Stetson Colby Sherman

WARNING: VERY VERY LONG POST, this is mainly for us to remember the events, but if you would like to read be my guest!

Details about Stetson's entrance into the world!!!

I was already 40 weeks and 4 days, COMPLETELY overdue with the little man, and we had a scheduled induction for 40 weeks 6 days at midnight, basically 41 weeks. So I basically had given up on going into labor naturally and was really upset but just over it at that point. I had been having contractions since April 27th ( my bday) and was dilated to a 3-4 since 38 weeks, even at my 36 week appt when I was a 2, the nurse said I would definitely have him earlier than 40 weeks. I guess the medical profession can never predict that kind of stuff as much as they hope to!

Sidenote: I want to remember this....a week before I went into labor I fell directly on my stomach. It was horrible! I was taking Lucy to time out and she decided to drag herself on the floor, and well, our bodies somehow got tangled and I tripped. I ended up cutting my wrist, skinning both knees and getting bad bruises and bumps on them, and well of course was FREAKING OUT about Stetson. We went to Labor and Delivery and had to spend 6 hours there while they monitored me and did a bunch of tests to make sure that he was ok and the placenta didn't get damaged. I ended up having contractions every 2 minutes while we were there , and they figured this was it, they were going to admit me....BUT my body did what it had been doing for quite a while, and stopped contracting after a while. We had to go back the next day to get monitored again, and everything was ok..

Back to the story: So on Tuesday May 25 we went out to Japanese food, then to Yogurtland and Petsmart and yet again I was having contractions. I figured they would go away shortly as they always do. However we went home and I was laying down on my side like I usually do when we get home from walking, and I felt a HUGE pop in my stomach and I got up and felt little gushes of water. This is the same type of thing that happened to me when I went into labor with Lucy, so I was kind of thinking this might be it. But I went about my normal activities, and I bathed Lucy and was putting her to bed and Troy went over to a neighbors house to help her with her sons butterfly project. Well at the time I was trying to get Lucy into bed ( she was throwing MAJOR tantrums and screaming and running out of her room--a nightly ritual for her for the last month of my pregnancy and the first week so far with Stetson) my contractions immediately got REALLY strong, and I could barely function. They came on SO quickly and SO strongly, really kind of out of the blue. ( for the intensity factor) So I called Troy and said get home NOW, and we called my mom to come over ( Troy's parents were in New York ) and the wait for my mom was SO LONG. We ended up getting in the car and pulling out of the parking lot before my mom was even there! ( i know bad parents ) I was basically crying the contractions were soooo strong. At this point they were every 3-4 minutes. We got to labor and delivery and I was admitted right away ( about 9 pm ) because I was dilated to a 5, and was having contractions every 2 minutes, and my water was leaking. By the time we got into our real room, we quickly were getting the epidural. I wish the epidural was quick....however yet again this time ( like Lucy's birth ) the epidural was horrendous. I will make a very long story short by saying it took the man 2 hours to get my epidural in. All the while my contractions were every 1 minute 30 seconds, and I had to be hunched over the entire time while he was doing it. It took him 3 times to get it in, and by the time he put it in he had a talk with me and told me he basically did a spinal on me ( which is what they do for c-sections ). Then another anesthesiologist came in and they started talking right next to me and the new one told the one who put my epidural in that what he did was wrong....and then they basically started bickering. I was silently freaking out. They spent the next half an hour checking my every feeling and move and asking, " Does this hurt? Can you feel this? How about this?" "mmmmm" "okkkk" Then the original doc said that he may have gone to far into my spinal column and pulled out some of my spinal fluid, which may give me a spinal headache later. Grrrrreat. If you know me at all, you know I was freaked out by this completely!

So on with the story ( but just to note, I have had 2 births, 7 attempts at an epidural, and 1 that actually worked ) my epidural worked ! It was great for the time being. My epidural was finally in at midnight. No one had checked my progress yet since 9pm when I was at 5cm because I had to get antibiotics and they had to take 4 hours to get in my system, so they said they wouldnt be checking my dilation at all and I was fine with that. So they said they would check me at 1:30am. Well around 1am I said I felt a lot of pressure and I wanted someone to check me. Well what do you know? I was fully dialated and baby was very low!! They needed me to get the full round of antibiotics though, and since I wasn't in too much pain, I decided to try and wait for at least an hour, maybe let the baby descend even more and I wouldn't have to push for as long. Well at 2am I started to push, and the pushing ended up being for two hours. Half the time as pushing with Lucy, and this time the pushing didn't hurt one bit ( whereas with Lucy I didn't have pain meds and pushed for four hours....so it was quite different). We were actually laughing in between pushes, and I only had to push the usual three times every contraction, but my contractions were slowing to every 5 minutes, so I had a lot of breaks. I finally was able to feel the pushing around 3:30am, and felt like I knew how to push at this point, where it only took a half an hour from this point on. I delievered him at 3:59am. When the pulled him out they were all talking about how big he was, and when they weighed him they said, thats weird, only 7lb 6 oz. The mid wife said, check him again. They did, and they said, 8 lbs 5 oz! Much better, but the mid wife was still saying she thought he would be bigger than that. Little did we know, like 4 hours later when we got put in our new room, a new nurse took him away and weighed him again and said 9 lb 2 oz!!! What the heck??!?! They said the scale in the room I delivered in was faulty. Glad we figured that out! Here are some pictures of our journey!

I think this might have been in the middle of pushing :)

I was VERY happy because they put him on me right after he came out and we did the skin to skin bonding for quite a while. I was so happy because I didn't even get to see Lucy for an hour because she was pulled out using a vacuum and a lot of other stuff....so this was a big deal for me to get to do with Stetson!

Blurry shot but here Troy is cutting the cord.

The most ADORABLE PICTURE!

Ha ha didnt get a picture of the correct weight! Oh well!

A few hours old and he got to meet his big sister! She was VERY excited!

I didn't get a picture of all of our visitors but here are some....above are Lynda's friends ( and ours ) Vicki and Debbie.

Our celebration dinner. We got the same thing at the Kaiser in Anaheim when we had Lucy.

Uncle Mike.

My dad.

My aunt Barbara.

Dang I didn't get a picture of the four of us, but here is the brand new addition!

And the classic SLEEPING shot :)

We spent the night the day I had Stetson ( Wed ) and were planning on going home on Thursday. However I woke up Thursday morning and couldn't get out of bed. I couldn't sit or stand for longer than like 5-10 seconds before I had HORRIBLE neck pain that shot up to the back of my head. So after several talks with the NICEST anesthesiologist, we discussed the fact that it was probably a spinal headache caused by the epidural and he said he would schedule me for a blood patch procedure and a flouroscopy the next morning. The blood patch is basically another epidural except they inject you with your own blood, and the flouroscopy is a procedure where I would go to radiology and they would somehow inject die in my spinal column and be able to tell where exactly to place the epidural. They would have to do this because of my scoliosis and the amount of times it takes to get an epidural in me.

Needless to say I was not looking forward to any of that. So I basically talked myself out of a lot of the pain, and we stayed one more night and the next morning right before the procedure was going to happen, I said that I felt worlds better, and really it was just neck pain not a headache. This was about half truth, but I really really didn't want to go through those other procedures either. He said no matter what, the spinal headache would go away on its own after a while.

So I loaded up on tons of meds and we went home. The next 3-5 days were very hard at home for , well for Troy. Poor guy had to deal with Lucy ( who is a whole other story ) and Stetson, and me, who couldn't move. VERY VERY rough to say the least!

BUT, I am writing this all now, and it is Sunday June 6, Troy goes back to work tomorrow, and although I am scared out of my MIND, I am feeling a lot better, can move around, am taking less and less painkillers, and am hoping for the best.

If you read all of this, you are amazing!