Eric's Birth Story

I am so incredibly happy that Eric has joined our family and it feels like he has been here forever already.  He is now four weeks old so I figured it was time to get his birth story out there.

Eric's story starts on Friday, May 27th, his due date.  I told Ryan, while we drove to dinner after dropping off Caleb for a sleepover, that I was in labor and that we would be going to the hospital after we ate.  Well fast forward 5 hours and we didn't have a baby.

I was disappointed, but understood that we had an induction date set for Friday, June 3rd and Eric would probably be stubborn like his brother and make us wait until that day before coming on his own.  We continued to "walk it out" all Memorial weekend.  We traveled down South all 3 days in hopes that today would be the day that we could just pop on over to the hospital.

Monday, Memorial Day, was no different.  We spent the morning at home and decided to go walk around the mall, again.  We met my mom and her husband there and we started toodling.  I went and got my toenails painted because they were a hot mess and I had high hopes that it would work some magic.  I was exhausted from walking so much so we left the mall and went to dinner.

Let's rewind to Monday morning when I woke up completely saturated.  Now my water didn't break until I was already admitted in the hospital with Caleb so I had no idea if I had just peed myself in the middle of the night, if it was sweat because we live in CA where we have no Spring and jump straight to Summer or if my water had in fact broken.  I went about my business, put a pad on to time the discharge and didn't say anything.

So during dinner I let it slip that I had woken up this way and everyone went into panic mode.  They made me call the hospital and after talking to the advice nurse it was determined that I needed to come in to get checked out.We sent Caleb home to my mom's house to go to bed and off to the hospital we went.

We got into Labor and Delivery and they started to run tests and monitoring me and baby.  I was not happy with the doctor that was examining me at all.  She kept saying "my story" sounded consistent and also told me that I wasn't dilated at all when just 3 days earlier I had already been at a 3.  After 2 hours of test, swabs and ultrasounds it was determined that there was a low amount of fluid around baby so they were going to induce me.  We called my best friend and mom and told them it was on.

I got into my delivery room around 9pm and we started the process.  I was terrified of being induced in all honesty.  I have heard horror stories about how painful Pitocin is and I didn't want to go through it like that.  I wanted him to come on his own.  Well by 10:40pm I was rocking and rolling and only had to have 2 doses of Pitocin (side note: apparently you start at a 2 and can go up by 2 every 30 minutes until you reach the max of 30).

I was doing great and breathing through all of my contractions.  All of a sudden around 12:15am I asked my mom to put lotion on my feet because they itched so bad!  She was massaging my feet for less then 5 minutes and my water broke! :)  The contractions intensified by a thousand and this baby was coming, and fast!  After my water broke I went to the bathroom to clean up and so they could switch out the bedding and I had ever desire to push while I was sitting on the toilet!  Talk about a scary thought, being that lady who delivers her baby on the toilet!  My nurse came and checked me and got me back in bed and ordered my epidural, it was now 12:30am.

While placing my epidural my contractions just kept getting more intense to the point that I couldn't take it.  I was not handling the pain well at all and then they lost Eric's heartbeat!  As if there already isn't enough to deal with emotionally at this moment, now I was listening to them discuss how they needed to hurry because baby didn't like this position and yada yada.  After just moments my epidural was in, Eric was fine and I was on my way to feeling great!

My epidural was placed at 1:06am and by 1:30am I was fully dilated and ready to deliver.  They called for the doctor and we waited.  We kept waiting and finally the doctor came in at 2:10am.  They set up and at 2:17am I started pushing.

After 2 pushes and 1 minute, Eric James Hughes was born and placed into my arms more perfect then we could have ever imagined!

Time: 2:18am
Weight: 8 pounds, 2 ounces
Length: 21 inches
Head: 13.5

Ignore the fact that I recorded his length incorrectly here.  Blame it on the lack of sleep :)