I was given the link to this community by a friend last week. Along with having a very tough labor and delivery, my husband deployed for Iraq 5 days after our son was born. Now I'm 6000 miles from my friends and family playing mommy and daddy and taking care of the house and bills by myself. Learning everything as I go, I had never even held a baby until after my own was born. So I'll start here with my labor/delivery story. I'm sorry it's so long. 4 pictures behind the cut as well.
I'll start out by telling you all that my due date was March 25 and my husband was set to deploy the 18th.
Monday March 12.. After getting up early to finish cleaning the house, picking up my mother and 2 cats from the airport and attempting to eat something we all headed off to bed. Well that didn't last long. At 11:00PM I started getting contractions between 8 and 10 minutes apart. By 1:00AM they were every 4 to 6 minutes. So much for getting any kind of sleep. I called L&D around 3:30 to see what I should do since they were still 4-6 minutes apart and I wasn't able to talk through them. They told me to lay down and if they were still like that in an hour to come in. By 5:00AM we were at the hospital. Contractions still painful and 4-6 minutes apart. They had me hooked up to the minitors for a while and decided even though I was in labor that I should go home and wait. Walk some. Of course by the time we got home it was too late to go back to bed.
Tuesday March 13.. Since they had told me to walk around a bit we decided to go to the mall and WalMart and get a few things done before the baby got here. Get a few more bottles, a diaper pail, some more recieving blankets... those type of things. After all the walking around my contractions were a little more painful, but still coming at the same intervals. After dinner back to the hospital we went. Same routine... monitors and waiting. I had had high blood pressure throughout my pregnancy, but no one had ever said anything to me about it. They wanted to do a blood test for preeclampsia. It came back negative, but they kept monitoring my bp ever 5 minutes. Around 1:00AM they decided to admit me because of my blood pressure. At points it was actually scaring my husband it was so high. It was nice of them to finally diagnose me with preeclampsia when I went into labor after I had been showing signs of it for months and my blood pressure had been high the entire time. So they hooked my IV up and set it up with Fluids, Magnesium Sulfate and Pitocin. Off to my room we went.
Wednesday March 14.. This day is much more blurry then the previous 2. I was able to breathe through the contractions for a while, but after a while because of the Pitocin they started becoming much more painful. I got an epidural and then a cathater. Always pleasant. They had tried to put it in the day before, but it was very very uncomfortable. The broke my water at some point in time and at one point I lost all control of my left leg. When they came in to check me they actually had to move my leg and hold it up for me. I wasn't getting much of anywhere. They ended up putting me on more Pitocin then they're really supposed to without orders from the doctor. I remember at one time they had me on oxygen for the baby. Thank god Dustin wasn't in the room at that point in time, he would be extremely paniced. Somewhere towards the end of the night I started to get a fever. It had been a while since they had broken my water and I guess I started to get an infection. They talked about doing a c-section. They were just waiting for word from teh doctor. Probably around 11:00PM or midnight I signed the papers for them to do a c-section. Which by the way was not easy with the IVs in my wrist. I was scared senseless in that room. They took me to get me ready before bringing my husband in, it was just me it felt like. I don't think I've ever been so terrified. My husband got there and started rubbing my cheek. I was so out of it I didn't even realize it was him for a while. I remember wanting nothing more then to be able to hold his hand, but thinking I couldn't move my hands or arms.
Thursday March 15.. I remember bits and pieces from the surgery. I remember feeling them cut me open. It didn't hurt in any way, but I could feel it was happening. It just felt like someone was drawing on my stomach with a pen. They told my husband to stand up because they were ready to deliver our son. That was the most bizarre thing I've ever felt and prebably will ever feel. There's just no way to describe it. So after 50 hours in labor... progressing me from 3cm to 6cm Aiden Ryan was born by c-section.
The Marine Corps were also able to push his leaving date back a couple days. So he didn't leave until Tuesday and we got to spend the first couple days together as a family.
Aiden Ryan Brandes
3-15-07
6 pounds 13 ounces
19 inches