4.18.2016

hadanotherbabyitsaboy: part two, Climbing Mountains

Hey there everybody. This is one of those rare moments where you get to hear from me. Oh, who am I? I have a few names. I am "the one responsible". I have been called "this is all your fault", and also have been called Daddy. Mostly I am Chris or Daddy, because once the pain is over I am one of the good guys again.

I am here for part two. If you haven't read PART ONE, I suggest you stop what you're doing and read that now. When Erica asks me to help with the birth stories, it's always something along the lines of "I was out of my mind and don't know what happened" or "my eyes were closed, I didn't see anything." So here I am. I was mostly in my right mind, and also had my eyes open. But this part of the story, while the most exciting, almost ends up being the shortest.

Let's take a step back for a minute. Here's a little story from part one that amused us. We were watching the contractions while in triage, and talking to Doctor Beck about them. He was adjusting the monitor and it spiked all over the place. I commented on this and the Doctor said yeah, some people will try and fake contractions to get moved to labor and delivery, watch this. He pressed on it to cause a spike. "We can tell the difference".

So part one left off at about 1:30 PM, when the water was broken. There is a lot of waiting involved after the water breaks. Nurses come in and ask how mommy is feeling. The blood pressure cuff constantly activates to torment mommy who just wants everything to move along but baby is still too high, the cervix isn't fully effaced, you are still dilated at a 7.

During this waiting time, the anesthesiologist came to consult with us. Erica decided back before Camden's birth that epidurals weren't happening, so the decision with Leonard was an easy one. It's funny though, even after you tell everyone involved that mommy has done this before, they still don't believe she knows what she wants. She is dilated, water broken, you can see contractions coming and going, but she is smiling...why don't you believe us? She's got this. But they have to still offer. We explained that we were not interested, he ran through the usual questions about prior labor, and asked if there had been a natural birth before. After explaining there had been, he says something along the lines of "Good. Even though its my job to offer, I always find it refreshing to see a mother choose not to get the epidural. Your recovery will be faster and easier without it."

Here's where the mountains come in. One of my jobs in labor was to watch the monitor showing the contractions and talk Erica through them, let her know when they hit the peak and starting running downhill. When we first started watching, they were just hills. By the time Erica got to transition, they were mountains. We had settled into a pattern of 4 strong contractions a minute long with barely a minute between, then 3 minute break before the pattern repeated. It looked something like this:


At this point (3-ish) they were saying Leo was turned wrong, and he needed to turn a bit to drop further. They brought out some weird peanut shaped ball, and made Erica roll over and hold it between her legs. I kid you not, she yelled more during this than the rest. We were climbing Everest on the contractions during this whole time.

After a few minutes like this, Erica said she felt like she needed to push. Dr. Beck had come to check on another mother who wasn't as far along, so he was just in the next room. He came in, took a look and started getting into whatever they call the super scrubs he delivers the baby wearing. Erica kind of yelled that she needed to push, and he turned and looked and said "Do it." Leo was basically already crowning. Erica pushed through 2 contractions and Leo's head was out, then she pushed through another and his shoulders cleared and he was born!

He was in the birth canal for such a short period, he came out with a perfect little head, no conehead for Leo. The doctor caught me emotional and put the scissors in my hand to cut the cord. I was too grossed out about all of the...everything with the others and hadn't cut any cords. I kind of just grabbed and cut without thinking about it this time. I guess I was finally just ok with the process.






And so on March 22nd at 3:31 pm, 2.5 hours after arriving at the hospital, Leonard Christopher Jenkins was born weighing 9 lbs. 6 oz., measuring 21.5 inches. He joins Big sisters Evelyn and Amelia, but I think the most proud was Camden, because he'd never been a big brother before.


And he rode home in style. I went and traded the old van for a new one so that mommy, baby, brother and sisters could have a safer, more comfortable ride. My dad told me that his Grandpa did the same thing for my grandfather. A horse and buggy weren't good enough and so they bought the first family car. That was just short of 100 years ago, back in 1917.

We've named it the Silver Fox...




4.15.2016

hadanotherbabyitsaboy: part one

When life gives you a baby, sometimes you forget about everything else.  I've been thinking about writing this posts for weeks. 3 weeks to be exact.  I just haven't sat down to pump this out. I decided to start slow and take whatever time I could find and start, even if it was 10 minutes a day.  I'm determined to get this story on here.  Mostly for me, but you can enjoy my story too. I'm gonna be breaking this into 2 parts.  I wanted to give you something and it a lot to write.


41 weeks hit and I was not surprised by this but so disappointed my baby wasn't here yet.  I had felt ready for weeks.  Trying everything I could think of to get this baby out of me.  I guess I should have known my plans wouldn't work, cause things in my life tend to just happen when they want to no matter what I want or think.

Monday, March 21st:
I had a late in the day doctor appointment. My doctor checked to see if i had any progress from the week before.  I was 4cm dilated, which made me happy cause I was a tight 2 cm the week before. YAY! My doc went ahead and stripped my membranes, again. After, we talked about an induction date.  I did not want to have an induction. I wanted to go into labor on my own again, but I also did not want to still be hugely pregnant.  So we scheduled my induction date for Wednesday the 23rd at 8pm.  We were hopeful that since I scheduled something that meant I would just go into labor before the time set. Nothing too exiting happened the rest of that day and night.  I started to have contractions around 11 pm but they were really far apart and basically nothing, so I decided to just sleep them off. 

Tuesday, 22nd:
Thankfully, I slept really great and woke up in a good mood. Got up, ate breakfast, took a shower & got ready for the day.  We had decided the night before that I was going to spend the day at my parents house with the kids, because Chris was going to go and buy a new to us van that we had been looking at.  At around 9 ish I told Chris we needed to leave and head to my parents and get our day started.  First we needed to go to the school to drop off our voter ballots and get our voting stickers.


After a quick vote drop off we headed off to my parents house.  When we reached the freeway, I noticed contractions starting and actually pretty evenly spaced out.  About 8 minutes apart roughly.  After driving for a bit I mentioned the contractions to Chris and told him that instead of him leaving right away I wanted to chill and time the contractions and see if they would get closer together as some time went on.

I spent an hour timing the contractions they ended up being 1 minute in length and around 3-5 minutes apart now. Not strong just uncomfortable.  At this point I knew we were having our baby today. YAY! We decided we would go to Target cause my movie Mockingjay pt 2 came out that day and I had to buy it and it would give us something to do and time for me to decide when we would go to the hospital.


Contractions continued while we were at Target, didn't stay long just went in bought some movies then walked out. I had a contraction in the parking lot on the way back to the car that I had to stop a bit and focus a little bit more. When we got back to the car we started out and I wasn't sure where, back to my parents or the hospital.  I decided it was time, so off we went to the hospital.

When we walked into the lobby we walked up to the adorable ladies at the front desk, one of them looked at me walking up and said "Oh i see her labor breathing!" I laughed and said yes we would like to have our baby today. We waited about 10 minutes to go back to get checked in to triage. Check in took about another 10-15 minutes. Still feeling great, contractions were mild and easy to breath through. We get into triage this time, i get changed and they ask their routine questions and check for dilation.  And guess what I was 7 cm dilated and 90% effaced but baby way still WAY high talking he didn't want to come out at all, up there high, and my water was still intact. This is around 1 pm.



They called my doc to come down and break my water, so they wanted to get me out of triage and get me to labor & delivery quick. I walked myself over there with my IV cart (i decided after they asked if i wanted an IV to get one, it was just the water stuff to keep my hydrated which i was okay with) met my labor & delivery nurse Keely ( bless this sweet sweet woman, she was exactly the nurse i needed!), my doc showed up right as we were walking to my room.  Got in bed and settled, broke my water and then i was ready for the ride.  I wasn't sure how long of labor I had left but I was ready for it.



1:30 ish now.

And yes, I snapped a few times to keep people updated. I said I would. 
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