Mr. Carson Bryant Gilmore was born on July 15, 2011
8lb 7oz - 20in
On Thursday July 14, 2011, my mom and I decided we were going to walk this baby out of my belly! So we went shopping...again! Around 10 am I started having irregular contractions about every 7-10 minutes, so we kept walking! We shopped until late afternoon and the contractions kept up, though they were painless. Went home hoping to get things started further and ordered pizza and wings. Sat on my exersize ball all evening and ate dinner around 7pm. We went to bed slightly disappointed, since the contractions were not becoming regular or increasing in intensity.
Around 2:30 am I woke up to go to the bathroom and coming back, I felt a little gush. I stopped...took a step, and felt another gush! I was pretty sure my water had broken, so we woke up my mom and headed to the hospital to find out what was going on! We got checked in and checked out and by 4am it was decided that I was indeed in active labor and my water had broken. I was still only 1 cm and 90% effaced at that point, and I labored for 6 hours unmedicated before deciding to go ahead with the epidural since I was not progressing very well, I had only made it to 2cm. With the epidural place I kept waiting for things to get better, but the pain never really went away. I thought maybe I was being a wuss, or just hard to numb so I was breathing through contractions. With little progress at my next check we decided that Pitocin would be needed to speed things along for the sake of the baby and the drip was started. My pain went from a solid 6 or 7 to a hot 10+ within two contractions. I was in hard labor with no working epidural. Things went on like this until 4pm and they finally checked my epidural and found that it hadn't been working at all, it had slipped out almost immediately after being set. So after 15 hours of natural labor the anesthesiologist reset my epidural and I finally had some relief. My labor at this point had barely progressed to 3cm. After all the work I had suffered with my epidural failing I was starting to worry it had all been in vain and I was going to end up with a c-section. Not only that, my little guys heart rate was hovering around 200+
Thankfully with the with a working epidural in place and bumping up the Pitocin drip, my cervix progressed to 10cm within 4 short hours. After 19 hours of labor I was ready to push and feeling the urge. We waited 30 minutes to let some of the epidural wear off so I could feel my legs a little more and Carson was born in 40 minutes of pushing, with only a very minor tear (3 stitches)!
They placed him up on my chest and cleaned him, and I fell apart and just fell in love with my beautiful baby boy.The stress of the prolonged labor caused him to be purplish at birth and unable to show us his full lung capacity, just tiny squeaking cries, so they pulled him out of the room to get him crying for us. In no time he was screaming like a champ, but he was still breathing really rapidly, so they took him to the nursery and got his breathing under control.
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5 days later we have been to our first doctors appointment and my little man is perfectly healthy and doing great!
We have had some trouble with breastfeeding, mainly latch, not that his latch isn't good, just that it is hard for him to latch and he gets VERY frustrated. My little boy is not a patient one, but he comes by it honestly, because I'm not either! Its something we work on at every feeding, and he gets a little better each time.
To help him out I am pumping a small amount and giving him a tiny bit at the beginning of each feeding to get his sucking reflex going and give him a taste of what he is about to get, and its helping him tremendously! That and we are using breast shields currently, but we hope to get away from those eventually.
My recovery is going great as well, each day is a little better and I am already starting to feel myself again!
This is me at 39 weeks
This is me at 5 days PP
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