Caleb Michael haight

On Thursday November 10, 2011 Caleb was born at 8lbs 4oz. Since then our lives have been very crazy, which is why it has taken me so long to blog about him being born.

On Thursday morning around 3 am I started having contractions at home. I had been up all night unable to sleep and let Mike sleep in until about 5:30am. Around 6 I decided we should head to the hospital because my contractions were pretty strong and I didn't want to get caught in commute traffic to the hospital which is about 45 min from our house. The drive to the hospital was very painful as I had contractions and driving over bumps in the road.

Once we got to the hospital we went straight up to L&D and they placed me in a little room to check me out and make sure I was really in labor. Mike and I took the time we had to wait to call our moms so they could come to the hospital. The Dr. did a quick ultrasound and determined I was fully in labor at 4-5cm, 50% effaced and +2. They then moved me to a regular L&D room.

After getting settled into our room around 7am there were many nurses and Dr's because it was shift change time. I got an IV and shortly after that a resident came in to talk to me about an epidural. I didn't want one at first but after about 6 hours of horrible back labor I gave in and got one. Back labor is so much more painful than the labor pains I had with Zoey. I requested that an attending do it and not a resident because of my bad past experiences. I ended up having 3 people do it, an attending and 2 residents. The attending took the opportunity to teach the residents how to place an epidural using an ultrasound. I was very pleased with these Dr's and I got an amazing epidural.

Shortly after I got the epidural my mom and sister showed up and a little later Mike's mom got there. The timing on everything from this point on is a bit of a blur for me. I was in labor and just relaxing mostly for a good majority of the day. I was starving since you can't eat and I was tired from not sleeping the night before but I was too excited to sleep anyways. I had a few visitors during the day my dad came, my friend Leslie came and the nurses were amazing and let us have extra people there.

A few times throughout the day Caleb's heartbeat was low and the Dr's and nurses came rushing in to have me lay on my other side and toward the later part of the day I was given oxygen to help him. Around 8pm (i think) our friends Kelly and Julio got there to visit. Within 20 minutes of them getting there the Dr came in to check me and told me I wasn't making any progress. I was dilated to 7cm but Caleb was still really high at +2. At this point the Dr told me I was going to have to have a C section because I was just not progressing enough and Caleb was looking to be in a bit of distress.

I was really scared and nervous about having a C section and I could see it in Mike's face that he was upset about it too. I started crying and asked someone to go out and get my mom since she had gone to the waiting room while I had other friends there. It was a good thing I had gotten an epidural already because it was one less thing I had to get before surgery. I will write about what it was like to have a c section in another blog post.

Mike got to stay with me the whole time and Caleb was born at 9:33pm. I got to see him and then Mike went with him to the nursery while they finished my surgery. After surgery I went to the recovery area and they found out I had an infection so they started me on antibiotics. They tested Caleb and luckily he didn't get the infection. When my epidural wore off they tried to give me a couple different drugs for the pain. One being morphine. None of the drugs they gave me were helping, apparently I don't respond to those types of drugs so it wasn't until a few hours after I got into my postpartum room that I got a drug that helped. Once I was in my room Mike and Caleb came in. Because of the pain I was in and the lack of strong drugs I wasn't able to hold him or nurse him until the next morning.

Due to the infection I had to be in the hospital for 4 days. Most of that time I had an IV in each hand and couldn't do to much with Caleb. Mike was amazing and took care of me and Caleb the whole time. He did all of the diaper changes for the first 3 days. It is such an amazing feeling to finally have our little boy here with us healthy and strong.