The Jos Know: August 2010

Okay, I don't really write odes. I mean...EVER.

Anyway, Isaac was finally born on Monday, August 16. Here's how it all went down.

A few weeks ago I could tell I was passing a kidney stone. Not sure if you've ever passed a kidney stone, but I hope you never have to find out how much it hurts. The pain went away and I continued on, whining and complaining and crying about being pregnant...still.

So then at my appointment last Thursday the OB tells me that I've dilated to 3cm and she thinks I'll go in the next day or two. This is something you should never tell a pregnant lady that's miserable. You should just let her believe she's got another 11 days or she'll go crazy looking for signs of labor. Truthfully though, I did have all the classic signs of labor but nothing much was happening. It's hard to convince my body to go into active labor on its own. It just sort of leisurely contracts when it feels like it and never really gets the show on the road.

Friday, Saturday and Sunday come and go with absolutely no baby. How frustrating. Sunday night I start to get severe kidney pain again, on my right side. The pain is so strong that I soon can't tell the difference between a contraction and the pain in my kidney and ureter. I call the OB nurse around 2:30AM and ask her if I can take a Darvocet I have. She okays that and says to come in to the office in the morning to get checked out. The pain killer lasts about an hour and 40 minutes. The whole time I can feel contractions; they're nice and strong but about 5 minutes apart. Upon pain of TMI, about 4AM I sorta thought my water broke, but due to some other circumstances that are best left unmentioned, I just couldn't tell for sure. The pain of the kidney stone was increasingly getting worse and worse. Del finally told me to call the OB nurse again and she told us to go ahead and go to the hospital.

At the hospital they finally gave me morphine for the kidney pain, but it only took the edge off and it was short-lived because it was IV injected. Surprisingly the doctor on call said that I should be admitted, treated for the pain and labor induced. I was ecstatic. I hugged the nurse, who has six kids; the first one is a girl and the 5 younger ones are boys.

The rest is easy, I got a room, I got an epidural which totally took care of the incredible kidney pain and the contraction pain, I got a whiff of Pitocin, I napped for a little bit while listening to Isaac's heartbeat, I felt like I should push, they came, they saw I should push, we conquered child birth.

Isaac was born at 5:07PM. He weighed 8 pounds 5 ounces, was 21 inches long and is definitely a boy. Wow, what a shocker. He's the heaviest baby we've had by nearly a pound. Rachel has been the biggest so far at 7 pounds 9 ounces. He had a hard time with latch for the first 24 hours but he's got it now. He's home and we're all settling in nicely.

Still having trouble with the kidney stone, but it'll go away eventually. I'm on Lortab for that. I'm tired, obviously, but feeling very happy and energetic.

So there you go. And now for the pictures.