Before I had Levi I really appreciated my friends who put up there labor stories. I liked to know how things went down so I could kinda know what to expect.
SO
while I do want to have this documented for my own history, I wanted to put this up on my blog so that others can see how it all went down for me.
{Labor Story}
Wednesday around 4:30pm my water broke. I called Jordan and when he picked up he said "Is it time?" I said "I think so...". I wasn't quite sure since I was on my way to the bathroom when my water broke. I remember thinking "Oh no, I peed my pants!" But then I thought "Duh, I don't pee my pants...My water must have broke!" It was a small gush at first and then it just kept trickling. Jordan rushed home from work and was instantly in a panic. I wasn't quite sure what to do myself and so we called Jacie (of course) and my mom. I hadn't started feeling contractions so we we're sure if we needed to head to the hospital yet. Jace told us to head to the hospital because it was likely we would have the baby within the next 24 hours. We called ahead to let them know we were on our way. Since I wasn't in any pain I told Jord it was ok if he wanted to freshen up a bit and take a shower (he was mowing lawns). After about 15 min we were on the road and heading to the hospital.
It takes around 45 min to get to the hospital from Pine Valley and during the ride down I started to feel the contractions. They started at 6 min apart and by the time we were at the hospital they had gotten to 4 min apart. We parked and I waddled inside (my pants were soaked). I walked up to the nurses desk and said "Hi my name is Whitney Gardner. My water broke and my pants are really wet." The ladies just giggled and kept working. So I said "Uh..What am I suppose to do?!" A nurse finally gets up and takes us down the hall to our room. My contractions were getting pretty painful by now and after she was finished explaining things to me I realized that I wasn't paying any attention to what she was saying. I told her that I was sorry but I had no idea what she had just said. Jordan told the nurse not to worry that he would explain things to me and I went to the bathroom to change.
When we got to the hospital it was about 10 min to 6 pm and they were about to do a shift change. Because of this, we didn't have anyone check on us for another 30 - 45 min. When my nurse finally came in she went into great detail about explaining how the hospital works and how each machine was monitoring me and the baby. All the while I am cringing with each contraction that is coming 3-4 min apart. She hooks me up to an IV and I have to wait until the whole bag drains into my system before anything else can happen. She checks me at this point and I am dilated to a 6 and totally effaced. I told her I was ready for an epidural whenever I could get one.
Once the fluid was in my system she put me on pitocin to get my contractions to be a little more regular. Next came the epidural. OUCH. Ok, it wasn't too bad but I hated that needle going into my back. It wasn't fun. But the side effects were GREAT. I was about to throw-up with the pain from contractions but once the epidural kicked in I was loving life. I let my mom, Janece, Tresa Brown and my sister all come in. We all just chatted like it ain't no thang until the nurse checked me and I was dilated to a 9. We kicked everyone out and Dr. Winward came in. Everyone started prepping for the delivery. It was all so surreal. I couldn't believe that I was about to have a baby.
I got in position and they told me to start pushing. It was a weird sensation. It didn't really hurt (I was on drugs remember?) I just felt a lot of pressure "down there". It seemed like the hardest part was pushing for their 10 second count. But, after about 10 min of pushing baby Levi came into the world. They immediately laid him on me and me and Jo were able to hold our little boy. It was love at first sight. He's perfect.
After he was weighed, measured and cleaned up me and Jo were able to spend alone time with our little one. It was wonderful.
I felt (and still feel) like everything happened so fast.
Even the whole nine months.
My labor - in total - took about 5 and a half hours from the time my water broke.
And there it is. The labor story.
Levi met his only cousin for the first time this last weekend.
