Labor Day

In honor of the kids who caused me to labor (and continue to!), and who allow us to have another water slide party with their kid friends today, (because without kids, we'd probably just be hanging out with friends who don't have kids!) I'm joining a meme that Shannon started about my very special labors.

How long were your labors?
Lukas: 38 hours
Natalie: 9 hours
Konrad: 7 hours

How did you know you were in labor?
Lukas: water broke
Natalie: water broke
Konrad: to avoid the surprises of the first two, and to help out my SIL Chris, who had to drive a fair distance to watch the first two, we SCHEDULED AN INDUCTION. I highly recommend this method of delivering a baby. Good night's sleep, check in to the hospital, get hooked up to the drugs, deliver a baby 6-8 hours later, sleep the next night (or try to). Notice the two consecutive night's sleep? Very cool!

Where did you deliver?
Lukas and Natalie were delivered at the same (small) hospital. After we learned that Natalie would require more than the average medical care and hospital stays during her lifetime, we switched to a children's hospital and medical group that was much closer to our home, so Konrad was born at our current hospital.

Drugs?
I thought that I could do it without drugs...after all, my mom did it, so I should be able to, too! Tom and I took a class before Lukas' birth where we learned (or thought we learned!) how to hypnotize me so that I would not feel the pain, and would deliver the baby naturally. Looking back on it, I don't think I'm well suited to hypnosis. And I don't think that pregnancy was the right pregnancy to try a natural delivery. And I don't think I have as high a pain tolerance as I thought I did! :)

So after going 18 hours without meds, I begged for an epidural, got the pitocin drip to move things along (my water had broken, but the baby was not descending, and the contractions were not strong enough to move him down...and I was exhausted after not sleeping the night before...and every time I fell asleep, a contraction would wake me up, and since I was not hypnotized, I was feeling every one of them...and then I was too tired to try to hypnotize myself.)

C-section?
Praise God, none. Althought several friends have told me it's the way to go, I like the way mine came out.

Who delivered?
For Lukas and Natalie, I had the pleasure of shaking hands with a doctor I had never met before with my legs spread apart (my OB was not on duty when my first two made their entrances). For Konrad, since it was SCHEDULED, I had the wonderful experience of working with the doctor I knew.

With Lukas, at 6 am (after 37 hours of labor), the doctor told me he would give me one more hour, and then we would have to discuss "other options"...Tom likes to tell it that he knew that with a deadline, I'd push that baby out, and Lukas was born at 6:50.

When Natalie also decided to break the water balloon, Tom and I didn't want to go through a long delivery like we had with Lukas, so we immediately asked for the pitocin and epidural, and she was born fairly quickly, with no complications during the delivery. It was only when she arrived that she couldn't breathe well, we began to understand that there was something different here, and the NICU became her home for 5 weeks. That was a truly hard time for Tom and me, and we are thankful that God helped us through it.

Konrad was born like clockwork: hook me up to the pitocin, and a baby appears a few hours later. It was a beautiful birthing experience, and helped me recover from the traumatic experience at Natalie's birth. I highly recommend that anyone who had a hard birth experience like we did with Natalie, consider having another child...it has truly been a healing process for me.

And those are my Labor Day stories. I like the fruits of my labor. They are certainly blessings to our lives!