Our beautiful baby boy.... Camdyn Joel Weber!!!
Camdyn's birth story has some similarities to Brad's but includes a few BIG differences. Again like with Brad I woke up around 2am and noticed I was having some contractions. Nothing to painful, but noticeable. I did fall back to sleep a few times, but then realized that I was waking about every 9 minutes. I didn't want to wake or alert Jon "in case" this was nothing, so I decided to go down stairs to time the contractions and to pull out a few of those pregnancy books to see if this was indeed the real thing. The funny thing about these contractions was that they were not as painful as I remember having with Brad... I could still walk/talk during them.
Around 4:00am I heard Brad wake up and go into our room, which was when Jon realized I was not in bed so he came down to see what was going on. I told him I thought something was happening, but he could go back to bed for awhile. Since these contractions were consistently between 6 to 9 minutes apart for the last 1.5 hours, I finally decided to call the nurse line.
After talking to the nurse she said she would page the on call doctor, which just happened to be Dr. Cowling (my doctor). I was very happy.
Dr. Cowling then called me back and after we chatted, she told me I needed to head to the hospital right away and that she would meet us there. As a side note, at my last appointment with her she had told me that if I went into labor that basically I should head to the hospital before calling because I was already 4cm dilated and fully effaced and the baby would come quickly since Brad arrived in just 6 hours.
So I woke up Jon to let him know what was going on and he called Jesse to tell him it was "go time" and we needed him to come over to watch Brad. It only took Jesse 10 min to get over, but by the time he arrived my contractions had hit the next phase and became much more intense. Jesse was pretty impressed with Jon and I as to how calm we were and how my breaks in packing for contractions were nothing like in the movies. :)
We were heading to the hospital by about 5:30 and by this time my contractions were intense. We arrived at the hospital and the older gentlemen at the ER entrance knew I needed to get up to the maternity ward quickly, so he got me a wheel chair and took us up the short cut way and upon arriving upstairs he told the nurse that "this lady is going to have her baby now". Both Jon and I chuckled at his comment. The nurse could tell I was in pain, so she got me in a triage room to check my progress. After getting into a gown, she came to check me, and immediately said "looks like your done". I asked her what she meant by that and she said "we need to get you to a room immediately, you're ready to go". Immediately I started crying... not because I was shortly going to meet our baby, but because it meant that there was no epidural in my future.
At this point they again paged my doctor to see where she was, knowing that a baby was going to make its debut very shortly. Once I was in my delivery room, with not sign of my doctor, the nurse told me to hold it in, but if I felt the need to push let her know and she would run down the hall to wake up the on call doctor who was trying to sleep. At this point Dr. Cowling called and said she would be there in 20min. The nurse asked if I could hold on for that long and I told her I would try my best (in between screaming pain). The doctor arrived about 6:15, walked in with a BIG smile and said "well are you ready?". With that she broke my water and it was really go time. With contractions in full swing, the baby was coming down nicely. I totally understand where the screaming pain comes into play (something I did not live the first time due to the epidural) when you hit the point of the "ring of fire". It was at this point where the baby's head was completely crowned ready to pop out and my contraction stopped. Holding on for dear life and praising the Holy Father, Dr. Cowling asked if I wanted to touch the head. I declined, since all I really wanted was for him to be out, she then attached the suction to his head and helped with that final push. RELIEF!!! Our baby boy had arrived, fully healthy, and with a good set of lungs.
Camdyn Joel arrived at 6:43am
This is where things got interesting....
Typically once the baby is out and the placenta is delivered, your uterus continues to contract and the bleeding subsides. Mine on the other hand did not. Again the first time around with Brad I did not realize how much it hurts when the doctors & nurses push on your belly after delivery because of the epidural. But, truly that after part is rather uncomfortable as well. Since my bleeding was not stopping, basically I was emitting large clots that they then had to weigh to gauge the amount of blood loss. Dr. Cowling did some exploratory things to see what was causing the excess bleeding, but to no avail and many painful groans from my end, she thought best I go to the Operating Room for a dilation & curettage (D&C). Since I had loss just under 2 liters of blood, Jon was left holding our precious new little Camdyn, while I went to the OR. This is where I finally got some pain medicine and was put out for surgery. Things went well in the OR, it turns out that my lower uterus was not contracting properly so basically not telling my body to stop the bleeding. After the D&C, Dr. Cowling put a balloon in my uterus to put pressure on the interior walls to make sure that bleeding would stop, which it did. The balloon had to be placed for 24 hours, so I was then bed bound until its removal. So much for a quick recovery with a natural delivery! All in all things worked out fine, I will be a little anemic for a while until my blood volume builds back up, but we are now focused on the newest little member of the Weber Zoo!
