Austin's birth story

Austin Devon Inman joined our family at 2:14am on Wednesday, January 9, 2013.  He was 6lbs 5oz, 18.25 inches long and absolutely perfect.  Below are the details of his arrival:

I woke up on Tuesday, January 8th (my due date) with not a whole lot going on in the contraction book.  I'd had several days of some minor contractions but when I went to my midwife appointment the previous Friday, I was told that I was only one centimeter dilated and not effaced at all.  I had started to get it into my head that Austin would definitely be late, and possibly close to a week or so. But my due date had arrived so I decided this would be a good day to try some old wives' tales to get things going.  So around noon I headed out for a quick walk to Carolina Farmin' to pick up some lunch.  I'd been avoiding walks like the plague for the past few days just because Austin had already dropped so walking was slightly painful and made me have to pee constantly.  But this day I headed off and it wasn't too bad.  I picked up a sandwich with eggplant in it and came back home to settle into a little Netflix Parenthood marathon.  That's when I started feeling the first minor contractions of the day and they stayed about 7 minutes apart for the rest of the afternoon.

At 4:30 I went to pick up Cash from day care, contractions still happening at about the same rate but the intensity picking up a bit.  We got home and things started to ramp up quickly.  Around 5pm I saw that I had some more indications that labor had actually started and my contractions were clocking in around 4 minutes apart.  I called my midwife and explained that the contractions were still far-ish apart but the intensity was picking up big time.  She gave me the go ahead to move forward with our regular night - dinner, tubbies, and bed for Cash by 8pm - and then give her a call.  I felt a lot better that we would be able to get Cash settled and asleep before leaving.  So we had our taco dinner and the sundae bar that I had already planned for the night.  Cash and I ended up doing our sundaes by ourselves as Ross was trying to get some stuff in order for us to go into the hospital, and it was a really nice way to have some special time with him before bringing Austin home.  We all went up to read him books and Cash was being especially sweet towards me (usually he just wants Daddy for book time and will say "No, mommy....Daddy reads books", but tonight he wanted me there and gave me multiple hugs and kisses.)  Before we said goodnight, I explained to him that I had gotten a call from Baby Austin and that he said he was ready to come and be Cash's little brother so Daddy and I were going to go and pick him up and I wouldn't be there when he woke up.  He seemed ok with it and we said goodnight and I promptly called the midwife and said we would be there within an hour.

At that point I tried to labor at home for about a half hour but decided that we should probably just get going because things seemed to be moving pretty quickly, or at least in comparison to my labor with Cash.  Our neighbor Aaron came over to spend the night with Cash and we headed off on the quick drive to the hospital around 9pm.

When we got there we went to triage and found out I was at 4 centimeters and in active labor.  The contractions were starting to come really quickly at this point but I needed to stay in triage to be monitored and they were also cleaning one of the rooms with the tubs that I had requested when we walked in.   And this is were I start folding like a deck of cards.  Within 45 minutes, I dilated from a 4 to a 6 and wasn't getting much break in between the contractions.  Plus I was forced to be on my back for the monitoring which gave me no relief or good way to manage the pain.  So by the time my midwife checked me to confirm I was a 6 and the tub room still wasn't ready, I told them to just get me the epidural.  And I was fine with it.  This was going so fast that I feared I would get in the tub and immediately go into transition which would negate any epidural possibility and I had never really envisioned going fully through to the pushing stage without one.

So we got into the room and within 20 minutes I had the epidural and Ross and I decided to get a couple of hours rest while I continued to dilate.  I was still feeling the contractions though (just the pressure, not the pain) and I was pretty awake so I just ended up laying there and then playing on my phone for a bit.  Around 1am the midwife checked me and said I was at a 7 and asked if I wanted her to break my water to move things along.  I decided that was better then getting Pitocin so we went ahead and it was probably a good thing we did because we discovered that there was meconium in the fluid.  However, my midwife assured me this wasn't a huge concern but that we would need to have the NICU on hand when I delivered just to make sure that everything was out of Austin's lungs.  So back to "sleep" I went but this time on my side to help move things along.

About a half hour later, the nurse came in and asked if I was feeling any pressure.  I basically said, not really, but I was feeling some minor "heaviness" down there.  When she came in 15 minutes later to check me around 2am, she discovered that Austin was basically almost out!  She looked at me and said "so you weren't feeling any pressure"?!  I just laughed and said that I didn't know, it didn't feel like anything major and wasn't the classic "having to go to the bathroom" feeling so I didn't think it was a big deal.  The midwife came in but we still had to wait for the NICU to arrive which took a few minutes.  When they finally came in, I said something to the effect of "Hi, I'm Hope and apparently my baby is falling out of me".  And basically he was because I pushed for two contractions and Austin arrived in the world.

The NICU checked him but he cried right away which indicated that everything was perfectly fine. Ross cut the cord and we did some skin to skin time and he latched on to nurse right away even with his tongue tie.  We were settled into our regular room by 4:30am and got a few hours of sleep.

We are so blessed to have Austin in our lives.  He is a great baby and an amazing addition to our family.  We can't wait to see him grow up.