Guest Post ~ Birth Story

Since I am so busy right now, I am excited to have a great friend and fellow blogger doing a guest post for me today! Thanks, Mia!

Hi Guys! I'm Mia from The Chronicles of Chaos. I'm so grateful to Krystle for letting me talk to you guys today. After hearing about Krystle's gorgeous son Lucas and his unexpected early birth, it reminded me of my own son, Domenic, (who is now 3 years old) and I wanted to share his story with you. This post might be a little TMI for some of you, so if you're not interested in birth stories, you might wanna skip down to the end - there is definitely a happy ending to this story, I promise. :)

Dom is my first-born and fearless child.  It seems like he was destined to be this way, if my pregnancy was any indication.  I went into pre-term labor at 33 weeks.  I noticed some spotting while I was at work, and at first I wasn't really concerned (having never been pregnant before and not knowing any better), but when I mentioned to my coworker that I had some spotting and felt a little crampy, she asked me how many weeks I was and I told her and she immediately said, "You need to go to the hospital. Or at the very least, call your doctor." Admittedly, I was a little freaked out, but I wasn't in any pain or anything, so I called my doctor's office. The nurse put me on hold for a little while and then came back and said the doctor wanted me to go straight to the hospital.

At that time, I worked about 50 miles from home, and my boss wouldn't let me drive myself back, so I called my hubby to come pick me up.  When we arrived at the hospital, I was pretty freaked out and didn't know what to expect. I was contracting pretty regularly by then and when the doctor examined me, I was already 4 cm dilated! They gave me steroid shots to help develop Dom's lungs, in case he did end up coming that day.  But they hooked me up to an IV to help with dehydration and they gave me magnesium to try and stop the contractions/labor, which made me super nauseous and dazed and I felt cold all the time! I stayed in the hospital for a week before I was allowed to go home and I was ordered to stay on bed rest for a few days and then I could go back to work.

Fast forward to 36 weeks.  At this point I was waking up a million times a night because I was uncomfortable, or I would get hot, or I would have to pee lol. When I woke up around midnight, having to pee, of course I didn't think anything of it.  I got up and walked to the bathroom and all of a sudden I felt this wetness running down my leg.  I wasn't sure what had happened, I just thought that I had waited too long to go pee and had wet myself.  Plus, all the baby books tell you that you will know when your water breaks because it has a certain odor.  Well, it just smelled like pee to me, lol! So I got back in bed.  But I kept feeling this awful pain in my lower back and I started having these forceful, painful, earth-shattering contractions.  I thought it would pass, because Dom wasn't supposed to be due until mid-October and it was only late-September. But by 5am, the contractions were so bad and so close together that I knew something wasn't right and I needed to go to the hospital.  I woke up my hubby and we rushed to the hospital.

When I told the nurse that I was 36 weeks, she kind of rolled her eyes, and I knew she wasn't taking me seriously.  But she dutifully hooked me up to the monitors and did an exam.  All of a sudden, her eyes got big and she said, "oh my goodness, you're fully dilated, this baby is coming right now!" They quickly moved me to the delivery room and the doctor yelled at me and said, "Why did you wait so long to come to the hospital?!" and I told her that I had no idea what was going on, this was my first baby, and then I burst into tears. And then when I asked about an epidural, she said there was no time, they had to deliver now.  Which made me cry even harder because I was terrified and was not expecting to do a natural childbirth.

After about 45 minutes of pushing (and screaming and crying and yelling at my hubby, who was looking paler and paler by the minute), Dom was born a little after 6:30 am.  He was 8 lbs 5 oz and 20.5 inches long!  He would have been a huge baby if he went full-term!  It was probably the quickest delivery in history, lol, and soon after he was born, I felt great, and was up and walking around and took a shower with a little help from the nurses.  I thought, hey this is easy, I don't know what all the fuss is about! (Don't worry, I got to eat my words with my youngest son's delivery, but that's another story for another day!)

Ugh, excuse my fat face, but I did just give birth, so that's my excuse! ;)

Dom had a broken collarbone from the trauma of delivery, but the doctor assured us it happens sometimes and not to worry.  And he also had jaundice, so we had to stay in the hospital a few extra days while he was under the bili lights, but once his bilirubin levels came back down, we were sent home with our beautiful boy.  And let me tell you, that kid does not rest for one second! He is raring to go from the minute he wakes up in the morning until the minute he goes to sleep.  It's exhausting keeping up with him sometimes, but he just lights up my life and I'm so proud to be his mommy.

Dom now, at 3 years old. He's a nut!

Phew, what a roller coaster ride!  But all's well that ends well, right? :)

Did any of you have an unexpected birth?  Share your story below, Krystle and I would love to hear about it!

The surprise birth of Lucas Parker!

I am not sure how to start this because I thought his birth story would be a simple, and short story that would most likely bore you but that is not the case. On Wednesday, Aug 1st (one month exactly from my due date) I went to dinner with some girl friends and fellow bloggers. We met at Panera at 6pm and over the next 2 hours of chatting and laughing I was having contractions. I had gotten so use to them that I didn't pay much attention to them. I headed home around 8pm. On the way home I started to pay attention to them a little more and trying to time them. At that point, they were about 10 minutes apart. When I got home I sat down and watched the Olympics with Matt and the kids. I was still timing them and they were still 10 minutes apart so I headed to bed thinking they were just the everyday contractions I had been having for months now. Around 2 am, I woke up having some pretty intense contractions. I got up and went to the bathroom and laid back down. From then until 5 am I couldn't sleep through them. I finally woke Matt up and told him something was going on. I was not sure what but these contractions were NOT like the ones I had become use too. I called and was told to head to L&D to be checked out. My mom met us at the hospital to get Logan and Abby. While walking into the hospital I had to stop a few times because the contractions were so intense. They were about 6 minutes apart then. We got up to the L&D floor and got all hooked up to monitors.  They started an IV to give me fluids in case I was just dehydrated. After a about an hour my doctor came in and said because my cervix was not changing with them they wanted to put me in a therapeutic sleep to see if the contractions stop or get more intense. I was moved to a regular room and given morphine in my IV and a morphine injection in my right thigh. They told me they would wake me in 4 hours and see if the contractions were gone. They didn't put monitors on me which I thought was weird but didn't say anything. After about 2 hours of not being able to fall asleep because I was still contracting, I asked the nurse to hook me up to the monitors. Within 20 minutes she was back in my room telling me they were going to start prepping me for my c section!

Our sweet boy was born August 2nd (35wks 5days) at 12:53pm weighing 7lb 7oz and 20.75 inches long (he would have been huge if full term). He had to be "jump started" to get him breathing so they had to take him to the NICU. I did get to see him for a few moments before they left with him. Matt went with him and I got stitched up and moved to recovery. Matt came in and told me that Lucas was on a CPAP for his breathing. It was so hard to hear because I felt like if I could have kept him in longer he wouldn't be having a hard time breathing. My little guy surprised us and was off all the breathing stuff within 12 hours of birth. We also found out that he was Coombs Positive like Logan was but we were prepared for that. They had him on 2 lights and were checking his levels every 4 hours. By Sunday he was down to one light and doing amazing. On Monday he was able to come to my room at which point they put him on 3 lights because his levels were still going up slowly.  By the next morning his levels had come down some and he was able to come home!

Logan and Abby love him so much. They love to just sit and watch him sleep and talk about how cute his cheeks are. Our family is now complete and I could not be happier!

I still need to get the "nursery" and his "2 week old" post up but I wanted to share his birth story first!