the birth story of remington merle robson

we have news!! he has come!!! i'll start at the beginning and if any of you get bored or are really not all that interested, be informed that we now are proud parents of a beautiful baby boy. this account is really more for me than anybody but it was good motivation to write it on here. if you want to skip it, scroll down to the bottom for pics of our little angel.

below is a picture taken the week before i popped. that stomach is big, but would you believe that i had room to hide a 9lbs 8oz baby in there?! we were operating under the idea that our baby would be 7lbs or thereabouts. that's what the midwife thought, at least.
here also is a picture of my mother, who came to join in on the fun on the 17th. she loved being able to bask in the sun and so here i surprised her with my camera.
anyhow, so my due date was officially june 17th but the ultrasound pushed it up to june 13th and that's the date that the midwifes were counting as my real due date. that day came and went. then the 17th came and went. they started to get a little concerned and so scheduled me for an induction on the 24th. i really had a hard time with that and so called and canceled that on the 23rd. i felt that my body would know what to do and so i didn't really want to push it. they then rescheduled me for the 28th.

on the 23rd i started doing everything i could to jump start my body. although everyone has these ideas of what will start labor, i believe that for all these things your body has to be ready and so then they'll help. if my body wasn't close to ready i knew that i most likely wouldn't go into labor. anyhow, i used evening primrose oil, i walked, used jasmine oil, and i hooked myself up to a breast pump among other things. my body stubbornly refused. so i decided to get a chiropractic adjustment. i talked to my aunts (who are both chiropractors in az) and the idea behind this is that if the pelvis is not quite lined up then adjusting my pelvis might help the baby to be able to descend. on friday morning, june 25th, i got adjusted and the chiropractor also massaged some pressure points he said might help. so i went home and continued my breast pumping and voila! that evening i started having contractions. shawn was working 12 hour night shifts due to an international exercise so me and my mom worried that if my labor went fast that he might not be able to make it. so i called his work and was told that they wouldn't be able to get a hold of him for an hour but they assured me that after an hour they'd get him to a phone to call me. a little over an hour later he called me from his cell phone and told me that he didn't know anything that was going on. they had just told him to turn in his gear and go home. he assumed that meant i was in labor but he had no idea where i was. i assured him i was still at home and so he came to join me in waiting.

the contractions at this point were irregular and were stubbornly refusing to form any pattern. they'd come every 4 to 20 minutes. for a while it would appear that they were regular but then they'd break any semblance to that. ugh! this went on all friday night, saturday, saturday night, sunday... on sunday i spoke with my midwife asking her if i could cancel the induction since my body was already doing something. she talked me into coming in on monday morning for a stress test for the baby and then we'd talk about it. i could agree to that.

sunday i started losing it. up until this point i was able to manage the pain and to stay on top of things but the exhaustion of not sleeping since thursday night was catching up to me. on top of that my contractions started to get worse. they still wouldn't regulate themselves and they now decided that they would come and hang around for 5 minutes, which was torture! previous to this they had been a minute and a half to two minutes long but when they started lasting an eternity i really couldn't take it anymore. so on monday morning at 4am i called the hospital and told them i was coming in. so me, shawn and my mom headed over to the hospital where i was admitted and hooked up to an iv. since i had been scheduled for an induction that morning they started me right away on pitocin. the midwife got there at 6 and was surprised that the nurses had already started me. i started crying to her and told her that i couldn't do it anymore. i was so exhausted and if she could tell me i'd have that baby before midnight, 18 hours away, then i would be happy. that made her laugh a bit in a sad way but was probably relieved that i wouldn't be a difficult patient anymore.

anyhow, when i was admitted the nurse checked me to see how far i had progressed during the weekend and the answer was practically nothing! the only progress was that my cervix had thinned from 80% to 90%. a whole weekend of pain and exhaustion and nothing to show for it. grrrr!!

my goal had been to have no drugs put into my body during this. even though the amount is minimal that actually gets to the baby, some is more than none and i didn't want to drug my baby. after a few hours on pitocin (i know, a drug) i asked if there was anything they could give me to relieve my pain so i could rest a bit. i consented to have the drug nubain. this drug is awesome!!! i was able to rest for somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 hours. i'd semi-awaken for the contractions and then doze right off. it really helped me to get a much needed nap. when that wore off i dealt with my contractions like before but quickly wore out so i asked for more pain relief and they gave me a narcotic, which didn't do too much for me. every time i'd close my eyes i'd be somewhere else and would talk nonsense. i guess shawn and mom said that it was pretty funny. i remember opening my eyes and seeing their faces, trying not to laugh. i just wanted to be taken seriously so i think i might've gotten mad. i really can't remember. then the pain really hit when my water really broke. that brought on incredible pain. the contractions were so intense and it felt like there was a glass shard buried in my abdomen that was compressed every time i'd have a contraction. intense pain!! not pleasant! and that's when my screaming phase started. i completely lost it. the last drug they gave me just made me lose control all together. i remember asking the nurse to please just cut me open and take the baby out. she calmly told me that i didn't really want that and i pleaded for an epidural, which wouldn't have worked because i could hardly keep still. so the nurse distracted me and asked me if i wanted to take a shower, that it would help. so we went over to the showers (locker room-like showers) and that's where i found out that the nurse lied! i really think she was just trying to distract me and that worked pretty good except that it didn't help with relaxing me or with the pain. shawn said he could hear my screaming out in the hall. so we went back to my room and i suffered some more and then decided that i wanted to push. i tried for a while and when the midwife got there she checked me and said that i needed to wait a little bit longer, that my cervix wasn't completely open. so for the next hour i had to wait. torture! and my midwife, gloria, was fantastic. i'd get ready to start screaming and she'd tell me to focus and would talk me through my pain management. she was the only person that i would listen to and she was able to help me so much. so after an hour of waiting i announced to the midwife i was ready to push. she looked skeptical but checked me and told me that all was clear. i was so relieved! so then i pushed and pushed and pushed. towards the end the little baby's head was hanging out but would not pop out. i don't know if his eye brow ridge was holding him back but it was unbelievable that he would not pop out. after 20 minutes of no progress i begged gloria to just cut me and help him come out. she didn't want to but after a while she conceded and out his head came. and then the midwife told me to catch my baby, so i reached down and caught my baby as his shoulders and the rest of his body followed.
after a little family bonding time, shawn headed off to the nursery with baby to do all the checks while i delivered the placenta and got stitched up. a little while later my food got there and i started to eat but then started to get really icky feeling. my mom went to get a nurse and when she came back i was white lipped and convulsing. my mom told me later that my blood pressure had plummeted to 47/30. the nurses moved fast and got me back online. i think the exhaustion finally got to me and my body was allowed to react to it. kind of scary! later when they were trying to move me to the recovery room i blacked out again, but not as bad.

for the future, rule #1 is to never start the real labor process so exhausted. a body can only deal with so much!
remington merle robson was born monday, june 28th at 5:04pm. he weighed 9lbs 8oz and was 22 inches long. he's a perfect little boy that we're thrilled to welcome into our family and he has brought us so much joy already.
a friend of ours jokingly told us that we should name our baby remington shortly after we got pregnant. he had said that because of the remington brand gun and he knew i would never name my child after a gun, as i try to steer clear of them. so it became a standing joke but shawn fell in love with the name. in the hospital, when we were trying to make a final decision on a name, i looked at the air conditioner in the room and laughed. it was a remington air conditioner! i decided that i could go with the name because it wasn't representative of a gun, but of an air conditioner! haha!

as for his middle name, merle, that is a robson name. shawn's dad's middle name is merle and shawn's mom's mother's name is murel. same name, different spelling so we decided to stick with the male spelling, merle.
welcome, remi! we're so excited to have you in our family!!