Cael's Birthday

I know several of you have been waiting for the details of Cael’s birth, so here it goes. I awoke on Tuesday night to take my nightly 3:00 am bath. For the last several weeks, I’ve been waking up at night because my back has been hurting so I soak in the bath and then head back to bed. Just like every night prior, I took a bath, but the back pains would not go away. I walked around the basement for 10 minutes, hoping that the back pains were just Braxton Hicks contractions and that they would go away. No such luck, I headed back to bed, turned the heat pad on high and tossed and turned for the next few hours. I got up at 5:30, knowing that my mom was getting ready to leave for work, and went and took a bath in her Jacuzzi tub. I thought maybe the jets would take away the pains in my back, they didn’t. I went back to bed and turned on a back massager and laid there until it was time to get up for work. I headed into work, calling my mom almost in tears from the pain, and decided when I got to work I would call Dr. Litherland to see if I could come in and get checked out. When I got to school, I called the doctor’s office and the nurse blew me off – until I told her that the back pains had made me sick that morning. She said she would talk to the doctor and give me a call back. She called back within a few minutes and said that Dr. Litherland wanted me to head on to the hospital. I met Matt at St. John’s around 9:30 and got checked into triage where they do several assessments to see if you’re in labor. When they checked me, I was having contractions, dilated at a 3 to 4, and 100% effaced. Needless, to say I was not getting to go home from the hospital. We had to wait in triage for a few hours because there were so many women who were in labor already and all the rooms were full. I finally got in to a room around 1 and got going on the IV. It took the nurses 5 attempts to get an IV in my arm. After the IV was in, I was quickly given an epidural and they broke my water. All this was done by 4 pm. I waited around, watched TLC, and ate popsicles until my heart’s content. Around 7:30, my nurse kicked everyone out and we did some practice pushes. After 2 sets of pushes, I had to stop and wait for the doctor. I also had to put an oxygen mask on because Cael’s heart rate was going down a little. At 8:00, Dr. Litherland arrived and I started pushing. By 8:06, Cael was born. He weighed 6 lbs 14 oz and was 21 ½ inches long. He had long, thick black hair and was very cute. Unfortunately, Cael came out with his hand up by his face and I had to have several stitches. But I am healing quite nicely and we’re all doing great.