Andrew's birth story

EmilyB15

So here is Andrew's birth story. Sorry if it is a little long. Andrew John was born on 1/19 at 2:40am. He weighed 4lb and was 17 1/4 inches long. He was born at 31 weeks 3 days.

I have had a very normal pregnancy. Not 1 abnormal thing has happened, so I was not expecting this. On Friday, 1/18, I went to bed around 10:30. While I was getting ready for bed, I noticed a little bit of fluid leaking. My first though was that I peed myself, but I knew I hadn't. I decided to wait and see what happened. I waited 30 minutes and I wasn't soaking through a pad or anything, but I was still getting small trickles of fluid. I called the doctor around 11pm and told him I thought my water had broken. He told me it probably didn't, but come in to the hospital anyway to get it checked out. At this point I had had 2 contractions about 20 minute apart. They felt like light period cramps, so I didn't know for sure that they were contractions.

I drove to the hospital, even though DH was with me and had no more contractions. We parked in the parking deck and I walked up to the ER. At this point I was getting a little more fluid leaking out. We waited in line in the ER, checked in and waited another 10 minutes for a wheelchair. I started getting more contractions at this point, but still not bad ones. When I got in to the L&D, they checked me. My contractions were about 5 minutes apart, but still didn't hurt too bad. My water had broken and I was 4cm dilated. 

They moved to me to a permanent room and hooked up my IV. They gave me a steroid shot for babies lungs and got me on an antibiotic and mag sulfide to try to stop my contractions. They checked me again and I was at 6 cm! Within the next 30 minutes my contractions really started to hurt bad. The OB came in to check me again and I was complete! And at 2:20ish I was told to start pushing! At 2:40am Andrew was born. It all happened so fast. 4 hours and 10 minutes from start to finish.

Andrew is now in NICU and will be for about 5 weeks. He had some trouble breathing early on, but is now on a cannula and is being weened off of oxygen. He is tube feeding and should be off all IV fluids tomorrow. He's really looking great. So excited to have my beautiful baby here and can't wait to take him home. It's all worth it!