Kellan's Birth Story-Part One

Even though we were actually scheduled to be induced on Friday, I believe Kellan would have been born on Friday or possibly today anyway. When I went to bed on Thursday night around 10:30/11pm I was having a few contractions here and there. Didn't think too much of it until they kept coming. They were really mild and random, so I went to sleep. I woke up around 1am with stronger contractions and decided I should probably keep track of them. They came about every 10-13 minutes for the next hour. So I got to thinking we may be heading to the hospital earlier in the morning than we thought.

I woke Andrew up to tell him that we might need to leave in a bit. The doctor had told us to go to the hospital when my contractions were 10 minutes apart (instead of the 5 minutes they usually tell you) because I had pretty quick and easy labors with the girls. I told him to go back to sleep and I'd let him know if I thought we needed to go. I got up and made Lily's lunch for Mrs. M's class the next day and did a few other quick things around the house. And in that half hour didn't have a single contraction. So I decided to go back and lay in bed and see what happened. Well, even though I had a few more contractions in the next few hours, nothing like before. So we proceeded with the original plan to go to the hospital at 7:30am. I believe he was pretty ready to arrive and I was still having contractions every now and then. So I think he would have come on his own in the next day or two anyway.

We got checked in with no problem and the nurse started Pitocin at 8:30am. Dr. Larson broke my water around 9am or so and the contractions came on pretty quickly. I was about 2-3 cm dilated when they first checked. It didn't take long for me to get to 4cm and I received my epidural with no issues. I was dilated 4cm at 10:25am. The nurse told me to tell her if started feeling pressure and she was going to come back in 20 minutes or so to check me again. She was supposed to call Dr. Larson back to the hospital (she was at the office doing her regular check-ups) when I hit 8cm. Well, when she checked me at 10:45, I was already at 9cm! So the nurse ran off to call the doctor. His head was right there 15 minutes later when the doctor arrived and we started pushing right away. Three pushes and at 11:17am Kellan was crying his little lungs out! He had great color and checked out perfect for everything they look for.

I was a little worried going into this delivery because Lily's delivery was sooo perfect (and Ella's for that matter--though I had to push a bit longer for her), I figured there was no way we could have a delivery that topped that one. But I have to say, Kellan's did! I certainly can't complain about a less than 3 hour labor. And so far the recovery for me has gone really well.