Andrew's Birth Story

Here's the full detailed explanation of Andrew's arrival.

At approximately 2 p.m. on Friday, October 30, I felt my first contraction. Granted, I had been having irregular occasional contractions for several weeks so it didn’t faze me too much. I was at the town coffee shoppe because our internet was down at home. However, I couldn’t get my computer to work with their internet either. I guess God had other plans besides work for me that afternoon. I dropped in to see John and realized that I had 2 more contractions in that time. They were 15-20 minutes apart. I let him know that I had suspicions but wanted to wait for more regularity to confirm.
I headed home and had a few contractions that stopped me in my tracks. Yes, this was indeed the real deal. I called John and asked him to come home when he could. I wrapped up a few things for work, called my mom to begin her drive to Tipton, and tried to sit and relax. John let the sitter know that Jeremiah would be picked up late by Maama S.
By 4:30, my contractions were 4-5 minutes apart. John called Labor and Delivery and we were given the green light to come on in. I was certainly no brave soul upon arrival, graciously accepting the wheel chair for the ride up to the 6th floor. They settled us in to the room and hooked me up to all the necessary monitors. Things progressed rather quickly. I requested my epidural at around 8:00 p.m. and I was fully dilated by 10:30ish. It was close to 11:30 when I began to feel pressure and the urge to push so we started in on that exercise. The doctor’s explained that since my body had not done that part before it could take longer than the speedy dilation. I gave it my best (3 hours of my best) but at 2:30 the doctor asked if we wanted to keep pushing for another 30 minutes or opt for the c-section. I was, to say the least, disappointed that we couldn’t make the VBAC work but it was time to be realistic and prioritize our baby. With concerns about the baby’s position, (one nurse guessing he was sunny side up) we opted for getting ready for surgery. After all the necessary preparations for the c-section, we were in surgery by about 3:30 and welcomed Andrew Jesse at 4:02 a.m. on Saturday, October 31, what would have been his great-uncle Mark’s birthday. The doctor's noted that there was some thin places that may have been dangerous is we continued to push so we probably made the best decision. Daddy got to cut his cord off and then they took him to the nursery while they put me back together. We met him again in recovery, where he enjoyed his first eats, just a couple hours later.