Jeff and Ashley Schill Family: February 2013

Jackson is now 8 weeks old and I thought it is probably due time I sit down and write about his birth story. Before I start with the actual day, I have to back up to a few days before. I had been scheduled to be induced on Friday, December 28th for several weeks and I kept debating whether I wanted to go through with it. For about 3 weeks leading up to the induction date I had been having contractions almost every night for several hours and then they would subside by the time I went to bed. It was a little unnerving! Anyways, there were many pros to being induced like knowing the day he would come, having someone lined up to watch Jamisen, knowing my doctor would for sure be there to deliver me, and so on. But one of my BIG reservations about being induced was just forcing something that wasn't natural for my selfish reasons. I'm definitely not a "natural" person but I didn't feel right about making the baby come when he wasn't ready. On Thursday the 27 I had a checkup so I told myself that I would see if I was progressing at all and make my decision then. I had talked to my friend Adele who is a nurse and she told me about a Bishop's score they use to determine if someone's body is ready to be induced. You get different points for how effaced you are, how dilated, the position of the cervix, the consistency of the cervix and the station of the baby. If you are over an 8 on the calculator then they will go through with it. I figured this would be my guide to decide and I also told myself if I wasn't dilated to a 3 or more I wouldn't do it. When I went to my appointment that day they told me I was about 80% effaced and barely a 1. I was the same thing about 3 weeks prior at my last appointment! I was shocked to hear that no progress had been made in spite of having contractions for the last 3 weeks. When I heard this I immediately said, "well there's our answer, I'm not going to do it." I felt a big flood of relief when I decided and figured that must be the right decision. However, it was a little annoying because the Nurse Practitioner kept trying to talk me into it and said I could talk to Jeff and decide that night and call my doctor to tell her. After more discussing of the pros and cons, I decided to still not go through with it and I called my doctor that night to tell her. I could tell she was annoyed and really tried to talk me into it. This made me feel horrible and made me question my decision again (can you tell I'm super indecisive?!) I stuck to my guns in spite of her encouragement and said I didn't want to do it. After all of this the next morning I got a call from my doctor's office saying that they didn't notice that my blood pressure was really high when I was in the day before so they needed me to come back and check it. I went in and it was still high so they had me lay on my side for 30 minutes and it came down. At this point they said I needed to go on bed rest to keep it down until the baby came. Are you kidding me?! Had I known this the day prior I would have gone through with the inducement because there was an obvious medical reason for it. I just didn't want to do it for selfish reasons and then blame myself later if the induction lead to a c-section or something worse. I told them this and asked if we could still do it but they said no and that I just had to wait on bed rest. I was so mad at them for not noticing something so big the day before and mad at myself for making the "wrong" decision. Needless to say I went home that day and stayed in bed all day. Sometime in the middle of Friday night I could feel contractions off and on and I had the thought that I should maybe track them but then kept falling back to sleep. I had tracked them so much in the past for them to then subside that I stopped really noticing them. Saturday morning I woke up around 7 and felt really sick. I told Jeff I felt like I was going to throw up. I was having contractions so I started timing them and they were all about 6-8 minutes apart. I called my mom and she came out to pick up Jamisen and we headed to the hospital around 10am. Once I was in triage they checked me and said I was a 3 and that the doctor on call would send me home unless I was a 4. I was so lucky to get a wonderful nurse and she told me I could either get a shot of Demoral to help with the pain and go home or walk around the hospital to see if I could progress more. We told her we would walk around. We went to the cafeteria and I got a muffin and hot chocolate, not realizing that was the last of my food for the day! If I had known that I would have sent Jeff to McDonald's for a deluxe breakfast! :) After walking for some time we went back and she checked me again. She said I was barely a 4 but that she was putting it in the computer and admitting me! From that point on I labored in triage while waiting for a room to open up. It took me all afternoon to get from a 4 to a 5 and then a 6. I kept asking for the epidural and she kept telling me that it would be better if I could get further along. So I walked some more and by this point they were coming every 1.5-3 minutes apart. Finally around 5pm a room opened up and they moved me. I was still asking for the epidural and got one around 6pm. At that time I was almost a 7. When I got the epidural it only worked on the right side of my body and I could still feel everything on my left. So the doctor came back and gave me more medicine which then completely numbed me on the right to the point that I couldn't move my legs one bit. Around 7:30pm my doctor came in and broke my water and checked me. She said she would come back at 8 to see how I was doing. When she came back at 8 the nurse checked and said "she is ready!" From that point things progressed quickly. Right before I started pushing I told the nurse I felt like I was going to throw up and then the room went black and I was on the brink of fainting. I couldn't see anything and the nurses voices and Jeff's were far away in a tunnel. I could feel myself getting ready to lose it when she gave me a sip of cold water and it brought me back. When this happened my blood pressure went way low and the baby's heart rate dropped but then came back up. Then it was then time to push. I did several sets but kept telling them how I felt a little out of it, like "not all the way there". The doctor gave me two shots, one for anti-nausea and one to bring my blood pressure up, and right after I pushed for another set and at 8:31pm Jackson Bryant Schill was born!! Soon after he was born all of my family was able to visit and meet him since visiting hours hadn't ended at the hospital. Jamisen was so excited when he met Jackson. He wanted to hold him, see his fingers and toes, and then wanted to share the iPhone with him and teach him how to play games. The next day Jeff's brother Rob and his family happened to be driving to Monterey from Denver so they made a small detour and visited us in the hospital. It was so fun seeing them!

I may be a little biased but he is such a beautiful little guy! I was so excited to see that he had a head of dark hair. I had a lot of dark hair when I was born and during this pregnancy I kept telling Jeff that I wanted a baby with hair and that I thought he was going to have hair. He has the most adorable pouty lips ever (gets that from Daddy)! Overall his features are darker than Jamisen's (has eyebrows, darker eyelashes and more olive skin) so it will be interesting to see if they look like brothers as time goes on.

Laboring...in the picture on the top right Jeff took a snapshot while I was in the middle of a contraction, can you tell I'm enjoying myself?! On the bottom right breathing some oxygen before pushing so I can avoid fainting!

Jackson had lots of visitors in the hospital! Starting in the top left and going clockwise: Uncle Rob, Nana, Uncle Morgan, Aunt Missy and cousin Anne, Nana and Papa, Uncle Tyler and Aunt Lynnsey, Uncle Ryan, Papa, Aunt Cascia, Uncle Parker and Aunt Kayleigh