Steve and Kellie: August Jack is Here!!!

***Super long post warning!***

I decided to be induced so that life was easier to arrange - especially getting my Mom out here and able to take care of Penny! So, my due date was July 13th (Friday the 13th!), but since that was a Friday we set the induction for July 12th at 6am so my doctor might actually get a weekend. My mom flew in late on the 11th and her flight ended up being delayed, so she didn't get in until about 1:00am. I felt really bad that we went to bed and let her Uber to our house, but I really wanted to get some sleep before being induced. I got up at 5am to call the labor and delivery unit to make sure they had room for me to come in and be induced. They told me to come in at 7am instead of 6 and they'd get me going then. Turns out there were 5 inductions scheduled that morning and I was the only one they let come in because things got so busy! I was really grateful things went according to plan there!

This sweet boy had been sitting on my sciatic nerve for the last 5ish weeks of pregnancy, so I was definitely hobbling by this point! The nurse tech showing us to our room took off walking and stopped and looked back realizing she had to wait for me since I was moving at a snail's pace! We got to our room and got settled (paperwork and all that jazz) and then they said they'd start pitocin soon and left the room. That's when I started to lose it! I told Steve I did NOT want to do this again and just thinking of all the pain and exhaustion a newborn brings. Steve told me tough nuggets cause it was happening whether I wanted it to or not...

My doctor was at the hospital with another patient and stopped in to check on me. We talked it over and I decided to have her break my water since she would probably have to do that anyways and I had her there right then. She broke my water and told me she thought we'd have a baby by lunchtime. I thought no way!

Around 10am the nurse came in and started the pitocin. I believe they work in 2mg increments and increase it every 15ish minutes. Once the pitocin started I almost immediately started having intense contractions. I wasn't super happy. The contractions weren't consistent though, so 15 minutes later she upped again. That did the trick and I was officially in labor! I was really glad I didn't need much medication to get things started, but I hadn't gotten an epideral because I wanted the pitocin to really take off and I know an epideral can sometimes slow the process. Well, I could not get the epidural fast enough once those intense contractions started and it felt like forever before they came into the room! The doctor who put the epideral in had a very interesting personality (talked about texts from Chipotle a lot of the time...) and was really thrown off when I told him not to tell me when he was putting the needle in. I just don't need to know when a gigantic needle is that close to my spine!

Then I took a nap. :) My nurse (Brandi) woke me up around noon to check me and I was fully dilated. She went and called my doctor and then came back to get things ready for pushing. One of the leg holster things on the bed was broken and so Brandi and my doula (Penny) rigged it up with an extra bed sheet! Classy. Then they had me start pushing. I pushed a few times and then my doctor came into the room. I could tell she was annoyed they had had me start pushing and she was hurrying to get "suited up". She looked at me and said "that's a big baby!" Not the greatest thing to tell a lady about to give birth. After a few more pushes, they lost Gus's heart beat on the monitor, Throughout the morning I had been rotating positions because his heart rate was being a little finicky with labor. My doctor kept saying "I can't find his chin" and finally looked at me and said something to the effect of "this baby needs to be born now. You need to push even if you're not having a contraction." That scared me for sure, but two or three more pushes and he was out and just fine! He let out all of one little cry and then snuggled into me. I felt such a powerful feeling of love for Gus immediately! I was so in love with him from the instant he was born!

August Jack Peper
Thursday, July 12th
12:28pm
8 lbs 8oz
20 inches

I don't remember too much after that. He didn't want to eat, but everyone reassured me that was fine - he was a big baby and just didn't need to eat right away. Because they had wanted to get him out fast, I'd had a bigger episiotomy than normal and so my doctor took quite a while to fix me up after Gus was born. She was talking to us and occasionally gesturing which made me sick cause her hand was covered in blood! I lost quite a bit of blood and she briefly talked with the nurse about giving me some more through a transfusion, but decided against that. I did have to take iron pills though.

We were transferred to our recovery room about 2 hours later. Of course our pediatrician was out of town, so we had the hospital one evaluating Gus. Luckily our pediatrician knew her - they'd gone to medical school together, so we felt okay with that. Gus was sleeping in 4 and 5 hour stretches and not eating very often. When he was eating, he'd latch and come off a lot and whine. I met with four different lactation consultants and they all told me we were just learning to nurse and it'd be fine. Way more on this later, because everything was not fine and I totally sensed it! But that's a different post.

They had to monitor Gus's glucose level since he was considered an extra large baby. I didn't think he was abnormally big, but according to their guidelines he was. That was sad watching his heal get pricked! His glucose was perfect the whole first day though, so they stopped monitoring it after that. I was hoping to go home on Friday, especially since my mom was with Penny 24/7 while we were in the hospital, but because he wasn't eating a ton they decided to keep us an extra night. We ended up going home on Saturday. It took us until Friday late afternoon to decide on a name. We went back and forth a ton! August was because Steve wanted Gus, but I couldn't do just a one syllable name since I wanted his middle name to by Jack after my Grandpa, which is also a one syllable name. So we kind of compromised on August!

Now the pictures:

First poop! It was a two man job apparently.

First bath. He didn't like any of it!

Penny was so in awe of Gus and was so gentle with him from the start!

She walked into the room to visit and saw Steve laying on this bed with Gus on his chest. She immediately needed to do that exact same thing with him!