Because he had so much energy, I decided to pop some popcorn and together the 2 of us watched a movie and I let him stay up a little past his bedtime. At 8:30 the movie was ending, so we began our bedtime rituals. I sent Caleb into his room to pick out a book and get in bed, and at his request I went to go fill his water bottle.
As I'm standing in front of the fridge filling his water bottle up, I suddenly feel a gush of fluids coming from me! I was shocked that my water had broken on its own! With Caleb my water didn't break until the midwife broke it for me. I wasn't feeling any contractions so I stood there for a minute contemplating what exactly to do. My 2.5 year old was in bed waiting for me to read him a book, and my husband was 15/20 minutes away at his friends house.
Luckily my cell phone happened to be right there on the kitchen counter, a place that I rarely leave it. So I called my husband, and in my most calm voice told him what was going on. I told him to stay calm but come home and drive safely. I wasn't in a hurry after all there were no contractions yet, but we knew it was a possibility for me to go fast once labor started. Luckily my bag was already packed, the infant seat was in the car and my camera bag was all ready to go. I also had a bag packed for Caleb so I just had to calmly get him and explain that he would get to go to Grandma and Granddads. As Tony drove home I rounded everything up and loaded up the car. I also called my midwife to make sure I should head in and let them know that I was on my way.
We left within minutes of Tony getting home, I decided we had plenty of time to drop Caleb off ourselves at their house, he fell asleep in the car anyway so that was a good thing. I was surprisingly calm at this point. When we got to my parents house I decided I would carry Caleb into the house and put him to bed. Sure I'm crazy but I managed to carry him in and up to the second floor and get him in bed. It was super emotional for me to be saying goodbye to him, the last time I would see him before he had a little brother and he was no longer my only child. We made sure Caleb was ok and asleep before we left my parents house to go to Troy Beaumont Hospital.
When we got there we checked in and went to triage. I wasn't dilated any more than the day before at my 39 week appointment - a whopping 1 cm. UGH I knew I was going to be in for a long night. My midwife, LouAnn, came in and checked me, and stripped my membranes. Then she proceeds to tell us that baby's heartrate was pretty low when I was first put on the monitors, and she didn't feel good about letting me labor naturally without the pitocin. She advised that I get on it right away to get labor starting and start the road of getting baby out of me.
It was a long night, I was put on pitocin around 10pm or so and even though I didn't feel any contractions all night, I sure did feel the hard metal bed beneath me. Why can't they make those beds more comfortable!? By morning I still hadn't progressed much, I think I might have been at 3 cm or something. Luckily I spent the night trying to rest up cause it was looking like it would be a long morning. When morning came I decided to get up and walk around to try to get things moving, I also tried getting on the birthing ball and moving around as much as possible.
That morning I got one of the best nurses ever, she was finishing up her studies to become a certified midwife, so I not only had 1 midwife, but basically 2 in the labor room with me. I was told later that morning that I most likely had 2 bags of water, and last night the outer bag broke but the inner bag was still in tact. That is what was holding up my progress. LouAnn came in and broke the inner bag of waters, at that moment I knew things were going to start progressing. I was soon VERY uncomfortable, I knew that I couldn't relax through these contractions. Contractions on Pitocin are very different from contractions not on pitocin, the best way I can explain it is that Pitocin gives the contractions a very sharp ending. I decided to get the epidural. After I got the epidural things progressed much quicker and my body was able to work through the contractions.
Around 12:40, I was checked and was at a 8 or 9 (honestly can't remember) within the next hour I started pushing, after about 2 contractions and just a couple pushes my baby boy was born. He didn't yet have a name but he was perfect. I had talked to LouAnn before he was born and told her I wanted him on my chest and I wanted to wait to cut the cord until it was done pulsing as long as he looked good and there were no complications. I was so happy to have this experience this time around. With Caleb I wasn't able to hold him very long b/c of the merconium.
We still didn't have a name for this baby boy, but he was here and we were so happy. As things settled down we called my family so they could bring up caleb to meet his baby brother (and hopefully decide on a name). When we heard that Caleb had arrived, Tony went out to get him from the waiting room. On the way back to the room Tony asked Caleb what we should name his baby brother. During the whole pregnancy Caleb wanted to name the baby "jack", but since that is Caleb's middle name we didn't really want to go with that one. On the way back to the room Caleb told Tony that his name is Baby Cullen. So there you go, that's his name. Of course Cullen was a name from our list but Caleb never agreed - well not until he was born anyway.
After Caleb met Cullen our nurse (the best nurse ever) decided to help Caleb with a little art project for me. Check it out at the bottom, the very last photo! I PPH LOVE it!!
On to some pictures, if you want to see all of them follow this link.
Here are a couple of my favorites from the birth.
