Baby Bump growth from 16 weeks to 40 weeks
Here’s the recent project I’ve been working on for the past 9 months. I’m now the proud mom of a beautiful baby boy, born November 10, 2012. Pregnancy certainly had its ups and downs, but it’s a necessary time period to get a happy, healthy baby. Motherhood has been quite the journey these past three weeks and I’m loving every minute of it, even when he’s screaming at the top of his lungs and all I want to do is cry right along with him because I have no idea what to do to make him happy.
Here’s my birth story, in case you are interested in reading it. I had excellent prenatal care from Metropolitan OB/GYN and an incredible labor & delivery experience at Rose Medical Center. I highly recommend both facilities!
At my 38 week check up, it was determined that our baby was breech so we went ahead and chose to set a scheduled c-section. After discussing an aversion with the doctor, I decided I didn’t think I sounded like the best candidate. I was pretty freaked out, but we set it for November 13th, first thing in the AM.
I worked my last day of work this past week and was looking forward to having the entire weekend to just get prepared for baby. Instead, I woke up Saturday morning at 3:45 with incredibly painful contractions. As they lasted longer than the typical 5-10 seconds I’d been experiencing just weeks before, I decided I needed to start tracking them. After 1 hour of 10 minutes apart, I finally awoke Marty and we agreed I should call the doctor. The on-call doctor indicated I should wait until they were 5 minutes apart and then call her back. After another 2 hours, they had steadily dropped to every 5 minutes then 4.5 minutes. It was pretty intense. I would be fully functional for those normal 5 minutes then just bend over huddled over something to breathe & block out the pain & any noise or light for the contraction.
We called the doctor again and then headed to the hospital. It was about 8am at this point. I got checked in via the Emergency Dept and was wheeled off to Labor & Delivery where my cervix was checked. I was dilated to a 6 or 7 cm! I could barely believe it! I thought I was just being a wuss over what was probably a 2! I would have done natural childbirth pretty great!
The nurses indicated that we needed to move fast at this point to get the baby out and I was about to be swarmed with people. I’m actually glad she prepared me for that. I cried a lot, just because of the nerves & anxiety over the immediacy of the situation. I started shaking a little later and thought it was also from the nerves, but apparently that’s just a part of labor.
I was given an epidural and vomitted immediately afterwards. It made me feel pretty nauseous right away and I warned the nurse in a pretty quiet voice that I was going to get sick. I felt perfectly fine after that though and it was such a relief to no longer feel the labor pains.
The surgery was quick & painless, even though I was a complete ball of nerves the entire time. I could only feel slight pressure on my stomach & breathing as they pulled the baby out from the c-section. I heard the baby cry and I lost it. I was just so relieved to hear that. Marty announced it was a boy and we were both surprised and thrilled. His name is Joseph Thomas and he’s pretty much perfect, but I am his mom, so I’m biased 😉
We had our little surprise baby on November 10th at 10:09 am. We were discharged from the hospital on November 13th – his actual scheduled c-section date.
I wanted to provide you all with all the details just to let you know that it all works out. We thought we had a plan, but it didn’t work out that way – but we survived and still get the most precious gift out of this surprise journey! We are just so thrilled to have this little boy right now. It hasn’t been an easy road, but it will get better and I’m already so in love with him. It’s also such an incredible thing to see my husband as a dad. It makes me fall even more in love with him!
StudioSister Photography 