Part 1: The Delivery

Welcome to my Delivery Room

Labor is tough work!

Proud Daddy!

Reece J Morse

We scheduled our induction or eviction of Reece for December 29th and our appointment was at 7:30 AM. When we got to the hospital I was checked and was 3 cm, 90% and the baby was at -1. They put my IV in and started pitocin around 8:00, I started having contractions pretty quickly. They weren't too bad initially and got a little worse as the morning went on.
Around 11:30 I decided to get an epidural. I am very glad I did! I was checked again shortly after the epidural and I only progressed to 3.5 cm. At that point my doctor decided to break my water and increase my pitocin. I almost immediately began feeling the contractions again, so I was certainly glad I had the booster button! Two presses and I was comfortably numb again!
My nurse came back around 2:30 and I was already 8 cm dialated, which surprised me since it took more than 3 hours to get to 3.5 cm. The nurse explained that after I reached 10 cm, I would be allowed to "labor down" (I learned that this means letting the contractions to push the baby further into position without actively pushing) for about an hour. Around 5:00, she came back in and checked me and determined that I was finally at 10 cm. I expected to have my "labor down" hour to mentally prepare myself for the pushing stage. So, needless to say I was quite surprised when she asked me to try pushing! I pushed through one contraction and promptly threw up from nerves possibly! (Unfortunately, this wouldn't be the last time I threw up that day.)
The nurse said that I did a good job with that push and that she was getting the doctor. Reece was finally going to make his appearance! After about an hour of pushing (I knew it would be hard work, but I think that's about as exhausted as I've ever felt!), Reece was welcomed to the world at 6:02 pm!
I have to admit, that was the most amazing moment of my life. When Reece was put on my chest, I couldn't have imagined the love I would feel for a 7 lb little boy.
He was fine other than having a little trouble breathing, but after sucking quite a bit of amniotic fluid out of his lungs, he was great. His color quickly turned pink and Daddy proudly held his new baby boy! Unfortunately I wasn't doing so well. I have a few complications that caused me to hemorrhage a bit. Because of this, I was given a blood thickener which made me very sick. I lost even more fluid due to this. My blood pressure also increased quite a bit, I had wires coming from everywhere. My heart rate, blood pressure and blood oxygen level were all being monitored. I also had an IV with 4 tubes attached.
We were optimistic and hoped that at some point I would feel well enough to try to feed Reece, but at 11:00 pm, Tyler decided to have to nurse take Reece to the nursery so they could feed him. Finally, around 2 pm, I was feeling well enough to hold Reece again, I also called my mom to let her know I was doing better. I was given potassium through my IV and went back to sleep. We woke up around 7 the next morning and I finally felt somewhat normal again. Finally around 9 am we were finally moved to the postpartum room and Reece was able to stay with us.
We also found out that our dog ate an entire bowl of chocolate candy! Luckily it was mostly milk chocolate, which we found out is the safest chocolate your dog can eat. Since we have a fairly large dog, he would have had to eaten around 3 lbs of milk chocolate to get sick. Instead, he just had quite the sugar high according to the new grandmas who were staying at our house.
At last everyone was recovering well and approaching healthy. Our new family was finally together!