Owen's Birth Story

On May 27th Nathan and I (and Derek) welcomed Owen Michael into our family!!! Here's how it all went down:

On May 26th I had been feeling contractions for weeks. We expected Owen's arrival any day, but he was taking his sweet time. I was dilated to 3cm and was 70% effaced, so I was really just waiting for my water to break. That evening Nathan was poking Owen (in my belly) for fun and I felt a trickle of fluid. I suspected that my water had torn but not broken. I didn't feel any more fluid after that initial trickle, so I figured that Owen's head had blocked the tear. I called my doctor who sent me up to labor and delivery at the hospital. When I got there, they tried to test me for amniotic fluid, but the test kept coming back negative. Again, I wasn't leaking any fluid after that initial trickle, so I wasn't all that surprised that the test was negative. I wasn't having any regular contractions (although I was having them) so they decided to discharge me and send me home to see if labor started on it's own. Before I left the nurse scheduled an appointment at 9am the next day with my doctor. That night I went for a long walk around the neighborhood with a friend and hoped that labor would start overnight. It didn't. I went to the doctor the next morning hoping that she would have some advice for me on how to get labor going. I wanted to wait for spontaneous labor but I was also worried about the possible water bag tear. When I got to the doctor I was dilated to 4cm. She told me my options were to wait it out, or go over to the hospital, have her break my water and see if my body took over from there. I was having contractions every 10 minutes by this time so I was pretty confident that my body would know what to do. I opted to go home, get Derek over to the babysitter's and get my bag packed the rest of the way and then head over to the hospital. I called my mom, who grabbed her already packed suitcase and headed over to the airport to try to get on an overbooked plane. It wasn't looking good for her to get here that afternoon, but she went anyway, and we started praying. I got to the hospital, got situated in bed and waited for my doctor. I was still having regular contractions, but I wasn't in any pain. Nathan and I were hanging out and watching TV when my doctor came in at about 12:30pm and broke my water. After that my contractions got more regular and closer together but I still wasn't in any pain. I was dilated to 6cm by now and so I got out of bed and onto the birthing ball to hang out there for a while. At 2pm they checked me again and I was still at 6cm. My doctor wanted to give a 5 minute long slow drip of Pitocin. I wasn't thrilled with the idea. I had wanted to avoid Pitocin at all costs, but at that point I realized it would help. After 5 minutes they came in and turned it off. The Pit contractions were so painful. It was awful. There's a reason the epidural rates for women who are induced are so high! I was begging Nathan to let me give in and get an epidural, but he was great and refused. It didn't take very long for my body to take over once I accepted the fact that I was not going to do pain drugs of any kind. I was pretty out of it for the next hour or so. I was aware of the nurses checking on me. I was aware of Nathan holding my hand. I was aware of my doctor stopping in periodically to check on me. I was aware of them getting ready to deliver and them setting up a fan to keep me cool (because I started sweating horribly through each contraction because of the pain). But I didn't care about any of it. All I could focus on was getting through each contraction. Finally I came awake when my doctor said it was time to push. Pushing was crazy strange. I could literally feel Owen moving down with each push. At one point there was horrible pressure on my tailbone, but I pushed through it. Getting the shoulders out was the hardest part. (Wide shouldered Metcalfs!) Then just like that, it was over. Owen was born. Turns out that pressure on my tailbone was Owen's face. He came out all black and blue in the face from slamming into my tailbone so hard. But, he was healthy! He was 7lbs. 10oz, and 20 inches long. He is a little nursing machine and when he was weighed a couple days ago he was 7lbs 12oz (which after dropping to 7lbs even at the hospital is pretty darn good weight gain!). He is such a great baby. He doesn't scream unless he's STARVING. He just fusses to let us know he needs something. We sleep pretty well at night except for between 2 and 4am. He really wants those to be awake hours, but Mommy is not so thrilled with that idea so we are working on that. He is laid back and easy going, and like I said, a champion nurser now that we are over the initial learning process. Things are going pretty well in the Metcalf house for now. Derek loves his little brother and never misses an opportunity to hold him and cuddle him and love on him (supervised of course). We will resume life as normal when Nathan goes back to work on Sunday! (Eek!) More updates to come!