Jenson's birth story

 

Alright, I figure I better start where I left off. My last pregnancy update I was 36 weeks. And if you're one of my fellow followers you'll probably remember according to that post I told everyone that my Dr. was freaking out because "He is going to be a HUGE baby"- already measuring 7lbs at 36 weeks. She was wanting to get things started and try and get him to come two weeks early so that I wouldn't be giving birth to a 12lb baby with my so called "small pelvis."

At 38 weeks, I went into my appointment thinking my Dr. was going to be starting me and I was going to be in labor that night. If there's one thing I learned from this pregnancy.... never EVER expect anything! I was only 3 cm dilated and He wasn't measuring any bigger. She scraped a few membranes around hoping that would start a few contractions. Dr. Craig said, "I'd be surprised if this doesn't do something and you have a baby in the next few days." But nothing happened! Boy, did she like to get my hopes up!

At my 39 week appointment I was still only 3cm dilated. Dr. Craig did the same thing as the week before and stripped a few more membranes, crossing fingers it worked this time! Then we made plans that if nothing happened she would induce me Tuesday July 15th, just two days after my due date. I was surprised because this whole time, She had been telling me about this crazy rule the hospital has, that if it's your first child, they cannot induce you until you have gone AT LEAST one week over your due date. BUT, there was a catch that I didn't know about! There is a score that they give you based on how well you have been progressing; dilating, effacement, position of baby, and a few other things. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, they call it your Bishops score...? Anyways... if your score is a 10 then they have the "Ok" to induce you earlier. My score was an 11! Which is why everyone was shocked that I hadn't gone into labor yet! My body was (as Dr. Craig said) 110% ready to have a baby, it just didn't know it yet.

I was just a few days away from my due date in this pic. #HUGE!

Ha, this pic I had to take because I was thrilled I could still fit in between 2x4s :)

Well, my due date came and went. It was a bit of a sad/depressing day. The next day (Monday) I went into my appointment thinking we were just going to schedule the exact time for the induction the following day. I was still only 3cm dilated. Argh!! It was so frustrating! Dr. Craig went and called the Labor and Delivery to see what time Tuesday they would be able to induce me. She came back in and said, "How would you feel about getting induced tonight?" SERIOUSLY???! Alek and I were thrilled!! She said they were not busy that night and could fit me into the schedule and to plan on them calling me somewhere between 4-5 to go in. She asked when I had last taken my shot. If you remember, I needed to be off my blood thinners for at least 12 hours in order to get an epidural. I had taken it at 7:30 that morning. So, Craig said, "Alright we will plan on giving you that epidural at 7:30 tonight."

We left the appointment feeling all sorts of giddy and nerves! I couldn't believe it was going to happen tonight! We decided to go to Firehouse to celebrate the good news and then went back home to start packing the last few items and getting everything ready. 

At 3:30 they called. HOLY COW! A whole 30 minutes earlier than what we were expecting! Well.. really I didn't want to get my hopes up so I was telling myself they wouldn't call until like 7pm that night. But 3:30!!! We started running around like crazy making sure we had everything we needed. I jumped into the shower for about 2 minutes because I was dead set on going to that hospital as clean as possible. Finally everything was packed and in the car. Al took me back inside and we took a few deep breaths and calmed ourselves down. Then, my dear husband gave me a priesthood blessing. It was perfect and made me feel at ease and ready. He's truly the best husband out there :)

We got to the hospital, checked in, and they got me all hooked up to Pitocin. The contractions started right away. I kept staring at the clock on the wall, hoping I wouldn't be in too much pain before 7:30 rolled around. Things were going great! Around 6:30 they checked me and I was dilated to a 4! Whoo!! Then, all of a sudden my nurse and Dr. Craig walked in. I was surprised to see Craig there already. But, I was happy and excited to see her! Until....she spoke.

"I'm afraid I have some bad new." 

My heart literally sank. I seriously felt all my happy feelings immediately leave. I knew exactly what that meant. But, I didn't want to hear it.

"I'm afraid they changed the rule and now the anesthesiologist won't give you an epidural until you have been off the shot for AT LEAST 24 hours."

UGH!!!! I'm pretty sure I didn't speak for like 5 minutes. Everyone in the room just sat and stared at me. Waiting to see how I was going to react.

"So, It's up to you. We can take you off pitocin and send you home and have you come back in the morning. Or you can do this natural."

I still didn't speak. I just let those words sit in my head for a few more minutes. I was already in labor!! Contracting and progressing really well. If I went home...I would still have some of the pitocin in my system and there was a REALLY good chance I would still progress and still go into labor. I told everyone I needed like 5 minutes to let the news sink in and to think things over.

 At that point, I felt like there really wasn't a choice... except go home and go into labor or stay at the hospital and go into labor and do this naturally. So, I actually started to consider a natural labor. My face in the picture above says it all. I was freaking out. Everything was going so good until now!!! It wasn't suppose to happen this way. I kept telling my mom, and Al to be prepared for a lot of screaming. This scared Alek and he kept saying, "Are you really going to do this?!"

My nurse came back in and asked if I had made my decision yet. I couldn't get myself to say anything!! She then asked if I wanted to hear her opinion, or what she would do if she was me. Not really....but I told her yes anyway expecting her to give me the "women do it natural all the time" speech that I have heard way too many times. But she surprised me! She told me to go home! and that she had her first baby natural and it took months of preparation. And where I hadn't been preparing for a natural birth and wasn't mentally prepared that she thought it would be best to go home. I told her my concern of having the pitocin already inside me and that I was worried about still progressing on my own. She told me that if I drank enough fluids there was a good chance of flushing the pitocin out of me.

That was all I needed to hear. Within a few minutes I was unhooked from pitocin. My mom gave me her huge water bottle and I started chugging. We packed everything back up and headed back home. I was feeling a bit down because I thought I was being a wimp and was worried what everyone would think when they had found out I had come back home. But Al was by my side and supported me 100% which helped A TON! On the way home, I happened to look at the clock and it was exactly 7:30. I had 12 more hours that I needed to stop myself from going into labor. Longest 12 hours OF MY LIFE!!

 We got home watched a movie then headed to bed. I drank so much water that I didn't sleep at all! I literally peed every 20 minutes all night long! But, hey, I was getting that pitocin out of me! Also I didn't sleep because I was so paranoid about my contractions continuing. But they slowed way down, from about 3 minutes apart to every 15 minutes to where I didn't even notice them anymore. I was sooo grateful!! My prayers were being answered!

By 7:00 the next morning I was back up at the hospital, checked in and hooked back up to pitocin. Over night I had dilated to 5cm. I was halfway there! :) My nurse said she would get my epidural as soon as possible. The anesthesiologist had surgery at 9, so she guaranteed it would be before that. Once again I looked at the clock and it said 7:30... whew!!! I had made it! I was now in the safe zone! Let's do this!

The anesthesiologist came in just after 8am. They made Al sit in front of me, so I could concentrate on him instead of the big needle they were about to poke me with. Let's just say Al wasn't a very good distraction. He thought that whatever the anesthesiologist was doing was WAY more interesting than trying to distract me. I tried to keep Al talking to me with very little success. He kept asking the Dr. all sorts of questions, like what that instrument was used for or what he was doing next. I tried to block it all out. At one point the two of them even joked that this was the anesthesiologists first time ever doing this... (roll eyes) thanks a lot guys!! Then, all of a sudden Al's eyes got huge! I could only guess he had seen the needle they were going to use. I said, "Alek!! Poker Face!! I don't want to know what's going on back there!" But, really it was just a little poke and a bit of pressure I felt going into my back. Not bad at all!!

I had not been in any pain before the epidural, which I was so thankful for! I got numb pretty quick. Man it was the coolest/strangest feeling ever!! My legs felt huge and so heavy. I kept making Alek rub my feet so I could make sure they were still there. :) There was one point where I was numb everywhere except my um... crotch. It got a tad painful for a minute. I could feel every contraction and the pressure on my pelvis. This worried me a little because the part that was most important to be numb.... was not numb! My nurse came in and cranked the dose of epidural a little bit and within 10 minutes I was 100% numb. Awww much better! 

After that everything seemed to go by quick!! I think I slept a little bit but not much. I mostly just sat and watched the computer monitoring my contractions get stronger and stronger and thought it was so crazy that I couldn't feel my body doing that! 

At 9:30 Dr. Craig came in and broke my water. I closed my eyes because I heard the needle looking thing is deadly looking. So, I never saw what it actually looked like haha. I asked Al afterwards and He said it did look pretty scary! But, holy cow! Feeling your water break is the craziest feeling! I seriously thought I was peeing for like 30 minutes straight! All that warm water gushing out!

My left leg the whole time was twice as numb as my right so they had me roll over to my right side to try and get the flow of the epidural more into the right leg. But when I did this for some reason my lil man did not like that and with each contraction his heart rate would drop. It was pretty scary! So they put me on oxygen for a little while. Which helped a ton!! The oxygen actually helped me a lot as well. It help me calm down and take deeper breaths.  Even though I wasn't in any pain, it still was nice to be relaxed. :)

By 1:00pm I had made it to 10cm! whoo!! At 2:00 they had me start pushing. I pushed for 30-ish minutes. 

Then Al cries out, "Linds, He has hair!"

"You can see him?" I got so excited!! We then had to stop for a minute and wait for Dr. Craig to come back up. It was weird cuz I kept feeling the urge to push but my nurse kept telling me not too. I was still feeling no pain whatsoever. In fact I kept cracking jokes, giving Al high fives, and was grinning ear to ear. I was pretty impressed with that epidural!

Dr. Craig came in, got all situated and with only a couple more pushes, Mr. Jenson Kurt Lund was born! July 15, 2014. 2:39pm! 7lbs and 11 oz. 20 1/2 inches long.

My awesome coach :)

As soon as Jenson was born, they wrapped him up and put him up on my chest while the nurses started wiping him down. He only cried for about 5 seconds and didn't cry until the following day when he got circumcised... seriously who wouldn't cry after that?! Everyone kept saying how they couldn't believe how pink he was and that he had such good skin! I LOVED that I got to hold him right away. It kept me very much distracted with what else was happening down below. I'm pretty sure I felt the Dr. pull the placenta out but seriously I was so caught up in the moment I wasn't paying attention. I did make the mistake once, and glanced down to see what Dr. Craig was doing, and sure enough I saw her just a stitching away. Ah shoot! I thought to myself. That's going to hurt later... (I still couldn't feel anything.)

Al cutting the umbilical cord!

After he was cleaned up a bit, I got to do skin to skin with Him for a whole hour!! I swear it was only like 10 minutes though. Time already was just zooming by! It seriously didn't seem like an hour.

First family picture:)

"Al, I just had a baby!"

Best daddy ever <3

It was the most surreal thing ever! I'm so blessed that there were no complications and everything went just perfectly! :) I'm very VERY glad I decided to go home and wait until I was able to get that epidural! After all the excitement slowed down and they were getting ready to switch me to another room. We could all hear this lady in the room next to me just a moaning and screaming. I turned to my nurse and said, "man someone doesn't sound too happy!" and she said, "Ya... She's dead set on going natural." 

I couldn't help but laugh (no offense to all you ladies out there that are way stronger than me and prefer natural) But here I was sitting holding my baby, chowing down on my grape juice and graham crackers, feeling awesome! And that poor poor lady next door was just have the worst time of her life. Man, am I grateful for drugs and that everything worked out for me and lil Jenson! :) I feel so blessed!
A big thanks to everyone who came to visit, sent sweet messages, flowers, ect! And thank you for everyone who brought us meals! I love you all so much! :) But, really I need to especially give a shout out to my mommy and Syd-sue. They were awesome! They sneaked into my house and decorated it all cute for when we came home from the hospital. Then the next day they showed up with all these groceries and pretty much stocked my fridge with food. Made us lunch and dinner that day and cleaned my house! Seriously! How awesome is that? They are the BEST! :) Also a special thanks to Kylee Ann Photography for taking the best pictures ever at the hospital. I swear I look at them like 5 times a day and cry every single time! It was such a special day for my little family. 

Auntie Syd

Grandma!

Auntie Kyra

Auntie Breck!

Grandma!

GREAT Gma and Gpa

Grandpa!

Pregnancy Update! 36 weeks!

It's crazy to think that this may be my last pregnancy update! My little boy is going to be here before we know it!

34 Weeks

36 Weeks

Dr. Appointment: At my appointment yesterday, Dr. Craig measured my belly and literally gasped, "Oh Wow!" I guess my baby is.. well... HUGE! She said that if she had to guess, she would say right now he weights OVER 7 pounds. I was 7 pounds when I was born and was considered a bigger baby. HE STILL HAS 4 WEEKS TO GO!  Yikes. She also says I have a smaller pelvis?? Interesting because I have always thought my hips were huge and I could push giants out of there. But, no. Dr. Craig is concerned with how big he is getting and how small my pelvis is. So... good news! She is hoping to get him out of there two weeks early. Which means... I only have TWO MORE WEEKS! WAHOOOO! As of now I am dilated 1cm and cervix is already started to get thin. Dr. Craig said if I haven't gone into labor already on my own by 38 weeks, she will strip my membranes to help speed the process up. Ouch...  Hopefully that does the job because there's some crazy rule that for your first child they're not allowed to actually "induce" you until one week after your due date UNLESS you have a serious medical reason. Which oddly enough, blood clots and small pelvises don't count as medical reasons :( So... we'll keep our fingers crossed that I can go into labor by myself early and if that doesn't happen, I'll go into labor when my membranes are stripped. AND IF that doesn't happen, I'll just be prepared to give birth to a 15 pound baby. Dr. Craig actually said, "Don't buy any newborn size diapers or clothes because by the looks of it he's going to be a big baby!"OH. BOY.

Movement: I finally figured out what him having the hiccups feels like! I felt it a couple nights ago. Although I KNOW I have felt them before, this was the first time I was like, "Okay that has to be hiccups!" It's a crazy feeling!! and I have to admit... I'm not too found of it. haha It kind of drives me crazy!! I do love feeling him move though. He definitely is getting stronger. One night last week I woke up to what I thought FOR SURE was Alek poking me in the side.. I got all frustrated thinking, "why is Al waking me up??!" That's how hard it was! Sure enough is was just my baby. :)

Weight: This past month I've gained 3 pounds. Making a grand total of 28 pounds. I feel like a pig! I eat soooo much food!

Cravings: Hmm... still not craving anything specific. Every night it's something different. I eat a lot of snow cones! Yes, I've always been a bit obsessed with them but I feel like this summer has been even worse. Maybe it's just because I can get away with blaming them on the pregnancy ;) Last night at like 10pm I made Alek take me to Wendy's and get me a cheese burger. That was pretty random! Then I ended up only eating bites with pickles and threw the rest away. Sooo maybe pickles? I tell ya, it's strange!

Name: I'm glad to say we have it narrowed down to... I believe 3 options. Alek wants to wait and decide when Baby is finally here. I'm not so sure I'm too keen on that idea. I'm a planner and don't like waiting to decide something so life changing until the last minute. I'm hoping Al decides that when baby comes out he will look like a Baby "J" because that is what I'm still set on. :)
AND for those who have asked... I better make one thing clear. When I say Baby J. I'm not meaning "J" is going to be his name. I would hope I could be a bit more creative than that ;) That's simply just the letter it starts with. We are still keeping it a secret until he makes his grand arrival. Except those special few of you that caught me in a good mood and I told you. You guys better keep your mouth zipped up!

Stretch marks:  I never thought people would actually ask me this... but I'm not scared to share. I have been lucky! No stretch marks on my tummy or legs. I've been very good about applying my stretch mark lotion everyday. It has worked miracles! Sadly... it has not done so well with the ladies upstairs. If you know what I mean. But, they've gotten so big I don't really blame them. Their stretched to their max... TMI? Eh.... too bad.

Blood clot: Still religiously doing shots twice a day! All the credit goes to my amazing husband who remembers every single time! He's a champ. Sometimes I don't feel a thing, other times it hurts like a.... (IDK something that hurts bad) and then I get mad at Al and he is really patient and just says sorry and gives me a hug. :) The only bad thing about being on blood thinners... is well... my blood is super thin. Go figure. I get bloody noses ALL THE TIME! In fact as I'm sitting here typing this I got a tissue shoved up my nose. Eh... at least I'm not getting any more blood clots, right?

Things I can't wait for:

• Sleeping on my belly again. Notice it's at the top of the list.
• Holding my baby for the first time!!!
• Seeing Al hold our baby.
• Finally deciding on a name.
• Dressing my little guy in all his cute clothes! He's going to be a STUD!
• Wearing normal clothes
• Not peeing ever 5 minutes.
• Not peeing everytime I sneeze. Again.. (TMI?) Allergies don't make it any easier! 
• My next doctors appointment. Best part of the week now a days.
• To go running!!!! Ahhh I can't wait!!!
• My ribs not hurting. I forgot what that feels like!

Things I'm going to miss:

• Feeling him move inside me!
• Having an excuse for all the food I eat ;)
• Having an excuse for wearing Al's basketball shorts all the time.

Here's a few maternity pics too! Kylee Ann Photography took them and did an amazing job!! She also will be taking pics while I'm at the hospital in labor. Can't wait!!