My Birth Experience

October 28, 2012

I woke up Sunday morning one week overdue. I felt big, swollen, and sooooo ready to have this baby. My scheduled induction date was the following day. Only one day away and I would finally have this gigantic baby.

The morning was a typical Sunday morning. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just the regular braxton hicks. I figured we would be going to church like we did every Sunday. However, after cleaning up from breakfast, I noticed that the braxton hicks were starting to feel just slightly different. I mentioned something to Kyan and as eager as he was to hear any sort of change, he insisted we go on a morning walk.

So, I humored him and decided to go on this walk. But to my amazement the braxton hicks started turning into real contractions, but only mild contraction. I still wasn't convinced that it was anything out of the ordinary. They were still very irregular and less then 30-40 seconds long. After getting home, however, the contractions started to increase in pain and they went from really irregular to 2-1/2 minutes apart around 11:30 am. I knew I was in labor at this point but the contractions were still only around 35-45 seconds long.

We decided to pack our hospital bag, have my mom pick up Samuel and wait for the contractions to lengthen. They continued to be 2-1/2 minutes apart for the next 45 minutes. At this point, Kyan insisted we go to the hospital.

We arrived at the hospital and were admitted shortly thereafter. My first nurse was awful. She was everything you don't want while laboring. She was slow, ditsy, and very lackadaisical. I was in some serious pain, okay! I needed an IV before getting my epidural and I swear she took a lunch break before she came to place the IV in my arm. We arrived a little after 12:30 pm and I didn't get my epidural in me until after 2:30.

Nonetheless, I got my epidural and the nurse was switched out due to the end of her shift. Thank the Lord for that. The second nurse I got was perfect. The labor went beautifully. We had our baby boy two hours later at 4:32 pm. He was out in two pushes with no serious damage done. He was one healthy 9lb - 5oz baby and 20-1/4 inches long.

We joyfully welcomed our no named baby boy into this world. It took us two days to figure it out. But, once we did it stuck like glue. We tried Brad, we tried, Tyler, we thought about Spencer, but in the end, we decided on Ethan Galen Skeem. He definitely fits his name.

Samuel was able to meet his baby brother a few hours later. He was so excited.