Baby KC’s Birth Story – Part 1

Its so surreal to be writing our little man’s birth story. I am breaking this up into 2 parts, because in reality, this journey was so much longer and harder than our first. I feel like his birth story really takes place over a 2 1/2 month span. I know that is incredibly long, and trust me, every day felt that long. The days were long, but so worth it to be holding our sweet baby boy.

On January 8th, we went to church like any normal Sunday, except Chris Tomlin was leading worship that day so we arrived a little earlier. I noticed the first contraction as we were dropping Brooke off in Bibleland, but didn’t think too much of it. Then, I gradually started to feel more and more contractions throughout the service. Finally, in the middle of communion, I had a pretty strong contraction and looked at Kevin and told him we had to go. He got Brooke, drove the car around to pick me up and off to the hospital we went. My cousin met us there and grabbed Brooke. We spent the rest of the day at the hospital while they monitored my contractions, gave me shots to stop them, and gave me steroids for his lungs. We were only 28 weeks at this point, so we were pretty nervous about him coming too early. Thankfully, we got released home and the contractions let up throughout the night.

The next day, we went to our doctors office and I got put on “modified” bed rest. Everything in our lives slowed way down, well as much as you can slow down with a toddler running around. We had family come in on weekends to help and got into a routine during the week. On January 26th at 32 weeks, I started having contractions throughout the day, but they were pretty spaced out and inconsistent. Then, they continued through Friday and Saturday. Saturday night, they started getting more consistent and stronger. They were about 10 minutes apart for over an hour, then they just went away. On Sunday, same thing throughout the day, then Sunday night, they started to get about 8 minutes apart and really strong for over 2 hours. We called our friends to come watch Brooke and when they arrived we were about to leave and all of a sudden the contractions backed down to every 20 minutes and slowed down.

We had a doctors appointment Monday, so we were really glad to get to see our doctor and see what she thought. She ended up sending us to the hospital for observation overnight because of all the contractions and my effacement. She wanted me get sedated to relax my body and get a good night of sleep. Unfortunately, my contractions kept persisting even through all the medicine, so they decided to try another medicine Tuesday morning. Once I got that in my system, the contractions seemed to calm down so I was able to get off of the monitors and relax a little more throughout the day while they monitored me for any side effects or reactions.  I got to go home around 7pm that Tuesday night. They put me on a 3x a day medicine to help relax my body from the contractions and I still had to do the weekly shots we had been on since week 16.

When we made it to 34 weeks, I got to stop taking the medicine 3x a day, then at 35 weeks, we stopped the shots a week early due to bad reactions I had been having from them. And we waited… we were very thankful to have made it further than we did in our pregnancy with Brooke.

Then, on March 2nd when I was 36 weeks, I started having contractions again that were very close, so we had our friends come over to watch Brooke and we headed to the hospital again. The nurse confirmed that I was contracting a lot, his head was very low, I was 2-3cm dilated and 90% effaced. The contractions continued and were pretty painful. After a few hours, we got sent home because I wasn’t dialing any more. At our doctors office the next morning, my doctor said I was 3cm dilated and 90% effaced still and that he could come any day or in a few weeks. So…. we waited…