My boy

Long and probably contains way too much information. Feel free to skip it, or read and reminisce with me about the birth of Jacob.

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9 years ago I was up at St Vincent's Hospital in Portland "in labor". My water had started leaking the day before, and by the time I finally realized that what it was, I was told to come straight in. They confirmed it was in fact amniotic fluid, and sent me to labor and delivery. I was admitted at 5pm on May 29th. Our little guy wasn't due until June 13th, so we were not ready, and a little scared/excited.

I wasn't having any contractions, and to me, the pitocin wasn't doing anything to move labor along. Around midnight, when the on call OB came in to check on me, he decided to break my water. Even though there was fluid leaking, it wasn't anything major. Oh my, when he did that, I could suddenly feel everything. I think that action allowed Jake to drop down and start to get ready.

I didn't really have a labor plan. Tom and I had taken birthing classes, we still had one more to attend when all of this went down. I knew I wanted to put off any drugs as long as possible, and with in an hour of my water breaking, I was begging for anything. They started with Demerol, and all that did was make me high. I still remember laying in bed, flat on my back, the room spinning, totally high, and in pain. Didn't help the pain at all.

I wanna say it was about 2am, maybe 3am when I finally got an epidural. And it was good. For 5 hours I was able to sleep. Then it started wearing off. They tried topping it off, but only 1/2 of my body was numb. It sucked. Fast forward to the afternoon. Contractions every 3 minutes, I'm exhausted as I only got 5 hours of sleep, where they woke me every so often to check on things.

I remember a couple of friends coming in, and Richard and Cara were outside, and would come in every so often. My parents were there, and Tom's parents showed up at some point. Orrin, our good family friend/lawyer, stopped by to bring the baby a monkey. I was falling asleep between each contraction, so for a minute or two, then would wake up and push.

Things started to get a little dicey around 3pm. It had been 22 hours since they started the induction, and I had been pushing for over an hour. Things weren't progressing, and Jake's heart rate started dropping. The doctor came in to stay for awhile to monitor the progress being made. After awhile, she decided to try using the vacuum thingy to get Jake out. She never made it to that point. Suddenly things got moving, and after three hours of pushing and 24 hours of labor, Jacob was born at 5:05pm.

It seemed like there were a ton of people in the room. Tom, my parents, Tom's parents, 4 nurses and the doctor. And everything turned out well. Jacob was perfect, no healthy issues at all.

I can't believe that was 9 years ago. I still remember that so well. While I miss my little baby boy, I love watching him grow and change. He's up to my shoulder now, and has so much knowledge, it's unbelievable! I was going to share some pictures but my camera cord seems to have disappeared. Hopefully I can locate it quickly!