Cooper's Birthday Story

On March 24, I went to Madison Memorial Hospital to be induced at 7:30 in the morning. They didn't actually start giving me pitocin until closer to 8:30 or 9:00 that morning and at 9:30 the doctor came in and broke my water. They gradually kept giving me a little more pitocin and when the contractions started getting a little bit uncomfortable my nurse went ahead and had the anethesiologist come in and give me my epidural. It took 3 tries to get the epidural in right, for some reason the first two times he put it in I was having weird pains on the right side of my back so he had to take it out and try again. Once the epidural was over with the rest of my labor went by pretty smoothly. I could still feel pressure but no pain for the next several hours, in fact I went to sleep a few times. My nurse kept gradually giving me a little bit more pitocin but then she would have to come back and lower it down again because the baby wasn't responding very well to the contractions. She ended up having me wear an oxygen mask to help get the baby more oxygen. This had me pretty worried, but the nurse was great to keep an eye on the baby's levels and make sure he was doing okay. She said it was probably caused by cord compression, this worried me more, but she didn't act too worried. She just kept lowering the pitocin until the baby's levels returned to normal and then gradually start increasing the pitocin again. It wasn't until about 6:30 that night that I started feeling the contractions a lot more and they started getting really painful. I told Brandon to go and get my nurse, but she had already checked to see how far I was dilated at the beginning of her shift a few minutes before and I was only at a 7 so she had me push my epidural button and said she would be back in 10 minutes. That was the longest 10 minutes, I felt like I needed to push and I kept asking Brandon every minute if it had been 10 minutes. When she came back in I told her I needed to push, so she checked to see how far I was dialated and she felt the head. She was really surprised that I went from a 7 to a 10 in such a short time, because it had literally taken me all day to get to a 7. Then we had to wait a few very long minutes for the doctor to get there. When he got there they had me start pushing, I pushed for 2 contractions (probably under 5 minutes) and then he came. There was a knot in his umbilical cord which is why he was having a hard time getting enough oxygen during the contractions. The doctor said the knot had probably been tied earlier on in my pregnancy and sometimes having a knot can cause some serious problems. So we feel very blessed to have a strong and healthy boy. We decided after he was born to go with the name Cooper Trace. I am so glad everything went well. Kolby loves Cooper and will sit and hold him for several minutes(with me right next to them of course) and when I go to take Cooper back he always says no my baby, he has also been very soft and gentle with him, which amazes me because Kolby has never really shown any interest to other babies, but he definitely loves his baby brother and wants to help take care of him, sometimes a little too much help. We are all so happy to have Cooper as a part of our family, and love him so much! Thanks to everyone who has given us so much love and support at this time.