Roger's Birth Story

Monday Oct 2nd, 2017
I was scheduled to get an induction on Monday Oct 2nd at 39.5 weeks pregnant! We woke up that morning filled with anticipation and well wishing texts from family and friends. We had to be ready for the hospital to call us in at any time of day, but I was pretty sure it would be mid-morning. Since Mom was in town, we decided to distract ourselves by going to Half Moon Bay; we hit Poplar beach, Jersey Joe's cheesesteak sandwiches (amazing), even stopped at a pumpkin patch...still no call. We called the hospital periodically to get an update and they kept saying it was busy and to wait just a few more hours. By 10:30pm, they said we were pushed back to tomorrow morning.

Poplar Beach, Half Moon Bay - Not a bad way to spend the final hours of pregnancy (Or so we thought) 

This is the belly of a woman who needs the pregnancy to be over...like NOW

Tuesday Oct 3rd
We couldn't sleep that night because of the nervous anticipation so we finally just got up at 4am. Since the hospital hadn't called yet we went to Happy Hollow Zoo, then cleaned the entire house and vacuumed the car (because my pregnancy brain couldn't handle the thought of bringing home the baby in a cluttered car). I get some serious nesting instincts when I'm pregnant! Everything has to be organized perfectly to limit the chaos that comes with having a baby. When I was pregnant with Owen and we moved, I had to arrange our moving boxes in order of size and brand.

This took me hours...totally worth it

Finally, at 3pm we got the call! I gave Owen a snuggle goodbye and grabbed some pizza for the road. We checked in at 4pm, and went straight to my delivery room. It felt so weird and awesome to bypass the triage room since that was the hardest part of my last delivery. I was feeling really hopeful that it would just go smoothly and we'd have our baby boy by the end of the night. (HA!)  I flipped on the TV and settled in for a quick, pleasant stay. In retrospect,  I was probably being a little unrealistic. You can ask Tim - I tend to have a huge optimism bias; basically that means I always think things are going to turn out great even when there's contrary evidence (i.e. my last labor). It's people like me that are always late because when the GPS tells me 25 minutes, I always think "yeah, but I'll probably hit the lights just right and get there in 20!" It's a blessing and a curse, really...

Me thinking I'm gonna have a baby that night

Well anyway, that optimism lasted all of 45 minutes before the nurse came in to place my IV. I have a pretty bad (and totally justifiable!) fear of needles. I wish I could go hide under a rock and never see a needle again, but with childbirth they're kind of unavoidable. It took multiple attempts and a couple different nurses to place the IV in my notoriously small veins and they kept poking all the way through and rupturing it. When they got one placed in my wrist it itched and stung but they couldn't adjust it for fear of losing the vein. I was 1.5 cm dilated and 30% effaced so they started me on a pill to ripen the cervix. It gave me contractions every couple minutes until 1am when the doctor decided to switch to cervadil, which had to be in for 12 hours. That was really disappointing because that meant we weren't having this baby tonight. I thought they were going to start me on pitocin right away, break my water and BOOM I'd have a baby. Waiting around wouldn't be so bad, except my wrist IV was bothering me so much I couldn't sleep so I was just anxious to get this whole thing over with and get the IV out.

I don't have any non-horrible pictures of my hospital stay, so I'll just use baby pics instead

Wednesday Oct 4th
I spent the morning watching Star Wars and bouncing on the birthing ball through contractions. At 1pm the doctor took out the cervadil and informed me that I had no dilation change. That was pretty disappointing because I'd been having strong contractions for over 12 hours now- how could they not be doing anything? The doctor's next step was the foley balloon, so I had to get the epidural then too because inserting the foley balloon when you're only 1cm dilated is pretty rough. But after all that was over, it was nice to relax a little and finally catch a break from the contractions. After a few hours the balloon came out and I was dilated to 3cm so they started pitocin. By 6pm I was at 6cm and we started feeling excited!

Nobody wants to see a picture of me in an oxygen mask anyway

But, the epidural stopped working on one side of my body and I started feeling really intense contractions. I don't know if I was on a huge dose of pitocin or what because they were the strongest I've ever felt. I was pressing that epidural button like crazy, but it's like it just made my legs even more numb and heavy without relieving my abdominal pain. The nurses rolled me over a few times to try and help even out the medicine (as if I didn't already feel like a huge manatee, 2 nurses struggling for like 10 minutes to roll me over sure did it haha! My legs were so numb I couldn't help in the slightest). The anesthesiologist came back to give me another dose which worked temporarily, but an hour later they were right back. By 11pm I was 9.5cm and really, really exhausted from these crazy contractions. I was so done, I was determined to push the baby out before midnight, but the nurses kept telling me to hold off.  The nurses tried to get the anesthesiologist back to give another dose, but he was held up in surgery.

Thursday Oct 5th
You know you're a parent when you've googled, "how long can the human body go without sleep?"
At 1am I was really frustrated that the epidural wasn't working and I had been at 10cm for an hour and yet we were on a holding pattern for some reason. I'm grateful for nurses doing their job and all, but sometimes I just don't understand their methods. By this point, the nurses that were on shift 2 days ago when I first got to the hospital were returning and were all like, "wow, you're still here?" At 2:20am we finally demanded that they let me start pushing! Last time, the doctor had to tell me when to push because I wasn't feeling the contractions. So, that was a new experience this time, feeling everything and knowing what to do. Just 25 minutes later, Roger Everett Perkins was born! He weighed 7lbs 15oz - a whole pound lighter than Owen. The doctor said Roger delivered face-up, so he was posterior just like Owen - she said that probably contributed to the long labor.

I kind of didn't expect the birth of the 2nd baby to be as exciting or memorable as the first, but the moment Roger was born was so special! Weirdly, he looked exactly how Tim and I had been picturing him all along. We both just felt really grateful that he got here healthy and without any major complications.

I mean, look at that face! :)

First selfie with Daddy!

2 months

3 Months

Owen's Birth Story

I like how everyone records their birth stories these days because I find them really fun to read. So, I'll contribute my labor/delivery experience for anyone who finds that interesting!

First, let me tell you my fantasy birth "plan". I'd go into labor hmm...let's say 2 weeks early to get this pregnancy thing over with. My water would break and I'd waltz into the hospital and get immediately admitted. Once I started to get a little uncomfortable I'd get my epidural and then play cards with Tim until the baby came! Easy peasy! So.... now picture the opposite of all of that, and that's pretty much how it went down haha.

I went 9 years...oh, I mean days... over my due date and was scheduled to get an induction Monday Oct. 19th. I was sort of dreading this because I'd been stuck at .5cm dilated for 5 weeks and that means that an induction has a low chance of success and a high chance of a c-section. I hadn't had any signs of labor yet, not even many Braxton Hicks contractions. Wednesday at my appointment, the doctor confirmed that I was still at .5cm and gave us the grim outlook for Owen's delivery. 

Friday Oct. 16th

Around 3pm, after a delicious Thai curry lunch, I started noticing contractions regularly 15 minutes apart. For the first time, they were strong enough to be unmistakable as contractions. But, they didn't hurt too bad and they weren't really getting closer together, so I figured it was false labor and they'd just fizzle out in a couple hours. Because I'd gone so long without my body showing any progress towards labor, I was pretty much resigned to the fact that my body didn't have a clue about how to go into labor. By the evening, it still wasn't picking up, so we went ahead with our Friday night plans. Tim went to the BYU/Cincinnati football game with Richard (his friend) and I hung out at Richard's (my brother) for some dominion and ping pong.

Saturday Oct. 17th
We got back late from the football game and tried to go to bed, but between pregnancy hugeness and some more contractions, sleep just wasn't happening. By 4am, we gave up and just got up to eat breakfast. We watched The Mask of Zorro to distract me from the contractions which were 7-10 minutes apart now. They didn't hurt too terribly, but enough to make me bend over and squirm. We joked that I might be in labor, but still didn't think it was anything real.

Packing the hospital bag just in case

By 5:30am, they were 4-5 minutes apart and pretty strong. We started to get tentatively excited that I might actually be going into labor. Then, I lost my plug! (sorry, is that TMI?) Finally, a concrete sign of labor! Over the next couple hours, they were only 2 minutes apart and strong enough to lay me out flat! I was feeling the pain almost entirely in my back, which I didn't really expect. Tim started implementing more distractions: Lindor truffles, head scratches, and youtube videos of segway crashes (still hilarious even while in labor). At 7am, we decided it was time to go get checked out at the hospital. I pictured showing up at the hospital to be a little more dramatic like Tim racing me in a wheelchair. As it turned out, we just kind of strolled up to the desk and filled out some forms. I even felt a little awkward passing the waiting room where people were whispering to their kids "look, that lady's about to have a baby!" In fact, when the elevator door opened and this big family got on, I actually tried to straighten up mid-contraction and pretend like I was fine haha.

My weak attempt at a smile

In triage, I had to lay in bed strapped to the monitors for an hour which was pretty rough because back labor and laying on your back don't go well together. After all this laboring, I was at least hoping that I had made some progress...maybe I was even at 9cm and they'd rush me back to have the baby! nope.....1.5cm. :( So, even though I desperately wanted to be admitted and get some pain relief, we got sent home. My doctor was out of town, so the on-call doctor came in and gave us the whole "first time labor can take a long time" speech. The hospital was stuffed full of women having babies, so I guess in Utah hospitals the baby has to practically be crowning before they make room for you.

As you may have guessed, the rest of Saturday was...terrible. We got home around 10:30am and the intensity of labor really kicked it up a notch and each contraction was pretty agonizing. It's weird though, that  writing this only 2 weeks later, I can't really remember how awful it was anymore...I guess that's why people can have big families :) By the time 5pm rolled around, we started thinking about returning to the hospital to see if I'd made any progress because I just couldn't handle it anymore. I wasn't very chipper in-between contractions anymore, I was just worn out from laboring so long. My excitement and adrenaline from that morning was replaced by less than kind thoughts about the doctor who said "I'd be more comfortable laboring at home."

On the drive back to the hospital, I was very nervous. I dreaded spending another hour in the stupid triage bed and I was nervous they might send us home again because I felt like I'd reached my limit and if I had to keep laboring overnight I might go crazy! Surely by now I'd made some respectable progress...maybe 5 or 6cm? ....I was only 2cm. Darn you, stubborn cervix. The nurse said they'd check me again in an hour and if I hadn't dilated anymore by then, I'd be sent home. I did the math: I'd only dilated .5cm in the last 8 hours, so at that rate I'd be fully dilated in... roughly 5 days. Only 3,840 contractions to go! I felt trapped inside my own body that was trying to kill me.

Every contraction now felt like a literal stab in the back and had me holding on to Tim for dear life! Many of them were coming back to back without a break and made my whole body shake. This isn't what I read about labor! This is what it's supposed to feel like during transition, right? I had always planned to get the epidural as soon into labor as I could, yet here I was more than 24 drug-free hours into it with no pain relief in sight.

The first 4 nurses I had during labor all seemed a little distant and not very sympathetic. In the middle of my contractions, one nurse would absently mutter "just breathe..." while staring at her computer screen. She probably thought I was just being a dramatic first-timer, or she was thinking "Psh, when I was in labor I didn't even feel my contractions until 5cm." When I kept asking about taking something for the pain, one nurse blankly told me I wasn't even technically in active labor yet (translation: "suck it up"). I had thought that maybe being in labor would make me feel like a superwoman and the hospital staff would cheer me on, but the nonchalant attitude of the nurses made me feel like I was just being a wimp.

After an hour, the nurse came to check my progress and wow that HURT! It was never too bad when my doctor did it. While she was checking me I was desperately hoping to have made any progress that might earn us a ticket into the hospital. No progress. I was still 2cm. They were going to send me home again. Finally, the combination of a bad contraction and getting a cervical check from Nurse Edward Scissorhands and getting sent home again was enough to send me over the edge and I broke down in tears. The nurse just finished taking my blood pressure and adjusting the fetal monitors without blinking an eye at all the emotional drama going on. She casually suggested that we just come back in on Monday for the scheduled induction.   Wait, like 2 days from now Monday? ...Monday???  ....   ....   ......   ......MONDAY???

While I was trying to wrap my head around the reality of going home, Tim was forming a plan about asking the doctor to move up Mondays induction to today. He was pretty determined not to take no for an answer even if it meant carting me off to a different hospital. After awhile, the doc came in to discuss our options. He said they don't do inductions over the weekend and they're very busy, but Tim managed to convince him! We were SO relieved! We got admitted around 8:30pm and moved to the big delivery suite room.

As relieved as I was to finally be admitted, I soon felt the dread settle back in because now it was time for needles. The IV placement, blood draws, and of course the epidural needle. I know it sounds a little silly to be concerned about that in the midst of labor, but I genuinely hate that stuff. I have small veins so they are frequently missed and in the past I've thrown up, almost passed out, and had a nerve struck accidentally. By the end of my hospital stay, I think the nurses were definitely getting impatient with my skittishness. Around 10pm, the anesthesiologist arrived. I was so nervous it was really hard to keep still. The anesthesiologist did nothing to put me at ease - he was in a BAD mood haha. He talked in a low monotone voice, wouldn't look me in the eye, grumpily whipped through the consent form questions, and scolded me a few times for not being still enough. But despite his sour demeanor, the epidural worked beautifully! I could still feel and move my legs, but all my labor pain melted away into a warm, tingly puddle!

Yay for drugs

They started the induction process by using a balloon to help dilate me before starting on pitocin. Basically, the doctor inserts the balloon behind the cervix and then inflates it. Then he tapes it all down the leg so it will slowly pull out. Thank goodness this happened after I got the epidural because it was uncomfortable even with the drugs. Richard visited and the 3 of us played cards (so I guess that part of my original plan worked out). Although, I was hooked up to so many wires that I could barely move!

Sunday October 18th
At midnight, I started on pitocin. Tim and I both tried to catch some sleep thinking that it would take another half day for the pitocin to fully dilate me. At long last, I was SO comfortable and got in a great nap! I don't think Tim slept at all because I remember looking over at him huddled up on that tiny couch not looking super comfortable haha. An hour later at 1am, a nurse came to check up on me and...I was at 6cm! Woah, that was fast...too fast actually because I wanted to get in a good night's sleep before having the baby. But, we were excited that things were moving along! I kept happily dozing between checks - 2:30am I was at 8cm, 3am was 9cm and 100% effaced, and finally at 3:30am I was at 10cm! We were caught off guard by how quickly things were happening...our baby boy was going to be here SOON! I was really excited to finally meet Owen. For me, the pushing stage was the easiest part of the whole experience. We got a new nurse who was very friendly and encouraging (it made such a big difference to finally have a really nice nurse). It only took about a half hour of pushing before she called in the doctor for the final push. When he pulled the baby out it felt SO weird like all of my insides were falling out! Owen James Perkins was born at 4:44am.

Me and my boy

I remember the first time I saw him I felt a sense of familiarity like he already belonged in our little family. He was 8 lbs 13oz, 21 inches, and his head was in the 91st percentile (hence, the doc spent over an hour stitching me up afterward). Tim said that the moment Owen was born was the biggest adrenaline rush he'd ever had. He was standing next to me kind of in shock half-laughing, half-hyperventilating haha. They put him directly on me to snuggle until he went down to the nursery with Tim. Then it hit me: this huge tidal wave of exhaustion! I had a fever and low blood pressure after delivering so both Owen and I had to get antibiotics for 48 hours so we had to stay in the hospital for 2 nights.

All in all, I think both delivery and recovery were a bit rougher than I expected, but I'm just grateful that we got a healthy baby out of it! We love our Owen...I mean, what's not to love?

6 Weeks