Mason's Birth Story~

On Friday morning August 5th, I woke up around 2:45 with pains in my low back and belly. They came and went for a few hours before I woke Anthony and told him I thought this may be the start of contractions and labor but I wasn't quite sure. We were cautiously excited that this could be it. We woke up Friday morning thinking that Mason would be making his debut and decided to go for a walk to see if we could keep things moving along. As soon as we got back from the walk, the contractions stopped. I felt maybe 3 or 4 of them the rest of the day but nothing like the way they were the night before. FALSE ALARM!

Around 9:30 I laid down to catch up on the lack of sleep from the night before and of course the pains returned. This time they were strong enough to take my breath away and came every 15-20 minutes> This continued ALL NIGHT LONG but by 10 am they were getting further and further apart and eventually came every hour or so. The same chain of events repeated itself through Saturday night. It wasn't until Sunday morning that I had contractions consistently all day long 20 minutes apart. At around 10:30 pm, they had finally progressed to 5-8 minutes apart and we knew IT WAS TIME!

We called the doctor and they said we should head to the hospital in the next few hours but not to rush. We gave it an hour or so and by this point the contractions were 3-5 minutes apart and VERY painful.

Once we arrived, I was admitted and they checked to find I was in fact dilated 3 cm. It was REALLY happening!!! I made it until 2 am before asking for the epidural at 4 cm and soon after that the doctor came in and broke my water to get things moving along. "We are having a baby this morning!" Dr. Taylor said.

I was feeling great thanks to the epi and when they checked on me at 5 am and I was at 7 cm. We were excited! This is right around the time when things started to change a bit. The nurse came in and told me the baby needed to be moved and wasn't handling the position I was in very well. She turned me over to my right side, which may I add was facing the baby's monitor and things seemed to be ok. For an hour or so, as I watched with bated breath as things seemed to change quickly from very good and stable to very bad. His heart rate would drop at every contraction and each time it did I just watched and took a deep breath and reminded myself I was in the best place possible.

They changed shifts and a new doctor and set of nurses came in to check on me. I hadn't made any progress and they were still watching the baby closely. We needed to speed things up. The doctor had them start me on pitocin and an hour later NOTHING had changed except now I was even more concerned and worried. The doctor felt that labor and pushing would be too much stress on the baby and didn't want to take any risks so she said she felt we needed to move on to a c section option. Of course, I wanted him here safely but a c-section had not been in our plan. I didn't really do any research on a c-section. I immediately started crying as they explained the surgery and told me they would have me in the OR in a half hour and that it would be no more than 30 minutes once in there to meet our little man.

Anthony went off to get his gown on and my mom and sister were sent off to the waiting area tears were shed as we said goodbye and I was sent off to OR to be prepped for surgery. I was just so anxious for the moment when we heard our little man cry and he was safe in our arms. Within the hour our dreams finally came true. As I lay on the table with only a screen separating me from my son, I finally heard the little guy cry out and it took my breath away! Anthony leaned in and told me how beautiful he was and I cried tears of pure joy as I looked to the left and saw a PERFECT baby BOY! He was finally here and we immediately fell in LOVE! <3 Welcome to the world Mason!