Everything went well at the non-stress test and the doctor decided to strip my membranes to help me get going. (He had to leave Thursday night for a family emergency so I think he wanted to make sure I had my baby before he left!)
I was pretty sore after he stripped my membranes so we kinda just lounged the rest of Monday and went swimming Monday night. Tuesday we decided to go to the mall and just walk around a whole lot. I started having contractions pretty consistently after my appointment on Monday but they were still really far apart. After walking around the mall forever my contractions were about 15-20 minutes apart. We went home and were just relaxing and hanging out. My contractions kept getting closer and closer. My doctor told me to go to the hospital when my contractions were 10 minutes apart but I decided to wait it out longer and spend some more time with Brooklyn, my mom and Curtis. We made dinner and I kept timing my contractions. At around 8:30 they were about 5-6 minutes apart and they had been lasting over a minute for a few hours by then. We decided we would just head in to the hospital and get checked out.
We got to the hospital at 9 and they took me to an exam room and hooked me up to the monitors. They left me for about 30 minutes and then checked my cervix. I was at a 4 and they were admitting me! I was so happy that I went in to labor on my own and didn't have to be induced. I have nothing against being induced, I was with Brooklyn, but it is really nice just having your body go in to labor on it's own!
I think we were in the room for a couple hours before I got an epidural. I ended up having to wait over 2 hours for my epidural with Brooklyn so I wanted to make sure I asked for it before I was in terrible pain. Epidural's are amazing but it's really annoying laying in a bed for hours and not being able to move your legs ha! After I got the epidural my blood pressure dropped like crazy! The nurse was so good though and calmly told the anesthesiologist and he stayed in the room until my blood pressure went back up. They put somemedicine in my IV and within 10 minutes I was back to normal, thank goodness.
The epidural made me feel super itchy for some reason so I could not sleep at all. I tried and tried and just could not fall asleep. They kept checking me throughout the night and I was progressing well. Dr. Lorenzo came in around 7 to check on me. He had to go do a C-section and his rounds then he was coming back to check on me. He decided to have them start me on Pitocin because we were expecting the baby to be big. He wanted my uterus to contract a lot and bring the baby down as low as it could so it would be less pushing I had to do. Because we were expecting a pretty big baby the nurse told me they would have extra nurses in the room during delivery and NICU on standby. That totally freaked me out!
When my doctor came back he checked me and broke my water, I was at an 8. I wasn't very happy to hear I was only at an 8 because I was already starting to feel pressure, and I knew how long it took me to go from a 4 to an 8 so I didn't want to wait a lot longer.. After he broke my water I'm pretty sure he went back to his office to work. I started feeling very intense pain! The nurse checked me and I was still at an 8 so she called the anesthesiologist to add some more to my epidural and it didn't help at all. It was just very very intense pressure. I all of the sudden felt the urge to push, another nurse came in to check me and and said "There's the baby's head, we're ready! Call the doctor!" And of course, they couldn't get a hole of him.. By this point I was crying because the pain was so bad. Both nurses and the anesthesiologist were calling and texting the doctor. They finally got a hold of him and he asked if the nurses could have me labor down some before he got there and the nurse said no, the baby's head is here and ready to go! At the time it felt like it took him forever to get there but he actually got there pretty fast!
When they sat me up and got me ready I only had to push through 3 contractions and baby was here! Everyone was so surprised how fast he came! After expecting such a big baby and the delivery to be difficult and long I think everybody was surprised and happy that it went so quickly and smooth!
Parley Manning Evans was born on December 13, 2017 at 9:37 am. He weighed 8 lbs 11 oz and 21 inches long. A big boy, but not as big as we were expecting!
I thought my labor and delivery with Brooklyn went pretty well, but I would take Parley's 100x before doing Brooklyn's again!
We love this sweet boy and I am so glad I was able to go into labor on my own and bring this sweet spirit in the world!
