The Birth Story

Alright, I feel like due to recent events I need to temporarily abandon the love story and tell the story of my little baby, Dalton River Standage.

For the last two and a half weeks I had been having pre-term labor issues. I had been to labor and delivery 4 times to have contractions stopped. I was on bedrest and taking a medication called terbutaline every single day. I was still having contractions almost every day and I basically couldn't do anything. It sucked. But what sucked even more was that I had no idea how long this would last. I knew I had to keep him baking, so that I wouldn't have a preemie. It was scary and frustrating and painful. It was like basically being in real labor for 2 and a half weeks. Not fun.

My doctor had told me that if I went into labor again after I hit 36 weeks that they would just let me have the baby. Finally an end in sight. I only had to make it until Thursday the 24th. Then I could have my Dalton.

Well Tuesday morning I woke up having contractions every 7 minutes and they were pretty strong. I took a terb and that helped for most of the day. Only 1 or 2 fairly painless contractions came through. Ted had to go to work that night, so he dropped me off at my mom's. He didn't want me to be home alone and go into labor. At 4:38 I got a very very painful contraction. by 5:15 I had a couple more, but they weren't consistent. They sure did hurt however. So I took another terb.

Well that terb did NOTHING. By 8 pm they were coming every 4-5 minutes and were last 1-2 minutes and they were practically reducing me to tears every time. I finally caved and called Ted and told him to come home, that we needed to go to the hospital.

Now, this was obviously not the first time we had been to the hospital for the exact same thing. Every time I would go in they would hook my up to the monitors, see how baby was doing and measure my contractions. Then they would check to see how far along I was. Prior to this I was 3 cm dilated and about 80% effaced, but I had been this way for a week. Then they normally shoot me full of terb and send me home on bedrest. I fully expected them to do this again.

Well they checked me and I was 6 cm dilated, 100% effaced and apparently he was at a zero station. Turns out they don't send you home at that point lol. The nurse told me that I would be having the baby tonight.

I was in complete and total shock. I wasn't ready. I still was supposed to have a month left. The apartment was a mess and I had nothing set up for this little man. I was excited and scared and nervous and a million other emotions all at the same time.

Well because I had yet to get the Group Strep B test done I had to get an IV of penicillin. They wanted me to make it a full 4 hours on the IV before my water broke, so that there wouldn't be a risk of infection for the baby. That was at about 11 PM. I also had to wait until some blood work got back before they would give me my epidural.

We finally got into the delivery room, and I finally got my epidural at about 11:30 PM. After that it was really a waiting game. Contractions started to slow down and after 4 hours I had only progressed to an 8. They came in and broke my water at 3, in an attempt to get labor going again. Finally at 4:50 I was dilated to a 10 and it was time to push.

The next 15 minutes seemed to both fly by and take forever. He was face up so they had to use a vacuum.

At 5:05 am on June 23rd, 2010 Dalton River Standage entered the world. He was perfect. He is perfect