My Name is Lucas

I had my baby. Hooray, hooray! And it is a great story, especially following the last post which should have been entitled "Diary of a Mad Pregnant Woman."

I had two false labors, one on Sunday, April 11th, and the next night. Both times we were very close to heading to the hospital but then the labor stopped. This made me very frustrated and antsy to have the baby. The doctor had mentioned to me that we could maybe break the water if I'd shown any progression at my next appt, which was the next Wednesday. I was SURE I had made progression, after all that false labor, so I got all ready, so excited to get this show on the road!

Here I was, so young and naive...thinking that I could be having the baby that day! 39 Weeks, 3 Days. Yes, I did get a haircut and since the next pictures you will see of me are me after having had a baby, I figured I would show at least one where my hair looks a bit nicer.

The doctor examined me, and lo and behold...NOTHING. No progress. I wanted to cry (Which I did, later.) He said we have two options: schedule a C-section or continue to wait it out. I have to say, it is pretty tempting to want to schedule your child's birth because then you can be UNpregnant, a marvelous thing at that point. But when I thought about that option, I felt a pit in my stomach, I knew it was not what I wanted. But I am not blessed with the virtue of patience, so I knew that waiting for for this happen would be very difficult. And those of you who talked to me in the days leading up to his birth knew how annoyed I was.

Monday, April 19th: I have my 40 week appointment. No progress. The doctor did a quick stripping of the membranes (where he uses his finger to separate the amniotic sac from the uterine walls) which sometimes can help kick-start labor. He actually did it before, when I was 38 weeks, and it obviously didn't work. So I was trying not to get my hopes up, but I kept thinking of my friend Emily, who was 4 days overdue and her midwife stripped her membranes but she didn't go into labor until around midnight.

That's what happened. I felt pretty normal all day, a few weak sauce contractions, but overall fewer than usual. I thought grumpily, "I'm never having this baby!" but I felt a voice tell me to have a little faith, which gave me hope. I went to bed at 11:00 that night and at 11:30 was jolted out of bed but a horribly painful contraction and the feeling like I needed to go to the bathroom. I literally jumped out of bed and ran to the bathroom, breathing heavily through the whole contraction. It faded, and I got back in bed. Several minutes later, it happened again. But then I wait and the next one didn't come for awhile, so I figured that they weren't the real thing. Real labor means your contractions are regularly timed. By midnight, I kept having them, and they were getting more and more frequent and much more painful. Aaron started timing them, and we timed probably about 10-15 contractions, all at around 2-3 minutes apart. This got pretty intense fast!

We called the hospital and they told us to come in. I couldn't even talk to them on the phone because my contractions were hurting so badly and coming so frequently. Aaron called our neighbor to come sleep at our house and she arrived a few minutes later. I hobbled around the house between contractions, trying to get stuff together, stuff that had been packed and unpacked because of all the false labor. We got to the hospital and they checked me...I was dilated to six centimeters! Everyone said, "You did a great job laboring at home!" Ha! Yes, kudos to me for the last hour and a half of making sure it was real labor. It had all happened so fast.

After a couple hours of hooking me up to stuff, I finally got the blessed epidural. Now I know what all those women mean when they talk about the relief of the epidural. I hated getting the epidural with my C-section, because I wasn't in pain at all. Also, those pre-warmed hospital blankets are awesome! I want a warming cabinet built in my house some day. The doctor checked me and I was still a 6 so he started me on pitocin. We were pretty tired at this point, so Aaron fell asleep on the couch bed and I tried to rest as much as a person can who is hooked up to about a million medical devices and next to machines that are printing stuff, beeping, and monitoring heart rates.

At about 6 am, the doctor measured me at an 8. You have to be at 10 to start pushing, but he asked me to give one good push, and stretched me to a 10 then and there. "Okay, let's get ready to start pushing!" he said. So I started to push. And push, and push, and push. I pushed for an hour, probably the hardest thing I have ever physically done. I was SO tired. So nauseated. I didn't know where I was pulling my strength from because there were many points where I wanted to give up. I puked about three times, but the nurse just said, "that's okay! Throwing up is just as good as pushing!" Finally, the doctor came in to deliver him, and would not let me quit. I pulled every ounce of strength that I had (kind of like now, writing this blog post when I am drugged on percoset and really want to sleep) and pushed. Then Dr. Huish cut me to third degree and vacuumed Lucas out. What relief! Ahhhhhhhhhhh.....

Geronimo!! It was a long trip, but we made it...
...Alien head and all.

They pulled out my goopy second born and I burst into tears, of relief, gratitude, love, etc. They put him on my chest and I held his flailing little body still. He stopped crying. It was perfect, I was so happy for a multitude of reasons. Obviously I was happy to have given birth to a beautiful boy, but I was actually incredibly happy that I was able to have a vaginal birth. It was a wonderful experience, one that I would gladly go through again and again rather than have another C section. C sections are not that bad when you are doing them, but afterwords was very hard for me. VERY hard. And hard for a long time, not just a few days of healing. I will have to blog more about that another time.

We named him Lucas Jacob Ferguson. He weighed 7 lbs, 13 ounces and was 20 1/2 inches long. He had much shorter hair than Will, and it dark. He looked pretty different the first day. He had browner and much shorter hair than Will did, and we thought he wouldn't look like him much. But today he looks a lot more like Will.

I think this was taken right after they cleaned him up a bit, but I was still in the delivery room.

Will hung out with a few different friends all day (thank you for babysitting!) and then we brought him in to meet his little brother. He was curious about it, but overall pretty jazzed about playing in the hospital room. He was WIRED that day from not having a nap and frankly kind of driving us all nuts!
This is Lucas, Day 2. Right after his manhood has been snipped. "Snip, snip! I can do it Tuesday" See, he looks much more like Will did now.

I am doing well. I lots more to say, but like I mentioned before, I am DRUGGED and exhausted.