5 Miles

We are thrilled to announce Marcus Allen Miles was born Dec. 18th, at 4:50. He was 7 lb, 5 oz, and 19 inches long.  If that’s all you care about, you can stop here. If you’d like a more detailed description of the labor/delivery, go below the picture and you can read it.

If you read the post below you saw that I came into the hospital to be induced at 6 am this morning.  There were a few tiny issues. With my liver problems, they wanted to do a check to make sure there were no problems with my blood clotting (clotting factors are made in the liver…the Dr. didn’t think there would problems but he had to make sure). So until that test came back, there would be no epidural…and when they tried to break my water without the epidural, it didn’t happen.  Because we induced, he hadn’t dropped yet, and it was too far to reach the water without some pain meds. It REALLY hurt when he tried.  So this put everything on a delay.

By noon the epidural was in, the water was broken, and I was up to 4 cm (I was only 2-3 when I went in).   I spent the afternoon updating the blog, snoozing, and watching TV. At 3 I was checked and was at 5 cm. At 4 I complained because my epidural was wearing off and I was going from discomfort to considerable pain. And pressure. When checked again, I was 9 cm–so obviously things were moving fast!    I was surprised at 4:20 when they wanted me to start pushing, I didn’t feel the urge to push that much, nor did I seem to be that effective. But the nurse kept encouraging me and I realized I really wanted to eat some supper, so I was motivated! I was really amazed that he was out by 4:50! I really didn’t push that much, and was thankful he came out so easily. 

Once he arrived I got to hold him right away, but then the nurse was concerned that he was working hard to breath and cry. So she brought over two NICU nurses to check him out and work on him. They really had to work to get him to keep crying, and wondered if either his lungs weren’t quite developed or if his blood sugar was high.  We’re now wondering if he’s just a laid back baby, because he hasn’t really cried much since.  They got him to a point where he was working less and his blood sugar levels tested fine.  Then I got to hold him again and try to feed him. He also took his time starting to eat but once he started, he kept going for an hour! I finally decided he was just using me as a pacifier and let James hold him, and then my food came. I was SO ready for it since I hadn’t eaten since 5:30 this morning.  I really enjoyed my meal while James held him and then the two of them went off to give him a bath.  Since then we’ve moved over to the postpartum part and are just recovering and enjoying snuggling a newborn baby.  Thank you all for your prayers and support!  I’ve really appreciated the encouragement I’ve gotten, especially on Facebook today. It was so great to get encouragement all day long!