Thankful Day 25-Thanksgiving

FYI: this is a long blog.
Today I am thankful for the number one thing I've received and am most thankful for this year. My little miracle, Perrin. Some of you might not know this, but it was hard getting Perrin here. It took over 2 1/2 years and 2 miscarriages but I finally got pregnant and stayed pregnant. The pregnancy itself was fine. The birth on the other hand...that was a different story. My water broke at 5 a.m. on June 7, 2010. I was in bed asleep but I felt like I needed to roll over. Those who have been pregnant before know that's not an easy thing to do. I woke up a bit to do so and my water broke. It actually makes the sound you hear on tv. I felt a ton of water come from me and jumped out of bed (which was amazing since I was HUGE) and said, "My water just broke!!!" and ran to the bathroom and sat on the toilet. I should preface this that this story might be TMI (too much info) so don't read this if you get uncomfortable. :) Hutch got out of bed and pulled the sheet off the bed and put a towel down on the mattress. That might sound insensitive to some people because you'd think he'd check on me first, but for me, that was perfect. I always talked about how I was afraid of my water breaking because I didn't want to ruin the mattress or the carpet or anything so I really appreciated and loved that he hurried and did that. He then brought me the phone so I could call my mom. I called her and she answered after like 2 rings and she knew it was me calling. She said she'd get dad up and they'd meet us at the hospital. I then had Hutch call his mom. Hutch then gathered up my bag and put towels down on my seat in the car. During this time I was trying to figure out how to get to the car without making a mess. I still had water gushing out of me (I warned you TMI). I went through 3 or 4 under garments before I said, "forget it, I don't care, we're leaving". I ran from the bathroom to the next room with tile and so forth until I got to the car. My contractions started while we were heading to the hospital and jumped to 5 minutes apart while we were driving. On the way there the song "A Moment Like This" by Kelly Clarkson came on and I just started to cry. The song fit perfectly. Once we got there we checked in and I told them my water broke. She said they would have to check me first to see if my water had broken before they could check me in. They said this to me while I was creating a pool of water on their floor. :) They took me to a room and nurse checked me and said, "yes, your water is very much broken" They hooked me onto some monitors and noticed my contracts were very close apart. My super awesome labor nurse, Wendy, was checking my monitors and I told her that I'd like to do this natural. She said ok. She checked me and said I wasn't quite dilated to a one yet. Yup, not at a ONE. Then Perrin's heartbeat started to go down. They hurry and put me on some oxygen and inserted a monitor into me onto Perrin to keep a better eye on him. They had me lay on my side and relax (yeah right! you just put me on oxygen and said his heartbeat when down) after a bit his heart rate went back up. When you do have natural child birth you need to be able to relax. After that incident, relaxing was really hard. It also didn't help that my contractions kept getting closer together and harder and more painful but I wasn't dilating. After five hours my wonderful nurse, Wendy, came in and asked me if I wanted an epidural. She said the anesthesiologist was going into a c-section so it would be awhile if I needed one. I said I wasn't sure. I had so many people tell me that I couldn't do it or laughed at me when I said I wanted to do it that I was really hurt and wanted to proof them wrong and I also didn't want to disappoint myself. I asked my mom. She said to get one if it hurts and that I'm not going to let myself down. My mom was one of the only few people who supported me in the decision for natural childbirth. For those of you who laughed or said I was crazy or anything like that, don't ever do that to someone else. When people decide that, they want your support. When you doubt them, you're planting that doubt into their mind and it makes it harder to relax. Sorry, off my soapbox. My doctor came in while I was talking to my mom and he said that I haven't reached the peak of pain yet. I told them I wanted the drugs. :) BEST decision. It helped a lot. I wasn't able to take a nap still because the nurse checked on my a lot because of the complications before they wanted to make sure it didn't happen again. I did try to nap though. At one point the left side of me lost the numbness. It HURT! It was weird to only feel it on one side. The doc came back in and upped the dosage. A few more hours later I started to feel like I need to push and badly. They check me and I had jumped to dilation baby coming time. They cleared the room (my parents and Hutch's mom were there) and told me I could push. That was hard. I pushed for 2 1/2 hours. Yes, hours. Longest 2 1/2 hours of my life. At one point, I thought if they could get the pain to go away, I could sleep for a few hours and try again. It hurt...a lot. It wasn't a pain hurt since I had an epidural but it was a pressure pain that no one had told me about. At one point I said, "I would give anything for a Diet Coke". During one of my not pushing times, my incredible nurse, Wendy, stepped out and brought me a cup...of Diet Coke!! It had mostly ice in it but I drank it and it was my magic juice. It gave me a boost of energy. It seemed that Perrin just didn't want to come out. It didn't matter how hard I pushed, he didn't want to come out. The doctor had called for one of the nurses to bring in the vacuum thingy because he wouldn't come out (never used it though). While I was pushing my doc had to cut me to get his head out. I FELT IT! I screamed. The doctor said, "push through the pain" my thought was "push this through the pain". My mom happened to be just outside the door when he cut me and heard me scream. She said it took all of her strength not run in and find out what happened. But he finally came out. The feeling right after he came out was indescribable. I was such a relief, I can't describe it. They put Perrin on my chest to clean off but he was there for only a second. I barely saw him. They took him to the corner and were doing something with him. I hadn't heard him cry so I was wondering what was going on. Especially when my doc told Hutch to go over there and take pictures and the nurses said not to. Finally I heard the greatest sound ever, Perrin cried. And he has my lungs. That boy will be a singer. They cleaned him up and wrapped him up and Hutch got to hold him. They said they needed to check him out in the nursery so I was only able to see him and hold him for a few seconds. They let Hutch take him to the nursery. Here was our first picture of him...well, first picture where he has clothes on.My parents came in and hugged me a lot. My dad got to me before my mom and he was crying while he hugged me (and I was crying) and my mom was trying to get him to stop hugging me so she could hug me. The first thing I said to them was, "He's beautiful and I did it!" My nurse had my parents leave so I could finish getting cleaned up. They put me in a wheelchair to take me to my recovery room but let me stop at the nursery to see Perrin. I didn't get to hold him but I got to hold his hand. He was hooked up to different things. Now the hard part. When Perrin was born, he died. That's why the nurses took him. Heavenly Father blessed us in so many ways and one of them was to have the nurses resuscitate him. He had to stay in the nursery because he was having breathing problems. He was breathing too fast, then they slowed it down and was breathing too slow. They ended up putting him on a 48 hour antibiotic treatment. Perrin needed to stay extra days at the hospital and the hospital was willing to let us stay there as well. During that time he got his strength, his appetite, and his color started to get better. After a couple of days, he was able to go home. We were so happy and grateful. I'm so thankful that my Heavenly Father blessed us with a child, and also blessed to be able to keep him. I don't think we could repay him for this great blessing and miracle.