Colton's Birth Story

I keep thinking I need to write Colton's birth story out so I don't forget the details. It's been two months already and I feel like I can hardly remember how things played out in our first few days with Colton. I'll try to write what I can remember. Bradley and I went in to my last scheduled doctors visit on Weds. December 12...that was 12-12-12! My due date was 12-16-12 so I was practically 40 weeks pregnant. Everyone was shocked I made it that far. Even my doctor thought we would go into labor at least a week or two early. Bradley and I were walking at the mall late at night..sometimes two miles at a pretty good pace along with some stair repeats. Nothing was working to get this baby out! I even had a foot massage from Jill Woolf ( she's known for putting women into labor with her pressure point massages ). So at my doctor's visit, I was still dilated at like a 2.5 or 3 and 70% or something...not much change at all from my last three checks. Doctor Miles stripped my membranes again ( first time didn't do a thing) and then I asked her what the plan would be if this little man didn't decide to come anytime soon. She looked at her schedule and said she was on call for 24 hours starting the following morning at 7am. I was so surprised when she asked if we wanted to be induced THAT night...4 days from due date. Bradley and I immediately just said, "Um Yeah, lets do it!" So doctor miles sent us to scheduling to see if there were any available spots at the hospital for induction later that night. Turns out someone cancelled and there was one open spot. Apparently the hospital was SUPER busy because it was 12-12-12 and everyone wanted to have their baby on that day. We didn't really care about the date, but just wanted the baby out! So they signed us up for 8pm check in to be induced. I was kind of anxious and nervous all day, since my appointment at the doctor's office was in the morning...and we had all day to get ready and think about DELIVERY that was going to likely happen in the next 24hrs. We cleaned the house, got colton's stuff all ready for when we would bring him home, and then we went to the grocery store to pick up ingredients for our 'last supper'. The lady that scheduled us for our induction told us to Carbo load major. Because giving birth was going to be like a marathon and I needed good sturdy complex carbs to give me energy to last through it all, especially since they don't allow any solids after you get to the hospital. So we picked up some yummy fresh pasta, alfredo sauce, shrimp, and some yummy yummy bread. It was all delicious! We got our bags all packed earlier that day and took a little nap because we would likely not get much quality sleep before delivery.... and lets be honest. Not much sleep after delivery either :) Bradley gave me a priesthood blessing just before we left for the hospital. That was wonderful; it really helped me be calm and less anxious for everything that was about to happen. We left the house around 7pm, stopped at jared's house to hand off his Call Realty address lists I had been using and headed for the hospital! This was just before we left for the hospital. 39 weeks 3 days

Here we are, just checking in!

After we got all checked in we met our first nurse, Sonja. She was wonderful, and I'm pretty sure she was LDS. I was nervous about getting an IV...since I had a bad experience one time and I just don't like needles in general. She talked me calmly through it and it was no problem at all! She did great. I had been crampy/contracty all day since my appointment early that morning so when she checked me I wasn't all that surprised to be at a 3.5ish. Since I had made a little bit of progress throughout the day, they decided to wait on the pitocin drip and let me sleep through the night and check back at 6am ish to see if anything happened. They gave me a sleeping pill and I actually got some rest!

Early that morning they checked me and nothing had happened during the night, so we got started on the pitocin drip. It really wasn't bad, so they kept upping the dosage every 15 minutes or so. A couple hours went by and they check again...NO PROGRESS! Lame. So we tried some more. It was making me contract just fine...like every couple of minutes, but it wasn't making progress to bring the baby down. Then my doctor came in late morning, I think. She said we had two choices. She would either send me home and let me labor at home to see if things picked up, or she would break my water and we'd be fully committed to having the baby within 24hrs. Of course we decided we were already there and had already gotten hooked up to everything, so we might as well get this baby out! Then things went pretty quick from there. Immediately I wanted the epidural. I was still on the pitocin drip and it made my contractions so so intense. They hurt Sooo much worse after Dr. Miles broke my water. Luckily the anesthesiologist was available then to give me an epidural. He did such a good job! I wasn't even nervous about the gigantic needle that was about to go half way into my spine, I just wanted the pain to go away ASAP.

As soon as they got the epidural in and adjusted perfectly I could actually rest! From there things kept moving quick(er). Every couple hours they would check and I actually dilated pretty quick! By 5:30pm we were ready to start pushing. I had a great nurse, Lorinda, who helped coach me through each contraction. So I pushed, and pushed, and pushed....kind of like the pioneers hahah. But it wasn't really doing anything. Turns out Colton was sunny side up! That meant his face was getting stuck under my pubic bone. I felt like he was going no where; it was kind of discouraging! I kept pushing and with each contraction we would watch baby's heart rate. It was doing fine for the first couple hours, then towards the end it started dropping with each contraction and it wouldn't come back up until right before the next contraction. Then we would skip pushing for a contraction to let him rest. Then they put oxygen on me to help give baby a boost. Still he was not coming out!! Dr. Miles finally talked to us and said we had two options. The first was to try and use the vacuum assist to pull Colton out, or if that didn't work we would have to go to a C-Section soon. He was just getting too stressed in there. At that point we were just exhausted and wanted to get him out safely. We were confident that Dr. Miles was experienced enough to get him out safely with the vacuum assist so we decided to go ahead and give that a try before going straight to the C-section. Luckily after two attempts with the vacuum attached to poor Colton's head, he came out!

Before he was born, they told me he probably wouldn’t be able to be placed on my chest right when he came out because he was distressed and might have trouble breathing. But he started breathing as soon as he came out so they set him right on top of my chest. It was the best feeling in the world. To know that he came out safely, he was breathing, and I didn’t have to push the rest of my life! He had the biggest cone head and along with that he had a huge hickie up there from the vacuum. Poor little guy, they said he would have a pretty good sized headache for a day or so from that. There he was. Colton David Bowers. Born at 8:15pm on December 13, 2012. Almost exactly 24hours after going to the hospital.