WELCOME TO THE WORLD, LP!

When I wrote my last post, it was the morning of the 12^th and we were three days away from LP’s due date.  That was before I started feeling what I now know were the first signs of impending labor!  Starting around lunch time, I had been having intermittent low back pain and, for the very first time during my pregnancy, really was not feeling well at all.  Up until that point, I had been so lucky.  With the exception of the expected difficulty sleeping and general lack of comfort during the last month of pregnancy, I had felt really good.  And, as I mentioned, I’d  been working more the last month of pregnancy than I had in my entire career!  I had actually planned to work right up until the 15^th.  Well, that didn’t exactly happen.  The 12^th was the first time that I felt different.  I don’t know how to explain it, but the lower back pain was not the same as I had felt throughout the pregnancy.  Since I was just three days from my due date, I figured that I should probably head home so that I was closer to the hospital . . . just in case.  I actually left a meeting with a client to go home, if that tells you how I was feeling!

A few hours after I got home, we headed to our doctor’s appointment.  When the doctor checked me, we learned that I was still only 2cm dilated and 80% effaced.  No progress from the prior week.  The doctor explained that the back pain that I was feeling could be the early signs of labor or could just be from the baby changing positions.  So, unfortunately, Dr. Lee wasn’t able to tell us if I would go into labor early, on my due date or still not for a week L He did, however, write instructions for us to take to the hospital so that they would call him instead of the doctor from his practice that was on call just in case we went into labor the next day.  We headed home, and I decided that I should just work the last three days of that week from home. 

That night, the back pains and general discomfort continued.  Needless to say, I didn’t sleep a wink.  And then, that morning, I tried to get some work done, but continued to feel lousy.  The back pains became a bit more intense.  I know it sounds crazy, but I couldn’t figure out if I was in labor because those pains were nothing like what I had expected based on what my classes and books had taught me.  I knew there was such a thing as back labor, but I figured that I would still be able to determine when I was having a contraction and to time them.  Everything said that the contractions would come more often and get more intense as labor progressed.  Well, that simply wasn’t true for me.  The back pains didn’t have a pattern . . . sometimes there was five minutes between them and sometimes there was thirty minutes between them.  And, they didn’t really become more intense.  Believe me, they were very uncomfortable and somewhat painful.  But, that didn’t change much throughout the morning. 

So, finally, around noon, I called the doctor on call and explained what was going on.  He told me to head to the hospital to get checked out.  Both Vikas and I figured that since these pains were nothing like what we were told true contractions would feel like, I’d be checked and sent home.  So, I headed to the hospital without  Vikas and without my bags.  I fully expected to be told that I was being silly and that was I was experiencing was just my body preparing for labor.

When I got to the hospital at about 12:30 p.m., the triage labor and delivery nurse put me on a monitor for a while and then checked to see how far I was dilated.  I told her that I was a 2 the previous evening and how I had been feeling since then.  And, to both her surprise and mine, it turned out that I was now 4-5 cm dilated!  To put things into perspective, let’s just say that Dr. Lee told me that if I wanted an epidural, I should get one by the time I was 3-4 cm dilated!   The nurse told me that I better call Vikas and tell him to get to the hospital.  So, I did—he was just as shocked as I was!  He picked up our bags and was with me in no time. 

We were put into a labor and delivery room and were ready to go.  After making very clear that I wanted an epidural and did not want to miss my opportunity, Vikas and I took advantage of the fact that I was not yet in excruciating pain and walked around the hospital for about an hour since I knew I wouldnb’t be able to leave the bed once I had the epidural.  As we walked, the contractions/back pain became quite a bit more intense.  Eventually, around 4 p.m., I was ready for the epidural.  Once the anesthesiologist put the epidural in, I felt better . . . on ONE SIDE!  Yep, that’s right.  The epidural only worked on the right side of my body.  They tried everything to fix it, but no luck L  So, from 4 p.m. until 8 p.m., when I began to push, I felt each and every second of pain from the contractions on my left side!  I might as well have gone completely natural . . . it was definitely not fun.  But, luckily, I remembered to use the breathing skills that I had learned in our childbirth classes.  Then, around 8 p.m., I was finally dilated 10cm and ready to push.  At that point, the effects of the epidural were minimal, and I felt everything on both sides.  Plus, my contractions never became “normal”, which means that they never came as close together as they should have.  Because I had to wait to push “with” the contraction, each time I pushed, we made progress, but also slipped backwards during the delay between contractions.  So, I ended up pushing for two exhausting hours.  But, knowing that we were so close to meeting our little guy and Vikas’s (and the nurse and Dr. Lee’s) incredible support got me through it.

Finally, at 9:56 p.m., our little peanut finally completed his journey into this world!  He had arrived, and was absolutely perfect!  The feeling I felt when I heard our little man cry for the first time was indescribable!  It was honestly the sweetest, most incredible moment of our lives!  We were finally a family of three . . . simply amazing.

As many of you know, LP’s real name is Devin Vikas Patel.  We have loved the name Devin forever, and as soon as we found out we were having a boy, we knew that would be his name.  Here are his stats:

Devin Vikas Patel

9:56 p.m. on July 13, 2011

6 pounds, 14 ounces

20 inches long

Below are a few pictures from Devin’s birthday!  More pics from Devin's first few weeks to come!

Awaiting the arrival of our little one!

Just a few minutes old :-)

Getting weighed . . . truly just a little peanut!  6lbs, 14 oz.

Footprints for mommy and daddy's memory book!

Bonding with mommy!

Meeting my Nana (Maternal Grandpa) and Nani (Maternal Grandma) for the first time!

Our happy family of three!

Meeting my Ba (Paternal grandma) and Dada ( Paternal grandpa) for the first time!

The cutest little tootsies!



Getting my first bath!