Well, he came! 11 days early, I might add - I was so glad for this.
Lincoln had gone to work with Matt that morning (Friday, July 22), so I was running some last minute errands - I was hoping that he would be showing up soon. The whole time I was walking through the store I was having contractions and still hoping he would come soon. Got home and was working on stuff, cleaning and whatnot, and contractions continued but were not really consistent yet. By about lunch time they were coming more consistently, about 10-15 minutes apart, so I called my mom to see if she could come up that afternoon. Told Matt they were now coming consistently, and to have his phone handy. By the time my mom was able to come up, the contractions were slowing down, so I was walking around the house and up and down the stairs to get them back again - again, I'm ready to have this baby. Eventually they were about 3-5 minutes apart and Matt and I headed to the hospital.
We got to the hospital and started working on convincing the admitting nurse that I was actually in labor. Soon I was changed and in a room. I had a few different nurses there, it was right in the middle of a shift change. One of the nurses checked me to see how far along I was, and she said my bag was bulging so she didn't know if he was head down or not. So they pulled in an ultrasound machine to check. All this time, one of the other nurses was trying to get an iv in - I have great veins, she stuck me 3 different places and I had mongo bruises at each place, rude. So the ultrasound machine comes in, and the same nurse that was doing the iv (who would also be with me the rest of the night) started to look for babe's head. She couldn't find it. She called in the other nurse who had checked my progress. She couldn't find it. Then they called in the charge nurse to look. She couldn't find it. They were confused I guess because they were getting a heartbeat for the fetal monitor so low on my belly, but his head wasn't down low with it. And they decided he was probably breech. But at this point I am freaking out - WHERE IS MY BABY'S HEAD?! And then they decided to wait for my doctor to come so that she could confirm if babe was breech or not.
Luckily, my doctor showed up within the next 15ish minutes. Unluckily, babe was breech. She said we have 2 options. We can try to turn him, or we can get prepped for a C-section. First she tried to turn him. I was laid all the way back on the hospital bed so that she could try to finagle him through my belly to move to the right position. She told me that I could have serious bruising from the process, and that it would hurt. It did hurt. Like hell. And he would not turn. She tried for what felt like 30 minutes, was probably only 5ish. So she stopped, and they gave me meds to stop contractions, and we talked about the C-section. At this point I was already so tired, and clearly still hormonal, so I cried. A lot. I think the good thing about having a woman as my doctor is that she understands the emotions, whereas I think a man may not.
Everyone left to get the OR prepped and to get ready themselves. I was left to rest for a few minutes. I asked Matt and Marty to give me a blessing. The blessing was comforting, and I was told that Heavenly Father was proud of me for bringing another baby into the world. And I cried, again. But felt a little better. And then my mom came in. And she was crying. I told her she was not allowed to be afraid for me - I had that covered.
Matthew in his scrubs
Eventually we went down to the OR. I had to walk there, which was fine but I thought was a little odd. Had to climb up onto the table and get a spinal block (I still maintain that this may have been the worst part of the whole C-section process). It was unpleasant. Then when I was dead numb, they put up a drape so neither Matthew or I had to see what was happening as they cut me open. I could feel the doctor pulling and tugging things in my body, but felt zero pain or discomfort. Also through the process of the C-section, from all the drugs that were in my body, I threw up a few times. Poor Matt had to catch it. From start to baby was at most 5 minutes. He was born at 10:21 pm, and as soon as he was out, he was screaming. And peeing! They took him over to the scale and he peed again a few times, apparently aiming for Matthew and one of the nurses. Silly baby.
Soon I got to hold him and touch him. He was BIG. 9 lbs an 20 inches long! AT 11 DAYS EARLY!! (pretty glad he came that early) And his head was perfect, no cone head this time around!
After everything was finished, they rolled me back to the room I started in, to monitor me for an hour before moving floors.
Later that night, after Matt had gone home to be with Lincoln (my mom was staying with me), things got a little crazy. I felt like I was on fire, but I still had the shakes from meds and spinal block. The nurses kept taking my vitals, and my temperature kept going down. Every time they took my blood pressure, they checked my blood oxygen level, which kept going down. They left the finger clip on, to monitor my blood oxygen level - every time I started dozing off, it would drop pretty significantly - enough to freak momma Claud out. And my body temp got as low as 94ish. The nurses had to pull out this inflatable blanket that heats up to warm me up. I was up until about 3:30 am, this whole time they were working to get my body temp back up. When my body temp did eventually come back up, the shakes went away - not from drugs after all.
It was kind of a scary night.
But we are all still alive. And we are all currently healthy! And we love baby Red, I mean Grayson.
Please excuse my double chin.
Meeting his brother
He's a fan.
We had actually decided his name at least a week before he showed up. We just didn't tell anyone. Take that!
And Garrett won the Baby Madness Bracket.
