Colton's Birth Story!

Below is the story of how our sweet Colton entered the world -- we have lots to be thankful for!

We were scheduled to go into the hospital on Sunday evening, January 13^th for induction the next day, but Colton decided to come on his own time!

On Saturday evening, January 12^th at 11:30pm, my water broke in bed. Earlier that evening, I felt some symptoms that I had previously, when my blood pressure was high, so I checked it at home a few times. Then I started to feel a few cramp-like feelings that I hadn’t really felt before (=contractions!). I’d been asleep for about an hour, when my water broke (like a gush!) in bed and it woke me up. We gathered up our stuff, checked off our list of things to do before we left the house, called our parents, texted friends and were off to the hospital.

We were admitted to the hospital around 12:45am. We saw my doctor around 2:15am and she was concerned with my high blood pressure readings, so we decided to go ahead and get an epidural in order to stabilize my blood pressure. It felt weird to get an epidural so early because I was barely feeling the contractions.

By 3:15am, I got the epidural. Unfortunately, the epidural made my blood pressure bottom out and I felt really faint and threw up a few times. So I got more medicine to stabilize my blood pressure and I felt much better after that. Around this time, I was 2 cm dilated and they started the Pitocin drip.

PK & I tried to rest for a few hours, which is almost impossible with nurses coming in and out so often. Our families drove up from Austin and made it to the hospital by the early morning hours. At 5:45am, I was still only 2 cm dilated. Over the next few hours, I started to feel the contractions, even though I had the epidural in. I kept telling the nurses and pushing my epidural button for more pain relief.

PK’s cousin, Amy, is a labor & delivery nurse at the hospital where we delivered, and we were lucky enough to have her be my nurse on the day we delivered. Shortly after she arrived at the hospital that morning, I told her that I could feel the contractions and she decided to go ahead and check me just in case. To all of our surprise, I was 10 cm dilated by 9:15am! She said no wonder I was feeling the contractions. I dilated from 2 cm to 10 cm in just over 3 hours; we were all kinda shocked, since we expected this to be a marathon day.

We did some practice pushing and around 10am we started the real pushing. By 11:30am, my doctor came in and said she was worried that I’d been pushing for 1 ½ hours and wasn’t sure that we were making enough progress. I was determined after that not to end up having a C-section! I pushed for about 2 hours total and they ended up using the vacuum to hold his head during the last few pushes.

And Colton was born at 12:04pm on Sunday, January 13, 2013! What an amazing moment! PK cut the cord, Colton weighed 7 lbs 11 oz and was 19 ¼” long. His Apgar scores were 8 & 9.

After my water breaking the night before, Colton arrived a little over 12 hours later!

Little did we know that my mom and mother-in-law were in the hallway most of this time listening to all the action! They came in soon to meet their new grandson! They said that when Colton was born they could hear him crying and crying, and PK laughing and laughing.  PK later said that was a hard twenty minutes – watching, touching, photographing and celebrating Colton while still holding my hand and helping me power through the after-effects of birthing.

Finally after Colton was all cleaned up and I was recovered from another blood pressure drop, I was able to eat lunch and our Dads and my brother came in to meet Colton!

Later that day my Aunt Gail & Uncle James came to the hospital to visit! And then that evening, our friends from our community group came to meet the newest addition to the group!

Colton was pretty sleepy and not interested in eating for the first few days of life. One reason was that he was tongue-tied when he was born. On Monday, while we were still in the hospital, he got his tongue snipped.

It’s hard work being a new baby in this world --- have to go through all sorts of things in their first few days of life: tongue snipped, hearing tests, heart screening, newborn blood screening and circumcision.

We left the hospital on Tuesday, January 15^th. Colton weighed 7 lbs 2 oz and it even snowed on the day that we brought him home. We were thrilled to go home and get settled into this new life and introduce Colton to our doggie, Ranger!

January 13, 2013 was the best day of our lives! I love replaying all the events in my head over and over. We are so blessed that the Lord has given us this sweet baby boy to love and care for. It’s like he has always been a part of our family! We are so in love. Thanks to all of our family and friends for their well wishes and prayers.

Pictures to come soon!