O'Neil Family: July 2009

Kicen's birth was quite an event:

I had a doc appointment on Monday morning, at which my doctor scheduled an induction for Wednesday morning in the event that I didn't go in to labor before then. Late Monday morning, early afternoon, I started having random, irregular contractions. Nothing painful, nothing consistent and the only sensation was in my belly, nothing radiating from my back or other areas. The contractions were so irregular that I didn't pay any attention to them. I left work early that day and decided to take Tuesday off in order to have one last day to get things together before the induction on Wednesday morning....Little did I know -

Tuesday morning at 12:45am I got out of bed having very minor contractions. I began timing them and noticed they were very consistently 5 minutes apart and each contraction was getting noticeably stronger. After 20 minutes of timing, I woke Corey up and told him that we needed to get ready for the hospital. I called my parents, he called his and we waited. My dad was going to stay with Nakiah so we couldn't leave until my parents got there. We got to the hospital around 2am. At about 2:30am I was examined and told that I was dilated to 3 cm and 80% effaced, which was weird since the day before my doctor examined me and said I was 3.5 cm and 100% effaced. I wasn't exactly in the mood to argue, so whatever. The triage nurse called the on call doctor to see what he wanted to do. Remember - at this point, I'm in active labor, no one is arguing that. I'm 6 days past my due date and scheduled for induction the very next morning. The on call doctor said he didn't want me admitted, but to have me examined in another hour. (side note - not a big fan of this doctor, even before this experience. I would NEVER recommend seeing him!!)

At that point I was getting stressed. I was shocked, to say the least, that they weren't even going to admit me for at least another hour, not to mention by this time my contractions were getting closer and closer and were so much stronger than I remembered them being with Nakiah. The first time I was walking around breathing through contractions while dilated to 5/6. This time, I was in soooo much pain that I literally could not be still, let alone remain in my bed and I was told I was only at 3 cm. I really started thinking that there was no way I was going to be able to make it all the way through this labor without any meds. At the same time I could not sit still long enough to have any sort of needle jabbed into my back. I was getting scared!

After 30 minutes of serious, on top of each other, contractions another nurse came to examine me. The announcement this time was that I was at 6 cm. The nurse tried me make me do some squat technique to get the baby to rotate since he was in a "face up" presentation position. The amount of pain I felt as she was trying to get me to squat down is indescribable. It made the contraction so much worse and I wasn't about to continue! The nurse left the room and I swear the minute she did, the baby was ready to come and I had to push. A bunch of nurses rushed into the room to escort me to a delivery room....on the complete opposite side of the maternity floor. Halfway to the delivery room I had a huge urge to push and dropped to my knees. I remember saying "the baby is coming" and hearing the nurse tell me that I couldn't have the baby in the hallway and I needed to get up. After she called for a wheelchair, I got up and finished the trek to the delivery room.

As I was standing at the side of the bed, hunched over in the middle of another contraction, my water broke. The nurse was worried that the baby would be delivered on the floor and basically pushed me into the bed. At 3:13 am, less than an hour after the initial examination and the order from the doctor to wait for admitting me, the nurse, with only one glove on, while telling me to slow down my pushing, delivered Kicen through what felt like just one long push.

Meeting my little man for the first time

7 lbs 11.8 oz - 20 1/4 in

One proud daddy

He just got a shot and the face was the only reaction he had

First shot with mom and dad

Mom's first diaper - I felt so clumsy changing a newborn diaper...not to mention changing a little boy is soooo different than changing a little girl!