1 Samuel 1:27
I prayed for this child, and the Lord
has granted me what I asked of him.
Wow, it is hard to put into words just how incredible August 9, 2011 was! It was a day that I had been thinking about for my entire life and it was finally here. The day that my first child was born! The day started out bright and early. I had a scheduled induction at 7:00 am at Ft. Sanders Hospital. When driving to the hospital, I can remember thinking just how surreal it was that I was going to have a baby that day. It would be the last time that John and I would drive through Knoxville being a family of 2. When we arrived at the hospital, we checked in and then got placed in a room. Lucky for us, we were in a large room with big windows and lots of natural sun light. It was perfect, minus the fact that the room overlooked Tennessee's football stadium (John's dream and my worst nightmare. ha). While sitting in the room waiting on the doctor, I can remember just looking around and taking everything in. I was nervous and excited all at the same time. It was like Christmas morning x 100 but I knew there was going to be pain along with my big present. ha. When the first doctor arrived, it was Dr. Hayney Weaver, one of our favorite doctors. She was on call the previous day and was about to end her shift. Since my doctor (Erin Saunders) was technically on bed rest, Dr. HW was going to get us started and help out Dr. Saunders. DR. HW went over the particulars and then told us that she was going to send in some of the nurses to go over paper work as well as get me going on my IV. Not long after Dr. HW left, the process began. The nurses came in and put in my IV (OUCH!) and started my Step Antibiotics. I had to have two rounds of the antibiotics before Luke could make his appearance. After we were done with the nurses, Dr. Moffatt (another one of our favorites) came in to check my progress and break my water. After realizing I am kind of a wuss, she decided to give me my epidural before breaking my water. This was the part of the day that I had been terrified of! THE EPIDURAL! I had always heard horror stories about how bad it hurt to get an epidural and how big the needle was, so to say I was nervous was an understatement! When the anesthesiologist came in, I was so scared. I definitely wanted an epidural, I was just scared of how bad it was going to hurt. To my surprise, it was not near as bad as I had expected. It was not the most comfortable thing ever, but definitely not the worst either. After getting my epidural in place, Dr. Moffatt came back in and broke my water. At this point I was about 2 cm dilated having contractions on my own every minute. While that may sound good, they were not regular and needed to be in more of a regular pattern. At this point, they went ahead and hooked me up to the pitocin and tried to regulate my contractions. After the pitocin drip started, they told me I would have several hours of a "waiting period" in which I was just going to be hanging out watching the monitors and making sure they could get my contractions into a regular pattern. Durning this time, I was not in any pain so family and friends were coming in and out of the room visitng with us. It was so weird to see the monitor go off and tell me that I was having a contraction and not be able to feel anything. It was kind of amazing actually. Every so often, a doctor or a nurse would come in and check my progress but for the most part, the morning and early afternoon was a waiting game. After the doctors came in a few times, they informed me that I was not quite progressing as much as they would hope. Baby Luke was still sitting high up and not making his way into the birth canal or dropping. It was around 3pm and I still was not dialiated past about 4 cm. This was super disappointing to me considering I had been there a while and was not making a lot of progess. I knew that there was the possibility of a C-Section all along due to how big Luke was and how little I was but I still was hoping that it would not come to that. Dr. Saunders had warned me of that previously (which is also the reason I was being induced a week early) but for some reason I thought my body would work it out on its own. They decided to turn up the pitocin and see if that would help push things along. To my surprise it did but after several hours I was still stuck at about 6-7 cm. Plus I all of a sudden felt a awful pain on my right side. I informed the nurses and they had the anesthesiologist come in and give me an extra shot of epidural medicine. While this worked for a little while, It soon became evident that they pain was coming back. Once again, the anesthesiologist came back and gave me another exta shot. Thirty minutes later, the pain was back! At this point, the nurse suggested that we have the epidural replaced and have a new one put in. At first I was not sure about replacing the epidural in fear that what if this one did not work at all? What would I do then? After thinking about it for a minute and feeling the horrible pain once again, I decided to go ahead with it. A new anesthesiologist came in and replaced the needle and lucky for me did a wonderful job. I no longer felt any pain on my right side but sadly I was already so sick from all the previous pain and medicine they had been pumping in my body trying to regulate the pain. I was so nauseous I could barely see straight. My teeth were chattering uncontrolably and I felt like I had to throw up everywhere. It was honestly the worst feeling I have ever had. I would gladly take feeling the contractions over how sick I felt. The worst part was, it would not go away. For the remainder of the day, I was sick as a dog. I could barely think let alone talk to anyone. At around 8 pm Dr. Saunders came in to check my progress and make the call of what to do (C-Sections or keep trying). At this point, I was ready to throw in the towel and just wanted a C-Section. I wanted to Luke out and stop all the medicine. I just wanted to feel better. Dr. Saunders wanted to check me one last time before calling for a C-Section. As she checked me, we realized that I still had about two centimeters to go if I wanted to try for natural child birth. This sounded AWFUL to me! 2 MORE CENTIMETERS! UGH NO WAY! But after a little bit of convincing from Dr. Saunders and John, I decided I would try just a few more things to see if we could get Luke to drop and dilate to 10 centimeters. Lucky for me, Dr. Saunders is amazing and was able to accomplish both! With a few pushes, Luke droped down and I was at 10 cm! Now comes the hard part! We began pushing and boy was it tiring! I have honestly never felt more exhausted in my life! Not only did I feel sick, I was using every bit of energy I had to try and get Luke out! After 45 minutes of sheer exhaustion and throwing up on the doctor ( yes you read correctly, I threw up on the doctor) Luke made his appearence into the world at 9:29pm on August 9,2011. He was a healthy baby boy weighing in at alomost 8lbs. 12 oz and 21 1/2 inches long. The day was the longest day of my life but hands down the best day of my life! God blessed me with the beautiful baby that I had been praying for my whole life. It was amazing to see and hold this little boy that I had been carrying around for the past nine months! I was finally able to see his little features and kiss his little face! It was amazing! Below are some pictures of the day and Luke's arrival! Hope you enjoy!
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