Baxter is HERE!

On Monday, March 28 I had the most amazing experience, one I had been hoping and preparing for my whole life, my sweetheart and I welcomed our first child to the world.

It was an incredibly spiritual experience. I was blessed throughout my pregnancy to be surrounded by people who helped me look forward to labor and delivery as a divine experience. For the few days leading up to the experience I listened to hymns and talks about motherhood and God's mercy and love. I prayed that everything would go well and that Baxter would be safe. When contractions became regular on Saturday night I borrowed a page out of a book by pioneer women and made strawberry freezer jam. Yes, it is more simple than everything else that super women have done through the ages, but I was still pretty excited about getting it done.

We went into the hospital on Sunday afternoon to find out that I was still only dilated to a 3 and were sent home. I spent a lot of time in the shower that day to ease the contractions. We tried to relax and wait for the inevitable. On Monday morning the contractions were about 6 minutes apart lasting just over a minute we went to the hospital and they monitored me for an hour and I dilated from a 4 to a 5 and admitted us!

We got cozy in our room. After about an hour I was a 6 and wanted to go for a walk. We walked around for and went back to the room, the doctor told me that I was giving labor a bad name and he couldn't believe that I was walking around dilated to a 6 and not on an epidural, then he broke my water. I waited about an hour and the anesthesiologists came in to give me the drugs. They tried 10 times to get the epidural to stick. The needle they used to administer the local anesthetic couldn't get to where it needed in my spine and I felt every single twinge and movement as the epidural needle snaked through my spine. For just over an hour that was my life. I lasted about 45 minutes before I started crying and Leo came and stood right in front of me instead of to the side holding my hand. He looked right at me and every once in a while I saw his eyes dart to watch what the doctors were doing. He told me after that he watched as they pulled my tissue and blood out of my back as they tried over and over. Finally we all agreed it wasn't going to work and I was going to hit it all natural.

Another hour passed and I was informed that it was time to start Pitocin. After an hour on Pitocin my contractions were lasting about 90 seconds were coming every minute or so, I was still only dilated to a 7. Leo sat with me and rubbed my back, I thought I was in back labor but now I think it was just the injuries from the failed epidurals as I also had intense contractions in my front. 6:15 pm came with no progress in dilation and I started feeling like I needed to push, the nurses helped me breathe through it while Leo held my hand and told me how well I was doing. Finally around 7 pm I was an 8. At 7:15 I started pushing without being able to stop it and I told the nurse to call the doctor, I wanted a c-section. I couldn't stop myself and I knew that if the baby pushed up against the cervix it would swell and block Baxter's way out, most likely sending him into distress. The nurse checked me again at 7:30 and I was FINALLY to a 10 and ready to push! She and Leo held me as she showed me how to push and I did 3 practice pushes, right as I finished those the doctor came in, covered up and we started working with the contractions and the urges. I pushed for 10 minutes and Baxter Leo Bay came into this world at 7:57 weighing in at 7 pounds 7 oz and 19.75 inches long. My doctor told me that I handled natural childbirth better than some of his patients who had planned for a natural birth. It was an amazing experience full of hope, love, darkness, excitement, anxiety, pain, elation, and peace. The experience was not what I had planned, but one that I had been prepared for. A few weeks before I went into labor I was inspired to look at techniques for if the epidural failed. Leo and I had discussed the possibility of a natural birth because I wanted to see if I could do it. I was able to be calm with Leo (for the most part) and only once make a slightly awkward demand on him. I felt things that cannot be described and was filled with so much love for our Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, the women who came before me and my eternal family. That was just the tip of the ice burg as love overwhelmed me and still does when I look at my husband and my sweet little boy. We did this together. We waited, we sacrificed, we prayed and now we have come to the beginning of the next stage of our journey. I would do it all again in a heartbeat. It was a privilege and a blessing and I would not change a moment about it.