Cooper's Birth Story

What? Your baby is 8 months old and you're just now writing his birth story?

 Yep that's me. 

I had thoughts about it a long time ago because Matt is so good at telling the story that I wanted to record it and use that......

But every time I ask him to tell it he won't let me record it

So I'll just have to settle for writing it out here for Cooper to hear about one day

This is going to be a long post! 

So if you have no interest in hearing a birth story

Or have already heard it you're welcome to skip to the end and just look at the pictures instead

I was going to warn that it might be graphic but I'll try to steer clear of all that

I'll bet Cooper's first accident will be more graphic than this story so if you could handle that I'm sure you'll be fine.

So without further adieu I'll get started

My whole pregnancy was going great. I was almost 39 weeks along and was super excited that I didn't have any stretch marks! I had just finished telling Matt that I didn't think I would get any stretch marks at all and BAM! I got some. It really happened that quick..... They were super itchy so I tried Gold Bond. Luckily I finished working that week because it seemed like I couldn't go 5 minutes without scratching them. 

I went to my Dr.'s appointment on Friday and mentioned to the nurse how lucky I was that I didn't have stretch marks the whole time because they were so itchy! She took a look and kindly informed me that the big red welts on my stomach were indeed not stretch marks at all. Needless to say I felt a little stupid. What kind of pregnant woman doesn't know what stretch marks are? I just kind of figured they were so red from being scratched. The Dr. came in and took a look and said I had a PUPPS rash. My first reaction was: What?

Basically it's a rash that pregnant women get that spreads really quick and is incredibly itchy. My Dr. told me it wasn't very common at all and that he'd only seen one case of it before. Lucky me. I actually do consider myself incredibly lucky because I didn't get it until the last few weeks of my pregnancy and it's possible to get it right at the beginning which I don't know how some women can handle since it only goes away once the baby is born. At that point the rash was only on my stomach so I was sure I could handle it for the next three weeks. Regardless my Dr. said he would be working at the hospital in the delivery room that weekend so if it got worse to give him a call there. 

I woke up the next morning and the rash had spread to my legs and the itching was unbearable. I looked up anything and everything the internet said to try. I bought pine tar soap, slathered on lotion, and soaked in an oatmeal bath for the majority of the day. Nothing was working but I was determined to wait. Some women had to put up with that for 6 months I could surely last longer than a day. 

Sunday March 11th came around and it was now covering my arms and starting to show up on my face. My Grandma was having a family dinner at her house in Lethbridge so Matt and I went in. 

*Side Note* Matt knew I was uncomfortable so he tried to cheer me up by saying how nice the weather was and that we could drive his red truck in. In hindsight we should have just taken the car because that's where all the hospital bags were but we'll get to that in a minute.

We had a great dinner with my family but I knew I needed to give Dr. Stewart a call by the end of it. He told us to meet him at the hospital and he'd take a look at things. When we got there around 7:30 PM they hooked me up to start monitoring things and said I was actually having some pretty impressive contractions about 4 minutes apart and that I was already 2 cm dilated. I couldn't feel anything except the itching so when Dr. Stewart explained that I was close enough to my due date and the rash was spreading too quick so he wanted to induce me I agreed. Yep I caved. Matt was more hesitant but after seeing my welts again he said he was fine with it.

So they started things going and told me it was going to take a while and that I should just sleep through the night and in the morning I'd probably be going into labor. We called our parents and had my mom bring out stuff in from our car and Matt's parents came so I could have a blessing and I settled into what I thought would be a relaxing night. I started feeling some contractions but since I came in having "impressive contractions" according to them, I figured I could handle it. Boy was I wrong.

Within a couple hours things had gotten much worse. They came in and offered me some morphine so I could get some sleep but not even that gave me enough relief to get some sleep. Pretty soon I was in hard labor and I asked for an epidural. Seriously I'm a baby. They wouldn't give me one because I hand't dilated any more and I needed to be at least at a 4 to get one. A few nurses came in to monitor the baby's heartbeat. It seemed like they were taking forever! They would watch for a while then leave and someone else would come in who would watch and leave. We could tell something wasn't right and we were pretty worried when Dr. Stewart came in. He explained that the baby's heartbeat was getting stressed because my body was having a hard contraction, then a mild one, then a hard one and back and forth with no breaks in-between for the baby to rest. 

That's when he had Dr.      come in. She said she was going to take a look to see how things were progressing. Out of nowhere she said she was going to break my water and that's when things seemed unbearable. They monitored his heartbeat for another little while and since I had only progressed to a 3 in the past 10 hours they said they were going to have to do an emergency C-section. Dr. Stewart asked if I knew the procedure. I said no I hadn't read anything about it and he offered to explain to to me. I told him I'd rather just go into things without knowing because I didn't want to freak out.

Things happened so quickly after that. They started prepping me for surgery and the nurses started getting their gowns on. One nurse came in with an extra gown and asked who was going in with me. That's when I looked over to see Matt kneeling on the ground beside my bed white as a ghost. 

I've kind of left Matt out of the entire story but he was amazing the whole time! He never left me once and was so good about letting me squeeze his hand as hard as I needed him to. It was about 5:30 AM by the time they decided they needed to do a C-section so he'd been in there for 10 hours without any sleep, or anything for him to eat and drink. Combine that with how worried he was about Cooper and the fact that everything was happening so quickly and I can't blame him. 

The first thing he said to me was "Baby, I'm not doing so good."

My response "You're not doing good?!?! Will you look at me!?!" Granted I could have been a lot kinder to him but I feel like I had a decent excuse for a little freak out. 

When I told the nurse Matt was coming in with me she looked pretty skeptical but handed him the scrubs to go get changed. He ran to the bathroom and in his words "stuffed as much food down his throat as he could while he was changing". When it came to the pants Matt ran into a bit of a problem. See he's a pretty slim guy and the pants just wouldn't tighten enough for him but he knew they were about ready to take us to the OR so he just ran out anyways trying to hold up his pants. He got there just in time to grab my hand while they wheeled me to the OR, all the while still holding his pants up with the other. 

When we got to the OR I was still trying to breath through contractions while the anesthesiologist prepped me for the spinal. He asked me to arch my back so he could put the needle in. I thought I did but I'm pretty sure he asked me 3 times to arch it more. I was about ready to rip his head off. I mean come on. My belly is the size of a large watermelon and I'm having constant contractions while sitting up so you can put that giant needle in my spine and you're really asking me to arch my back even more? Don't you think I'm trying? Just stick it in!

Seriously instant relief! I'm sure I would have been more nervous for the needle if I wasn't having contractions but with the pain I was in I didn't feel a thing. I probably could have fallen asleep at that point. The Dr. asked if I could feel something and when my response was "Feel what?" they knew they were ready to start. From that point on I really had no idea what happened. No I still haven't read up on what exactly goes on with a C-section. My reasoning is if I have to have another on I'd rather not know. Ignorance is bliss.

Soon enough we were being handed our little Cooper! Now I don't want to seem like a bad mother but at this point I really did feel like one. I'd always heard about how women had this instant love for their babies the second they saw them and I didn't feel that. I felt terrible! A few weeks later we got to talking about it with a bunch of other young mothers from our ward and luckily a ton of them had similar feelings. I mean don't get me wrong I definitely love him now and couldn't imagine life without him but those feelings weren't instantaneous and I realize now that's ok! Let's just say it was a huge relief to find out I wasn't alone. Anyways back to the story.

I was brought to the recovery room where I had to wait for an hour before they took me back to my room so this portion of the story is from Matt. He went with Cooper to the NICU so the nurses could check him out, literally. Matt was just standing there staring at our sweet little boy so mesmerized by him that he forgot the trouble he'd been having earlier with his pants. Out of nowhere he hears a nurse from across the room yell "Sir, can you pull your pants up!" He was so distracted he forgot to hold his pants up and they were down to his ankles! So there he was just standing in his underwear with all these nurses looking at him wondering what to say. He figured out pretty quick how to tie them tight enough so they wouldn't fall down anymore.

We feel so blessed everything worked out with the delivery and that Cooper was so healthy. We can't imagine our lives without him.