camera. Then I heard a cry from the NICU bed and began sobbing.

I tore, but it was only a 2nd degree tear. Thank God, because he came out fast and it could have been really bad! Colson has a lot of bumps and bruises. He has a mark on his head where he kept bumping into my pubic bone. The worst thing was that his shoulder got caught on my pelvis. He hasn't been using his right arm a lot and the hand is positioned funny. the doctor told us that it is probably temporary nerve damage from where he was taken out so fast. We will talk with our pediatrician about a course of action. either it will resolve on its own or he will need physical therapy.

He's absolutely perfect, though. He came out all swollen last night, but a lot of the swelling has gone down and he's just an angel. He cries some, but is very easily comforted. He likes to snuggle and he also likes to just sit in the bassinet and look around with his wide brown eyes! (That's what he's doing now as I type!)

I love him so much.
Varonica Watts
1/7/2011 05:46:28 am

Tears of joy for you. So happy for your little family.

Our prayers for your family continue. Many hugs.

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brenda
1/9/2011 07:48:13 am

so happy for you! so glad that mostly everything went well. when lexi was born, the dr.s were fearful of her having the arm problem which is why we went for a c-section. here's to big babies! the boys are currently in PT -- has been a fabulous experience! hope your snuggles and smile continue (even at every night time feeding).

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Brittany
1/9/2011 11:54:36 am

I just love how his birth story starts...makes me so happy!

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Lia McIntosh
1/9/2011 12:49:48 pm

Congratulations on the birth of big healthy Colson. I hope you are able to post some pictures soon. Please make sure to get that arm checked ASAP. A similar thing happened to my cousin and her parents thought her arm would get better with time and did not seek specialist care. Her arm is still damaged. PT would have restored most of the use of her arm

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1/14/2011 02:09:32 am

WOW! That's the craziest birth story I think I've ever heard!! So happy that he's here and happy and healthy! So sorry to hear about everything you had to go through to get him here! Hugs, sweetie! :)

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