Brody Ward Grinstead is here! I was totally in shock and absolutely thrilled that he is a little BOY! He weighed 6 lbs 14 oz and is 21 inches long. We are so in love. :) Below I will detail my birth story so of course it will be long :)
We got up on the morning of January 27th and got Ella ready for the sitter. We wanted her to have a normal day so we decided to just drop her off on the way to the hospital. It was a pretty emotional morning for me because of course I was worried about how she would react to me being gone for a few days and the change of adding a new baby to the house. I was also just so emotional about the impending end of this pregnancy that has been anything but easy. We dropped Ella off and headed to the hospital and got there for our 7:30 AM induction.
After paperwork and all the inital vitals were done, the on call OB came in and broke my water around 8:30 AM. I was still 3-4 cm dilated and 80% effaced. He said he thought I would progress pretty quickly since I came in having a good start on my own. The breaking of my water was painless and quick! They also immediately started me on a low dose of Pitocin. Within half an hour my contractions got going. They started out mild but pretty close together- about 3 minutes apart. By about 10 AM they were getting much stronger and more painful so I decided to get the epidural. The anestheisiologist talked to me a bit about my epidural experience with Ella since I had it work only on one side after three failed attempts. He started the epi and thankfully it began to work well on both sides pretty quickly. At this time, the nurse checked me and I was still at a 4-5 so not progressing much. Noon came- still a 4-5.
Around this time, my epidural began to wear off on the left side just as it had with Ella and I started to feel everything. The contractions had been 2 minutes apart and very intense for several hours so I was sure I was making progress. The nurse checked me at 1 PM- no progress. At 2:15 PM my OB stopped in to check me and STILL no progress. He was shocked and said he thought I would have delivered hours prior. He checked the monitor and said that my contraction pattern looked great and he was very surprised that contractions so intense and close together weren't making any progress. He reassured me that we had plenty of time and baby looked great but I could tell he was disappointed that nothing was happening.
At this point I started to get really discouraged. I could feel everything on my left side and the contractions were so painful and I couldn't understand how I wasn't making any progress. I told my parents and brother to go ahead and go home because I knew it would be several hours before anything would happen and I knew Ella needed to be picked up from the sitter. Shortly after they left, my grandma stopped by and had just been in the room for a minute or two when the nurse came in and said she needed to check me again. I thought this was odd since it was 2:45 and I had just been checked half an hour ago but the nurse said that the baby's heartrate was in the 70s so she needed to see what was going on. As she was telling me this, I told her that I was feeling a lot of intense pressure and pain and I thought something was wrong. She checked me and to my surprise I was at 7 cm! I was pleased that I was making progress and remember thinking that hopefully it would only be a few more hours. The nurse went back into the hall to tell Jeff and to call my doctor to give him the update. She came back in five minutes later and I told her the pressure was worse so she checked me again and I was at a 9!
That's when things started to get a bit crazy! All of a sudden all of these people rushed into the room to try to get the delivery table and supplies set up. You could tell everyone was a bit flustered. I don't think I had quite grasped the intensity of the situation because in my mind I still thought I had lots of time. The nurse told me that my OB had left for Methodist and that the OB on call was out at Methodist West- yikes! She checked me again (5 minutes after the last time) and sure enough I was at a 10 and ready to push! I was so surprised! Just then my OB came in and it turns out he hadn't yet left for Methodist. Thank goodness!
They got me ready and I started to push. After the first push the nurse told me that the baby was crowning. What!?! I was thinking I would hear that about an hour into pushing! After pushing for two hours with Ella, I just assumed that things would take awhile. Boy was I wrong. I pushed through 4 contractions for a total of a little less than 15 minutes and Brody was born! When he came out, the OB said "Okay Dad, look and tell your wife what you had." Jeff was crying as he told me "Honey its a BOY!" It was one of the best moments of my life. It just reaffirmed to me how amazing it is to wait to find out the sex of the baby and why all those months of waiting were worth it! :)
After the birth, Brody was taken to get cleaned off but he was having some trouble breathing and his color was pretty white. They put the oxygen mask on him but when that wasn't helping they needed to take him down to the nursery to be put on oxygen and he also ended up getting fluid pumped from his stomach. While he was being taken down, the doctor was finishing up with me and told me that Brody's cord was one of the shortest he has ever seen. Apparently, with cords that short it is usually dangerous and impossible to deliver vaginally so he was very surprised that it had all worked out so well!
Brody stayed in the nursery for about 4 hours and then we were finally able to be together. He is just the most perfect, sweet little guy and we are so in love! He is nursing like a champ and just a cuddly little man. We got to come home today and he is adjusting to life at home with his new big sister and puppy. :) Ella is doing well with him so far and I can't believe how big she seems to me now compared to him!
Thanks to all for the thoughts and prayers as we have gone through this roller coaster journey of pregnancy. We have the most precious reward of all now and our family of four is complete! :)
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