He made it! Lincoln Jude was born at 12:18pm on 11/18/13, a whole 8 days early. He was our biggest baby weighing in at 7lbs 8oz, 20 1/2 inches, but still seems so teeny compared to his older siblings. I've recorded my other birth stories, more for my own memory sake than for anything else, and this will be no different.
We had a pretty typical Sunday. We went to church, came home, ate and then the kids napped. We decided to take them out for ice cream that afternoon as a fun treat, knowing we'd only have a handful of times that we'd be going out as a family of four anymore. As we left the ice cream place, I had a long and hard contraction. Something about it was very different from the rest of the ones I'd been having and I looked at Mike and said something along the lines of, "I think this may be the real thing." So, he began making phone calls to take care of his store and I began to question if I was going crazy....because surely this baby was not going to come early.
The contractions came and went for a few hours and then started to come consistently every 4-5 minutes around 6pm. I waited several hours (took a walk with the kids, cleaned the house and spent some extra time reading to them that night) and then I called the hospital. Normally, the Dr. said she would have had me stay home for a while longer, but because we had to get someone to come watch the kids and because my other labors had been fairly quick (5 hrs and 45 minutes and 2 hours aand 45 minutes, respectively) when I went into active labor, she wanted me to come get checked out. So, at 10pm we had a friend come over. She was a trooper and set up camp at our house just in case we ended up back at home and so that the kids could be comfortable in their own beds if I did end up staying. I really thought we'd be coming home and not having a baby for another week.
I went ahead and snapped a couple pictures in case he did choose to come. Here are the last couple bump shots at 38.6 weeks:
I was ready.
We went in, they checked for dilation and found I was only about 2cm and was not effaced at all. They wanted me to walk the halls for an hour to see if we could get labor really going because I was still in early labor and they were going to send me home with a false labor diagnosis if I didn't progress. We walked for an hour, the contractions came harder and they came every 2 minutes. We went back to be checked again only to have the contractions start to slow down when I laid down and the nurse found no change in my cervix. She sent us home apologetically and told me to get some sleep because this could last for weeks. It was not the most encouraging advice I'd ever received.
We picked up some food on the way home (finding a place to eat at 1am is really not very easy), ate and Mike and I laid on the couch. He drifted in and out of sleep while I started to feel heavier contractions every 2-3 minutes. After a couple of hours I could no longer walk or talk through the contractions and nothing I was doing (laying down, walking, rocking, working on house stuff) was slowing them up so I called the Dr. again. She was apologetic that my contractions were just not letting up and was afraid I'd come in and get sent home again, but really encouraged us to go ahead and come back because my previous labors had been quick. She was afraid if I went into active labor at home I may not make it to the hospital.
We made it back to the hospital around 5am (we actually made it to the hospital exit and then had to turn around and go home because I forgot my purse with all of our insurance information), they put us right in a room because, surely, this wasn't false labor and we'd be checking in. After a quick check we realized that we'd probably be heading back home for the day. There was no change in my cervix and once again, being at the hospital seemed to calm the contractions down. Though, it was clear that they were much stronger than the night before and much longer lasting. The nurse talked to the Dr. and they decided to give me a combo of meds to help me sleep so I wasn't going home exhausted. The idea was to either relax my body enough to completely stop the contractions or relax it enough to allow my cervix to change. Unfortunately, the medicine didn't "take the edge off" the contractions as they assured me they would. It just allowed me to doze in between them and then wake up in pain every 3 minutes. After a couple hours of this, they checked one more time. Still no dilation change, though I had become fully effaced and the baby had dropped more. The nurse assured me she thought my body was gearing up for active labor and she was sure this wasn't going to last weeks on end.
The Dr. came in to see us, explained what to look for and said she hoped to deliver our baby later on that evening. She asked the nurse to watch for signs of responsiveness from the baby before we left. He had obviously fallen asleep with our medicinal cocktail because his heart rate was great, but he was but he wasn't giving the heart rate spikes they wanted to see to make sure he was responsive. The nurse began to get us ready to go while watching for the spikes and as she was getting ready to pull my IV I prayed, "Lord, please let it be clear when I really am in labor. I don't want to just keep coming back to the hospital." The nurse chimed in, "I really think you'll be back later on this afternoon or evening in active labor." And then my water broke.
After that, everything is a blur. I went from 2cm-6cm in about 20 minutes. The contractions went from coming every 2 minutes to coming every 45-50 seconds and lasting almost 2 minutes a piece. The pain was excruciating because I couldn't relax. At that point I hadn't slept in 36 hours and hadn't eaten in over 8 hours. The new nurse they had assigned to me was convinced we were going to be there for several hours so she didn't want to check my cervix because of it. I eventually demanded she check for my own peace of mind. When she realized how quickly I had begun to dilate she called for my epidural. Once the epidural set in, I was able to close my eyes for a few minutes. Then I was ready to push! The Dr. came in, suited up and 5 minutes and 3 pushes later, this sweet little boy popped right out!
I was in labor for just a little over 2 hours. And he is so worth all the work it took to get into active labor. :) As it turns out, Sunday night was a full moon. After talking to the Dr. the morning after I had him, we found that it was probably the full moon and the atmospheric change that caused the erratic contractions and it was also probably the full moon that caused my water to eventually break. I *may* have gone into labor sporadically on Monday, the 18th, but chances are, because of the way everything went down, that the moon had a big part in it all. It kind of makes for a fun twist in the story. Another fun twist is that my original due date was actually November 18!
Lincoln is SUCH a sweet little baby. He's my most laid back baby thus far. He only ever cries if he's hungry or in his carseat. He lets his brother and sister pass him around like he's a hot potato and doesn't flinch at the noise levels that we get to.
We were excited to introduce him to Logan and Brody. They were able to come to the hospital a couple hours after deliver and hang out.
Logan wanted to hold him the whole time. Brody was just happy to see me alive and well, I think. He was very, very quiet the first two days when he visited the hospital.
He warned up quite a bit toward the end of my stay.
I sent Mike home both nights that I had to stay. We figured it'd be an easier transition for the older two if they had daddy at home. We also knew it'd give him the opportunity to get enough sleep so that when he was with me during the day and when I eventually came home, he'd be able to help out a lot more effectively. I was so thankful to be able to facetime with my older two through bedtime stories both nights!
I was also thankful for the special bonding time I got with my new little because I knew that once we got home, there wouldn't be much one on one anymore.
We've gotten the question, "Why Lincoln?" We got the same question with Brody. I guess it's par for the course when you don't choose a Biblical name or a family name. Honestly? We really just liked the name. We had several names that one of us liked but the other couldn't get behind. Lincoln was the first name that we both thought, "wow, that really fits." We've given each of our children Biblical middle names. Logan has my middle name, Brody has Mike's name and Lincoln was fun because we got to really seek out a name since there was no tradition for a third child's middle name! I had initially wanted him to be Jude _____ Kayle, so I really pushed hard for Jude. It didn't take too much, because Mike liked the name combination, as well. His middle name means "praise and thanksgiving" which is so fitting to me because we praised the Lord when we found out we'd be adding a new blessing and he was due right around thanksgiving. We'll always be thankful for our third little blessing.
If you've made it this far, congratulations! I know this was a novel. His birth was a little more eventful and there was a little more to it than his brother and sister's births. He was worth every second of the rough pregnancy and every second of the false laboring. I'm thankful that he's here and he's already blessing our family in ways we couldn't imagine!!
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