Houston David Harris was born July 22, 2012 at 10:55 am weighing in at 9lbs 1oz, 21 inches long and 40.6 weeks gestation. Isn't he just perfect???
My first look at our big guy.
Houston with mommy and daddy for the first time.
Wow! This has been such a long emotional journey but so thankful it is a trip Billy and I decided to take. Houston is absolutely perfect! And yes, as I hold him I can't help but think that this is the child that multiple doctors encouraged us to terminate back in mid-January. Emotional - maybe its the hormones of pregnancy and birth but I think it has more to do with the tangible fruits of a miracle that our God gave us. I am just in awe...and so in love with our new little guy.
I was hopeful for an easy uneventful delivery but that just doesn't really jive with the rest of this pregnancy. I started having mild, consistent contractions Saturday afternoon. They weren't painful but just to play it safe I started using my iPhone ContractionMaster App (yep there's an app for that!). The app alerted me it was time to call the doctor when my contractions were about 5 minutes apart and 1 minute long. Again the contractions were not painful so I know I wasn't in hard labor but given the history here I decided to call and head on in to the hospital.
We got all settled in our L & D room around midnight and started monitoring Houston and the contractions. This was after two different nurses tried to start an IV in three different places...really??? I was so tired but didn't want to sit down for fear the contractions might stop. I was so sure that I was dilating and things would probably move along pretty quickly. The same nurses that had trouble putting in the IV checked for dilation. Their findings in their exact words, "Ummm, I can't find your cervix. Let me get the midwife in here." Things were not off to the smooth start I was hoping for.
The midwife on call came in to do her assessment. She did find my cervix but could not find any kind of opening - no dilation. She suggested we (meaning her) encourage my cervix to open manually. I won't give many details on that, I'll just give you one adjective: PAINFUL. That didn't work. So on to something else. The doctor on call came in to check me and she wanted to try and cut my cervix open. At this point they decided I should go ahead and get an epidural - not for the labor pains but so I could endure the procedure they needed to do.
After the epidural the doctor tried to help my cervix along. She found it!!! But could not find any place on it that seemed to be the natural opening. She worked for probably close to an hour (there was so much blood - that part was a little scary). Then told me to rest and was hopeful that if we gave my body a few more hours I would start to dilate on my own. She came back a few hours later and tried again, again no luck.
The doctor and the midwife both understood how very badly I wanted a vaginal delivery with another surgery looming on the horizon for me. They both tried so hard for me and I could tell that they were probably as disappointed as me that it wasn't working. As soon as the decision to do the C-section was made we were back in the OR in a matter of minutes. Our precious gift was born at 10:55 am....
This whole time I've been on bed rest, 6 months of it, and guess what? The scar tissue from my surgery in February was just in the perfect place to keep my cervix from opening, the scars were protecting our little guy from preterm labor!! The midwife even commented that my cervix was so thin, barely there, that it just didn't make sense that it wouldn't be dilating. I believe this is yet another instance of God showing himself to us...He had Houston protected the whole time....
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