Labor and Delivery

(If you do not want to know all the details, just skip below to the pictures)

Thursday, February 11th started as pretty much any other morning. I got up at 1 am to go to the bathroom and then couldn't fall back asleep. Only this time, it wasn't because I was wide awake it was because I was getting pretty bad back aches. Now, keep in mind I had been having mild contractions for two weeks by this point, so this wasn't spectacular news. I wasn't jumping out of bed or screaming "grab the bags I'm in labor!" At least not yet.

Sometime in the middle of the night the back aches, turned to contractions and then around 2:30am I started asking Tyler to time them. They were around 5-8 minutes apart, but I wasn't in dire pain. We decided to call our family because we had no idea how quickly or slowly things would progress. Marcia (Tyler's mom) came over to watch M, and my mom booked a flight out to AZ. At around 4:30am we decided it was time to head to the hospital. My contractions were about 5 minutes apart and pretty painful as far as I was concerned.

When we got there, we got admitted, and headed to triage. I was told that I was 3.5cm dilated and 85% efaced so they wanted me to walk around for about an hour. Well, about 45 minutes later I had enough walking so we headed back to get checked. This is when the nurse dropped the bomb shell - she was sending me home. WHAT!? I was shocked. I didn't think that would ever happen to me. When it comes to pain, I have always thought I was tough and had a pretty high tolerance, but guess I was wrong. I was in a TON of pain during contractions and the nurse pretty much told me, "Nope your not in pain yet. Go home and maybe we will see you today or maybe not until tomorrow" Tomorrow!!?? That was certainly not music to my ears. But, either way Tyler and I took our bags and did the walk of shame down the long hallway and out of the hospital :(

Well that morning I happened to have an OB apt scheduled so I called my doctor and se told me to come in as usual. I couldn't take the contractions much longer so I left the house early and headed there. The hospital is on the way to my doctors office, so every time I had a contraction I would tell Tyler to drive to the hospital, then the contraction would stop and I would tell him to go to the doctors. I must have changed my mind about five times and Tyler was about to kill me. Anyhow, we got to the doctors office and she gave me an exam to see where I stood in terms of labor. She looked at me and said, "Oh honey, you wanted an epidural didn't you? You are at a 6 and def progressing so head back to the hospital and I'll be following you shortly". So, the hospital is where we went.

The second trip to the hospital is all kind of a blur. To keep it simple, I got into the delivery room at 10:15am and Michael Caden Herr was born at 12:09pm. I went from being 6cm dilated to holding my baby in under 2 hours. There wasn't much time for anything. I didn't get enough fluids, no blood was drawn, no epidural, no penicillin, BUT I did get a beautiful, healthy baby boy. I really couldn't ask for anything more than that :-)

Here he is. . .

Michael Caden Herr

Proud Daddy

Our little guy

Happy mommy

First picture together