The Birth Story

Many of you have asked to hear the birth story....so here goes.

On Wednesday, May 1st, I woke up feeling a little "funny"....but got myself ready and went to work. Pretty soon I started feeling some light contractions...not very intense, and not lasting very long. Just for kicks, I decided to start timing them to see if there was a pattern to how far apart they were. Sure enough, they were 8-10 minutes apart, but still not intense or long lasting. I let Bill know that he needed to be "on alert" just in case...but really didn't think much would happen. By lunch time they were still 8-10 minutes apart, so I called my mother (who lives in Colorado) to let her know. She was convinced that this wasn't the "real deal" and told me to drink lots of water to get rid of the contractions. By the end of the work day, the contractions were 4-5 minutes apart...so I called the doctor and they told me to go ahead and come into the office and they would check me out. My friend Elizabeth drove me to the doctor and Bill met us there. While we're waiting to see the doctor, Bill informs me that we don't have hot water because our hot water heater rusted out, and he has spent the whole day replacing it...but didn't want to tell me because he didn't want to send me into a stress-induced labor. :) SO, we see the doctor, and I am 5cm dilated, but they sent me home to wait for contractions to get stronger and longer. We go home and Bill finishes hooking up the new hot water heater....meanwhile, contractions are getting longer and more intense. We call the doctor again and by 6pm, we are at the hospital again. They check me again, and decide that they are going to go ahead and admit me. By 8:30pm I've got my epidural and am feeling pretty good. In the next 5 hours they break my water and the contractions are getting so close together and intense that baby Isaac doesn't really have time to recoup between them and he isn't getting enough oxygen...so they have me on an oxygen mask. My sister arrives at 9:30 or so, and hangs out until about 11:00pm, then goes to our house to get some sleep because they think it's going to be at least 6-8 hours until I'm ready to push. At 1:00am they come in and say that we are going to try to get our little guy out because he's having too hard of a time getting oxygen, and that we're going to start pushing. They also say that we are going to have to have a vaccuum assisted delivery, and if that doesn't work pretty quickly, that we'll have to go in for a c-section. SO, we call my sister to come back to the hospital, and I start pushing at 1:30am. I push for almost an hour by the time the vaccuum assistance is set up, and push through two contractions with the vaccuum, and at 2:28am, our little boy arrived without additional help! Praise the Lord! As I said before, he weighed in at 8lbs 4oz and was 20.5in. long. They took him to the nursery to monitor him because he was having breathing issues...but he was back in our room about an hour later.

We spend three days in the hospital since he was born in the middle of the night, and went home on Saturday. We are getting into our routine and he is doing so great. He is very mellow so far and really only fusses when he's hungry, wet, or dirty.

SO, that's our story!

We've started an online album of photos...if you want to check them out... http://picasaweb.google.com/jessica.ramsour/IsaacDavidRamsour