The story of Finn

I've decided it's about time I blog about Finn's birthday. I guess I haven't gotten around to it because at the beginning it was pretty tough. Not until he hit the 4 month mark did it get better (I guess that's what everyone says, but it's so true). This is probably one of the longest posts I'll ever do. Promise.

About 2 weeks before Finn was born Dennen and I had just recently graduated from USU. Then we headed down to Orem so that Dennen could take a CNA class that lasted a week. I remember trying to sleep that week and feeling really uncomfortable. My back hurt way bad, but I just thought it was the bed and didn't think anything else of it.

Here's a picture of us at the graduation/mother's day party. This is the last picture of Finn still in my belly.

I ran/shuffled for my last time 4 days before Finn was born. I remember telling Dennen, "that's the last time I'm going to run until I have Finn," and I was right.

We got back to Logan on a Sunday night, but Dennen had to go back down to SLC to do clinicals the next day. It wasn't that bad because I still had to move everything into our new place. At least I wouldn't be bored. I even decided to spray paint a bookcase we have white (probably not the best idea...).

I went to my 37 week appointment that day. Throughout my pregnancy my fundal height had measured a couple centimeters smaller than average, but my doctor wasn't stressed about it, so neither was I. But this visit was different. My weight had actually gone down 2 pounds. My doctor said that I might have IUGR and that he was going to schedule an ultrasound for the next day.

I called Dennen and told him what was up. I told him that he didn't need to come all the way back to Logan just for me to get an ultrasound. I was only 37 weeks. He felt a prompting though, and surprised me by coming back.

The ultrasound was never to be. I went into labor that night at around 10 pm. What the?! First babies are suppose to go past your due date right? That's what I had been told. When we finally went to the hospital at around 1:30 am I was in total denial. Nothing was ready, NOTHING! I wasn't ready, I couldn't be in labor! We hadn't finished moving in and didn't even have his room ready. On top of it all, we didn't bring anything to the hospital because we had never packed our bags for the hospital.

Labor didn't go as planned either. I wasn't allowed to get up and move around (which I had planned on doing to relieve the pain of labor and distract myself). I was attached to a heart rate monitor for Finn, a machine that measured my contractions (really people, I don't see why this is necessary, I'll tell you when a contraction is starting and ending), and a blood pressure cuff for me. Every time I had a contraction and the blood pressure cuff was pumping up I ripped it off. I was ticked! Mainly I was mad because I couldn't do what I had planned. Why in the world was this not working like all the labors I had read about in books?! I wanted to go home and not be in labor yet.

A nurse came in at 8 am and told me that they were still going to do an ultrasound to check Finn's status. They wheeled me down to where the ultrasound room was and got me ready. The ultrasound technician decided that it would be a good idea to push the ultrasound wand onto my belly when I was having a contraction even when I told him not to. Stupid man! I kept trying to ask him questions about what was going on and how much he weighed. He was very brief, and told me that he weighed around 4 lbs. My stomach dropped at that point. He then asked me if they had given me steroids (apparently to help his lungs develop). What?! Were they suppose to? All sorts of thoughts were rushing through my head. But one of the main one's was that this guy was a complete jerk.

Dennen called my doula that we had hired to come and help out. I'm so happy that we decided to call her and that she was available, even though we had only met with her once. She gave me some good back massages in-between contractions and helped me while Dennen ran home to grab all the things that we should have brought to the hospital.

The nurses made me stay attached to all of the machines because my blood pressure was high. It was 130/80 and usually my blood pressure is super low at 90/60. Also, Finn's heart rate wasn't responding to the contractions how it should have been. On top of it all I had to have an oxygen mask on which made me throw up multiple times because of the smell of the plastic mask. Don't get me wrong, even though I was bugged, I know that they were just trying to make sure that I was okay and that Finn was okay.

At around 9 am my doctor came in and told me that I should start thinking about getting an epidural (even though I wasn't planning on it) because it would help my blood pressure go down. Let me just say that the main reason I didn't want an epidural is because when you get one your chance of cesarian section goes up. I definitely did not want to have one of those if it could be avoided. When I hit 6cm and was totally confined to the bed it sealed the deal and I decided an epidural would be nice.

When the time came to push, I pushed him out in 15 min. The cord was kind of wrapped around his neck and arm and that's why his heart rate wasn't responding well to the contractions. He did really well on his second APGAR test which they take at the 5 minute mark. He got a 10 on it. We were so happy he made it out safely! The main word that sums up how everything felt was, "surreal". I was still kind of in denial that I had just had a baby. I know. Weird.

Brace yourself, here comes the first family picture. Not quite what I had in mind. I think I look a little bit too good for just having been in labor for 17 hours. I'm lookin' reeeaaal good!

I was able to snuggle with him before they took him to the NICU to monitor him for an hour. I remember feeling that he was so soft and precious. Everything checked out with him, he had absolutely no complications. "Wow," is all I can think still.

Well, to wrap things up, some of you may be wondering why I had IUGR and why Finn is such a tiny tater tot. Look at the size of your hand. Yeah, that's how big my placenta was. Definitely not normal. My doctor did a biopsy of my placenta and said that there were abnormal cells showing that my body was trying to kill my placenta. Um body, Finn kind of needed that. Anyway, I asked my doctor if I could have done anything different. He said no. It was some weird genetic thing that happened. He said that it was a good thing that my body decided to go into labor itself because Finn wasn't getting enough nutrients to grow anymore inside my uterus.

All in all, yes it was stressful, but it could have turned out a lot worse. We have a healthy little boy and we couldn't be happier!