Jeremy & Erin

Welcome Scott.

Our birth story, hopefully without too much detail. 

On Sunday, February 12th, while at church I started noticing signs of early labor. I couldn't sit still, I spent most of sharing time out in the hall and in my class room doing whatever I could think of because I just couldn't handle sitting for that long, I needed to be doing something. I was having irregular contractions and getting antsy.

Sunday evening contractions kept coming, same with all day Monday and on Tuesday. 

On Tuesday I had a weird feeling. I don't know how to explain what I was feeling but it was a feeling of being ready. Jeremy and I went to Michael's when he got home from school and we walked and walked. When we got back in the car we just sat for a minute, unsure of what to do, it was the day before Valentines so we decided an early Valentines dinner was necessary (neither of us wanted to make dinner and I had a feeling of now or never if we were going to do something).

...

I had spent the last month asking the baby when he was going to come, not really asking him to come but when. I just wanted to know when! Well around that time my belly button turned into the shape of heart, telling me he was coming on Valentines day. When I sent Kelly a picture she agreed. Jeremy said it wasn't possible and kept saying even while we were sitting in triage. He said the baby couldn't come until Thursday because he had midterms.

...

While sitting at Red Robin eating my half of our Burnin' Love Burger, my contractions kept coming and getting a hair stronger. I started timing them just for fun but they were still super irregular anywhere from 6 to 30 minutes apart. After we got home they started to settle down and come less often, I was a little bit disappointed.

At 6:01am on Valentines day (the day Jeremy had a biggish midterm) I woke up with this strange pain and feeling of having to pee (too much information?...it might get worse).  I thought to my self, I've never had to pee so bad that it hurt like this, weird! Well after relieving my bladder and crawling back into bed, my belly growled, then the pain came back. I looked at my phone, it was 6:06. I realized then that it was contractions.

I got out of bed opened my contraction timer app and went to poor myself some cheerios. I sat in the lovesac for an hour timing my contractions. 

6:09. 6:16. 6:28. 6:31. 6:35. 6:40. 6:50. 6:55. 6:59. 7:05.
They were still irregular, our doctor told us when contractions were happening every 5 minutes to go to the hospital, but I decided it was still time to wake up Jeremy. He uttered the words, "It's not Thursday yet, he can't come," and fell back asleep. I told him that this kid didn't care what day it was and I was getting in the shower. 

I sent my Momma a text message telling her it might be the day. And before I got in the shower I had a phone call from her, she told me not to wait very long before going to the hospital because with my brother Bryce (her first pregnancy which she says was a lot like mine) she didn't realize she was having as many contractions as she was and within four hours of getting to the hospital and just minutes of her water breaking he was born. That made me a little bit excited.

After showering and making my hair all cute and junk, I finished packing the last essentials in our go bag while Jeremy called the BirthPlace. They told us that my doctor was the doctor on call but to call her office and tell them my situation to see if I should go in. That was a mess and a half, the answering service (they weren't open yet) said that I didn't need to call just to go into the BirthPlace, after patiently explaining to her that they told me to call she said she would have someone call me back. That lady told me to do what I wanted, no joke those were her words.

Jeremy really wanted to go take him midterm at 10:00 but I didn't want him to leave me at home, espcially after what my mom told me. So he emailed his teacher and went to the BirthPlace. We checked in at 9:14. 

Our nurse Siri (one of my favorite people while at the hospital) hooked us up to monitors and checked me. I was still only dialated to 1cm and 70%, which is what I was at my appointment the week before. But she told us to sit and wait for the doctor. At one point Siri came in and told us that normally they would sent people in my situation home to labor, but the baby's heartbeat was dropping with contractions they might want to watch me on monitors for a while longer. Well it was almost noon before my Doctor got in to check me and I was 3cm and 90%. Which is good progress and because the baby's heartbeat was dropping they were going admit me. And she wanted to break my water. My nurse kindly reminded her that we were still in the triage room and that she should wait a while, thank you Siri!

Siri quickly moved us into room 5 and put me on wireless monitors, asked us questions about our birth plan (pretty simple: as natural as possible, skin to skin and breast feeding) then she left us with orders to walk the halls and nap.

At 2:00 she came in and said that she had been covering the whole floor and as much as she liked us we were her newest patient and needed to turn us over to a new nurse, MaryJane (not my favorite person). MaryJane was very pro natural birth, which was good for us, but she was very...IN YOUR FACE...and that really annoyed me. I got very frustrated with her on multiple occasions (not sure if that was obvious) and really just started to ignore her all together. While she was telling us about all these things she wanted us to do, my mom and Jeremy's parents walked in, with lunch! 

We ate our sandwiches and started walking and walking.

The next seven hours were pretty uneventful, I talked to my sisters on the phone, walked, watched tv, drank a milkshake, walked some more, played SkipBo, got a saline lock, rested and drank lots of water and they kept watching baby's heartrate.

At 7:00pm my Doctor came in (as her shift was ending) and checked me, I was at about 5cm and gave me four options.
1. Break my water (obviously her favorite option).

2. Give me morphine and let me sleep all night.

3. Let me sit and simmer.

4. Start pitocin.

I was all alone in my room when she came in and felt very overwhelmed with the options. I asked the few questions I could think of and I went with the break my water option because it was the one my doctor most strongly suggested.

Right after my new nurse Edi came in and introduced herself. My mom asked her for a birthing ball for me and I started those exercises. About an hour later things started getting very painful. I got in the bath (which did not bring the kind of relief I was hoping for). I was miserable and I stopped watching the clock. I laid in bed for most rest of the night, squeezing Jeremy's hand with contractions, vomiting from pain and eventually buzzing nurse for pain medicine. She put something in my IV and it helped me sleep between contractions. I was getting very tired and grumpy. I asked for medicine two more times, I was checked twice more and at midnight my dad got there, I was happy to see him. 

At around 3:30am I started begging for an epidural, I think everyone was ready for me to have one. Jeremy was falling asleep and I think was sick of me yelping for his hand every three minutes. And lets be honest I wasn't being super nice to everyone around me. I hadn't really slept in almost 22 hours and I just wanted to sleep and pee (the baby was in a position that was keeping me from relieving my bladder and after trying 6 different attempts to pee I still couldn't!)and hold my baby. My mom asked the nurse to check me before I got the epidural (know that I wanted a natural birth and still did even though I was dying), I was only a (small) 7 and it was hard to say how much longer it would take because I wasn't dilating as quickly as they would like. 

after the epidural...

At about 4am the anastegialongist came in (another one of my favorite people at the hospital, not just because he had the good drugs). He told me I had a slight curve in my spine and my cartilage was ridiculously thick. It took him two tries to get it in a spot he liked (my IV took two tries as well). And I fell asleep during the process, while sitting up trying not to move. When the medicine finally kicked in I had a window in my left hip so they had me sleep on it. The window never really went away, but I felt so much better so it was ALL worth it. 

At six my new nurse, Krista (another one of my favorite people) came in and told us that my contractions had slowed to about every 8 minutes while I was sleeping that the doctor was probably going to want to start pitocin. And she did. Krista said something about a c section, which I ignored and around that time pitocin had to be stopped because the baby's heart rate was dropping more than before. Around 9:30ish the Doctor on call came in and checked me I was a 9.5 and she said I could probably start pushing in the next half hour. And I did.

When I had been pushing for about an hour the Doctor came back in to see how I was progressing. And she was not pleased. She told me I had less than an hour to get the kid bellow my pelvic bone or else she would try once to help him and then it was c section time. Krista looked at me with her sweet little face and said as politely as she could she said something like: Lady, get mean and get this kid out or I'll just call the Doctor back in and we will prep for a c section now. A c section was no where in our spectrum of acceptable or ideal, so Jeremy told me to get serious, as if I wasn't! Come on people...

Krista went and got the squatting bar and had me stand up and push for a while. After about 15 minutes she called the doctor in and it was go time! Dr. Brooks was shocked! She really didn't think I could do it. She ended up having to use vacuum extraction, resulting in a fourth degree tear (too much? oh well.) At 11:50am Scott Tanner Brown was born weighing 7lbs 13oz and 19.5 inches long. 

first bath

he really liked it

I'm sad that we didn't get more pictures of this board as it changed.  My dad kept writing on it (Come on Scotty Boy!) The 22 was Ken's guess on how long Scott would be and he wrong but felt like he still needed to win.

Cute hair Jeremy

Car Seat test before going home. :D

 I appologize for the lack of pictures in this post. I wish we had taken more throughout the whole process...well at certain times during the process...