This is a little long, but I wanted to capture all the details to remember them later. I can’t believe Trevor was born almost 7 weeks ago already!

On Friday September 18, I woke up around 4am with stomach ache and diarrhea. I thought it might just be from the spicy chicken wings we had for dinner. After using the bathroom, I got back in bed and eventually fell back to sleep. Then, at 6am I woke up with wet pants, which turned out to be that my water had broke. At first I wasn’t sure, but once I was leaking every time I moved/bent over, I knew that had to be it. I was not having any contractions or labor signs yet, so I got dressed for the day, called in sick to work, tried to move around a bunch hoping it would get labor started. I tried a few of the natural trigger points for initiating labor. Unfortunately, nothing seemed to work.

At 8:30am, I talked to a nurse at my doctor’s office, and they asked me come in to be checked and to make sure that my water had broke. Ryan and I grabbed our hospital bag just in case and headed out. At the doctor’s office, it was confirmed that my water had broken. My blood pressure was also high. (Side note: I had some high blood pressure earlier in the week, but it had gone back down a bit. I also didn’t have protein in my urine, so my doctor wasn’t worried at that time about preeclampsia.) Since my blood pressure was high, the doctor asked me to go the hospital to be monitored. She said that if it was ok after a little while sitting there, I could go home and wait for labor to begin at home. If not, I would be admitted. But either way, we could expect that the baby would be coming soon!

It was around 10:30am when I began being monitored at the hospital. After relaxing there for about an hour, and having some blood tests done it was determined that I had the signs of pregnancy induced hypertension and preeclampsia, and would be admitted. I was to remain on bed rest and my labor was induced. While this wasn’t exactly how I had hoped things would be going at this point, I was still excited to know that I would be meeting my baby boy within the next day or so.

After a few hours, my contractions had picked up to where I was really laboring hard in the bed. I breathed through each contraction, usually clinging to the side of the bed. Since I was on bed rest, I couldn’t get up to move around or use other positions like I had hoped to do, but I felt like I was working through them fairly well. I tried to focus on my breathing and reminding myself to stay in the moment of each contraction — that each one would not last long. After a few hours of hard work, I was about 4 cm dilated but baby boy was still very high in my belly. Since I couldn’t use other labor positions and I was stuck in the bed, I decided to have an epidural. While this was not initially in my plan, I struggled with having to only be on my back/side on the bed while working through each contraction. I felt like since he had not come down that it would probably be a longer labor too.

The epidural helped immediately. I no longer felt the pain of the contractions, which continued to be about 2 minutes apart — just some pressure with each one. An internal monitor was started to more closely monitor the strength of my contractions, and how the baby was handling them. My labor continued overnight. Thanks to the epidural I was able to get a little rest/relaxation and Ryan was able to sleep for a few hours. My blood pressure and progress were monitored overnight too.

At about 5am, I was dilated to 7cm. However, baby was still sitting high, and not descending. I also developed a slight fever, and by this point my water had been broken for about 23 hours. Because of all these things and my continued high blood pressure, the doctor suggested that the best course of action would be to do a cesarean delivery.

Once the decision was made, things moved so quickly! I was immediately prepped for surgery and taken into the operating room. During then procedure, I could feel the tugging and tension while the doctors pulled baby boy out. Ryan was able to be there with me to tell me what was going on and be with the baby once he arrived.

Trevor was born at 6:09 am on Saturday September 19. He weighed 7 lb, 6 oz and was 21″ long. When Trevor arrived, I felt like I could hear his cries immediately after he was pulled out of me. He was whisked off to the side to be cleaned and weighed. Ryan was able to bring him over so I could see/meet him. Ryan and Trevor then went to the nursery while my procedure was finished.

Once I was out of the operating room we had a little time for skin to skin. Trevor had to spend a little time in the nursery for some help with his breathing, and to receive antibiotics for a possible infection. I had to spend most of the day in bed before moving after the surgery. We transferred to a recovery room right around dinner time that day. After a few days of recovery in the hospital, we finally made it home with a happy and healthy, beautiful baby boy. We are absolutely in love.