Birth Story

I thought I would post my birth story here first before I posted some of our pictures...

Short story: Hudson Charles Dean was born on Sunday, September 30, 2007 at 12:04AM. He weighed 6lbs and 3.8oz and was 20 inches long.

Long story: I got up Saturday morning at 5:00am feeling some of what I though were just bad cramps about 11 minutes apart. I didn't really think anything of them until they started coming a little closer together. I woke Jim up at about 7:00am and told him we may need to start getting all our stuff together to go to the hospital. We left the apartment at 9:00am and at that point I was having contractions between 4 to 7 minutes apart and they were varying in intensity. We got to the hospital and they put us in an observation room and after observing and making me walk about 5 miles around the hospital, my doctor came in and said that it was either all or nothing, they could admit me and start me on pitocin to get my contractions coming at a consistent rate or they could send me home and see me in a couple hours....I decided on the pitocin. Everything after that point is a little bit of a blur, it all seemed to happen so fast to me...I was put in a room, hooked up to an IV and we waited. It only took about an hour or so before the contractions got really intense and I requested the epidural. Unfortunately, the epidural only completely numbed one side, but at that point I was willing to take what I could get. The doctors came in a couple times and tried to get the epi working on the right but to no avail. Once the epidural was administered they took me off the pitocin because my body decided that it would progress pretty well on it's own. I went from 2.5cm dilated to 5cm dilated in about an hour and a half. That's about when my doctor came in a broke my water and attached a monitor to the top of Hudson's head. I then went from 5cm to 9cm in about another hour, and they were closely monitoring Hudson at this point because his heart rate would drop with each contraction. They had me lay on my left side and put me on oxygen to help the situation. A little while later the nurse told me it was time to push, so like the trooper I am I pushed for about 20min and was told to stop, due to the heart rate of the baby dropping so low with each push. I was told not to push for the next hour so that he could descend on his own without any drastic dips in his heart rate. For those of you who have been through the birth of a child you know how excruciating it is not to push when the urge hits....and I was told to hold off for an HOUR! Luckily the doctor came in after about 45min and said that the baby had crowned already and that I could go ahead and push. I started pushing yet again and yet again Hudson's heart rate would drop to a rather scary level, so the doctor decided he needed to come NOW, so she helped us out by using a little vacuum extractor and at exactly 12:04am little Hudson was born. Jim and I are very proud parents, Hudson is all we could have asked for and more.

I'm off to take a little nap now but I will try to post some pictures within the next day or two.