Hyrum Adam Wells Birth Story
I was scheduled to be induced Wednesday August 28, 2013 at 3
pm exactly one week before my due date but the hospital (Banner Gateway) was
very busy and so they were running very behind on inductions. They called me early Wednesday morning and
told me that they would call me when they were ready for me to come in but it
wouldn’t be today or maybe not even tomorrow.
Dr. Layton warned me beforehand that they were behind, so I was
expecting as much but it didn’t make the news much easier. I was so ready to meet our little boy and I was
so uncomfortable and ready to not be pregnant anymore so this phone call put me
in a pretty cranky/ down mood. I got up
and started getting ready for the day, feeding Evelyn breakfast and getting
dressed and whatnot and then Dr. Layton’s nurse Kim called and asked if I would
like to come in later so that Dr. Layton could strip my membranes and see if
that could get things rolling. I of
course said yes and this completely changed my mood, it was such a relief that
at least I could do something that might help get this labor going.
When 12:30 rolled around, I headed to my appointment and
when I get there I see my old college roommate Chelsea Beckstrand, who I
haven’t seen since her wedding reception 5 years earlier. She tells me that Dr. Layton is running
behind and that she has been waiting for quite a while. This makes me more nervous and I worry that
he will cancel my appointment because it wasn’t even really a scheduled one. Luckily
after a while they bring me back and Dr. Layton strips my membranes and tells
me I’m about 2 cm dilated and 70% effaced.
He wishes me luck and says he hopes to see me soon.
I get home and am cramping and having a lot of bloody
discharge which is really normal after a sweep and go about my day. I took
Evelyn to the Superstition Springs mall and walk around in circles for about 2
hours and then head home. Joshua and I had planned earlier to go to the temple
Wednesday night and so we drop off Evelyn at the Rudd’s house around 5 and head
to the temple. It was a great session
and was really nice since it had been a while since Joshua and I had gone to
the temple together, and I wont lie I totally prayed that we would have this baby
that night. After we are done we go pick
up Evelyn and head home. On the ride
home around 8:00-8:30 or so I start to have contractions. I start timing them and they are 5 minutes
apart. When we get home we heat up some
food since neither of us had eaten dinner yet and then put Evelyn to bed and I
continue to have contractions 5 minutes apart and they are starting to get more
intense, I tell Joshua that this might be it and I text Bethany to let her know
we might be heading into the hospital.
We start packing our bags and I tell Bethany to head over, she gets to
our house around 10:30 pm and we head to the hospital.
I was so nervous they
were going to send us home so I tell Joshua to leave our bags in the car. They check us in and hook me up to the
monitors in triage and the nurse checks my cervix to get a starting point which
is a 3 and about 80% effaced. I ask the
nurse if it’s ok if I stand up because it’s easier to handle the contractions
that way. She says that’s fine and we
start the hour wait. During our wait, I
start to get much more confident that they are going to keep me because the
contractions were getting much stronger and painful, I started to need Joshua
to lean on and help me through the contractions and soon have no doubt in my
mind that they will keep me. After the
hour the nurse comes back in to check me and tells me im still a 3! I was in shock! She tells us she will phone my doctor and see
if he is ok with me walking around for another hour to see if that will help me
progress and Dr. Layton said that was fine.
So we start walking the halls of the post-partum unit and start another
wait. My contractions were pretty
intense by this time about 2-3 minutes apart and lasting about 45-60 seconds
each and I keep telling Joshua how I don’t know how they could send us home if
I don’t progress anymore because I wouldn’t know when to come back. I convinced myself that the walking wasn’t
going to do anything because I was standing and swaying the whole hour last
time and that didn’t seem to help. So I
started to try and relax my body during each contraction, which was really hard
because they really hurt. When our hour
is up (around 1 AM) we head back to the room and the nurse checks me again and
says I am a 4 and I could stay! I was so
excited! She said we would have to wait
a bit while they got a room ready for us and if I wanted an epidural right away
I said no and that I could wait a while longer.
About 15 minutes later my contractions really pick up and start to
become unbearable. I started crying
during each one and tell Joshua to go tell the nurse that I want the
epidural. She tells him that we need to
get me in my room first and that it will be a couple minutes but they will move
me as soon as they can. They finally get
me a room and it took a while to walk there because I had to stop at each
contraction. When the anesthesiologist
finally came I was so relieved. When I
got the epidural with Evelyn I don’t remember it hurting hardly at all. This one however was pretty uncomfortable,
there was a lot of pressure and I didn’t like the feeling on my spine. It also didn’t help that I had to stay
perfectly still even during my contractions which were completely unbearable. I just sat there bawling curled in a ball, I’m
sure it was pretty pitiful to watch. It
was not a fun experience but I did feel much better when the Epidural finally
kicked in. Once the epidural kicked in the nurse came in
and checked me again (around 3 AM) and I was a 5, hooray. I felt like I was moving along pretty
well. After this things got boring, I of
course could not sleep because of shivering and the constant interruptions and
obviously because im in labor but Joshua was able to get some rest which was
good. Around 6AM the nurse came to check
me again and I was a 6. I was kinda
bummed because it seemed like I was slowing down. I texted Kristen Pear, the girl that was
going to take our birth photos and she wanted to come in just in case I jumped
to a 10 fast.
Around 7 AM we got a new nurse, I wish so badly I could
remember her name. She was wonderful,
very talkative and upbeat very proactive about my pain management and just
overall a sweetheart. She asked how my
pain was and I told her I was having a window (an area that the epidural wasn’t
numbing) She tried so hard to get that
area numb, she kept having me change positions and gave me a boost of the
epidural and finally gave me a bolus of lidocain. The lidocain completely made me dead from the
chest down. I couldn’t feel a
thing. It was nice to have the window
gone because it was painful especially when I was getting close to delivering
but I didn’t like being so numb. During
all of this I was also getting very anxious, I just wanted to be done laboring,
I did not expect to have to labor so long with my second and so I think it
caught me off guard. I kept asking my
nurse if we could break my water to make it go faster and she said we had to
wait for my doctor. Dr. Layton was able
to come around 12pm. He broke my water
and said that there was Meconium in the fluid.
I was ready to push right away and only had to push during 3
contractions before Hyrum was born. It
was tiring but very fast. Dr. Layton was
so great, once Hyrum was almost out he told me to stop pushing and just let
Hyrum’s head slowly come out that way it would slowly stretch me out and hopefully
prevent tearing. Because he did this I
only had to get 2 tiny stitches and had almost zero pain (as far as recovering
from a tear, which was a completely different experience from Evelyn birth) I was so grateful he did it this way. We also found out right after Hyrum was born
that he had a tight knot in his cord and it was wrapped around his neck, he had
an extremely long cord. While he was
getting cleaned up the nurses commented on how long his cord was and then my
doctor said that they only have half the cord and the other half was over by
him. The knot is what most likely caused
him stress and to have a bowel movement.
The nurses were in shock that he was perfectly healthy and that he
handled labor so well. They told me it
was a miracle that he was just fine and that my labor didn’t turn into an
emergency c-section or worse. After they
told me this I was so worried about him, I just wanted to make sure Hyrum was
ok. Once we were able to hold him I felt
a huge wave of gratitude to my Heavenly Father.
I know without a doubt that Hyrum was being watched over and protected
there is no other explanation why everything went as well as it did.
Hyrum was born at 12:21 PM on August 29, 2013. He was 5 lbs 9 oz and 19” long and with RED
hair (we were not expecting that at all).
Hyrum has been such a blessing to our family. He has such a sweet spirit. I absolutely love his sweet cry, it’s very
pitiful and adorable. I will always
remember what a miracle and sweet experience his birth was. I know he will do wonderful things with his
life. I hope he always remembers that he
has had the hand of God supporting and protecting him since before he was born.
No comments:
Post a Comment