07/07/20

Teddy’s Birth Story

Welcome Back Cuties!

I can’t believe it has already been a little over three weeks since our sweet baby boy entered this world and completely stole our hearts.  I know some people prefer to not share their birth stories because they are so personal, but I have shared so much of my life over the past five years with you guys that not sharing it just didn’t feel right. 

We welcomed Teddy Harrison Rando on Thursday, June 11, 2020 at 2:12 in the afternoon. Almost exactly two weeks before his actual due date! My entire pregnancy, the doctors told me that he was measuring a week ahead of schedule and to expect him not to go to the full 40 weeks and they were completely right.

The Monday before I went into labor, I had my regularly scheduled doctors appointment to see how everything was progressing but had a particular worry of my own that I wanted to address while I was there. Over the weekend, something started happening to me that every nine month pregnant woman dreads/fears and it was the moment that I lost all control of my bladder. Aka, I casually just started peeing myself. Not just once either!! It quickly became a common occurrence over the course of the weekend and the worst part of it was that I never even knew it was happening. One moment I would be minding my own business, going about my day and the next moment I would have pee going down my leg… It was mortifying and got so bad that I had to start wearing a diaper lol. While I thought nothing of it at the time and figured that it was just another embarrassing pregnancy symptom…my mom and MIL weren’t so casual about it and were worried it might actually be my amniotic fluid leaking (aka my water slowly breaking), so I went in that Monday a little worried and wanting to make sure everything was actually okay. Of course, this particular week, my obgyn (who has been my doctor for over five years) was out of town that particular week on vacation, so I saw her practitioner instead. She was super sweet, gave me a PH test to test my fluid and assured me that it wasn’t my water breaking. That everything looked just fine and even though I was already 3cm dilated, she still didn’t expect him to come for another week but suggested that I have my bags packed and ready to go by that weekend – just in case! 

So despite the fact that I left there still having to wear a diaper, I felt much better about it all and went home with a set agenda to get everything packed and ready to go by that weekend. Then that Wednesday, as I was working away and carrying on with my normal day, I started to have mild period like cramps and around 2pm noticed some spotting. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, so I of course called my mom to see what she thought. She quickly advised me to call my ob (who was still out on vacay) and ended up having to leave a message with one of their nurses. In less than five minutes, another doctor apart of her practice called back and advised me to go to the hospital. After telling her everything I had experienced she casually said, “Well, why don’t you go to the hospital to be checked out and then if you are in labor, they will notify us and we’ll go from there!“. At this point I was so caught off guard and said “Waittttttt, you think I might be in labor?? They told me not to worry about this until next week! My husband is at work, we haven’t packed our bags, and I haven’t showered in three days! I can’t go into labor right now lol“. So she assured me that she didn’t think it was too urgent but that I should call Colton to come home and to shower/pack our things as quickly as possible.

So we did all of that and arrived to the hospital around 5pm. As I walked in, freshly showered, bags in hand with barely any cramps at that point, I felt incredibly silly. I thought to myself  “oh my gosh this is so embarrassing, I way over reacted! There is NO WAY I am going into labor right now. I am way to calm and this is not what I have seen in the movies!”. I truly thought we were about to walk in, be laughed at and sent home! That didn’t happen though and we were actually put into a room almost immediately to be examined. I was told that everything looked fine but was still only 3cm dilated and in order to stay, I’d have to be 5cm…so they wanted us to wait 3o minutes and then send us to walk the hospital for an hour to see if that would help dilate me a little more before actually having to send me home. As we waited there for those 30 minutes, I of course peed myself on the bed (as I had been doing) and was completely mortified when I had to tell the nurse. She concerning-ly  said, “Are you sure your water didn’t just break??” and I said, “Oh no… I have been peeing myself for almost a week now lol!” but she wasn’t convinced and wanted to do a test of her own. As she did the test, I told her about the test that was done at my doctors on Monday in which she replied “Well I don’t know what test they did on you while you were there, but honey, this test says that your water broke. Congratulations – you’re having a baby!!“. 

By 8:00pm we were admitted into our labor and delivery room. Since I had never done this before, I had no idea that I was supposed to eat before getting to the hospital and that once I was there, I wouldn’t be able to eat until after I deliver. Unfortunately for me, I hadn’t eaten since noon that day and was starving by that point so this was probably the worst news I could have heard lol. We went over my birth plan (like if I wanted an epidural, if I planned on having him circumsized & etc.) and they told me that since we weren’t 100% sure when my water broke, that they needed to make sure I delivered in less than 24 hrs to avoid any sort of infection. That I would be starting Petocin at 3am (which would kick my contraction into high gear in order to help me dilate) and that I could either get my epidural either before or after. Since I knew that my pain level was about to get real intense, real fast, I opted to get it before so that I could do my best to get some rest as opposed to being up all night in extreme pain. 

Unfortunately, that plan back fired. Initially, I knew that my epidural was working because I couldn’t feel anything but around 3am, an hour after receiving the Petocin, I was in excruciating pain. It was like the epidural wasn’t working at all, so we had to get the anesthesiologist back in. When he finally got there around 4:30 or 5am, we quickly found out that it wasn’t the epidural that wasn’t working, but that the button that slowly releases the medicine wasn’t being pressed. The button that Colton was supposed to be pressing but wasn’t because he “didn’t want me to get addicted to it…“.  Needless to say, he is lucky he’s alive right now 😉 Lol just kiddinggg, but seriously, I couldn’t believe he was the reason I was in so much pain lol.  Once we were able to get that all figured out, I was finally able to try and get some rest. 

The next morning, around 10am, the doctor on call arrived to check me out and said that even after the Petocin, I was still less that 5 cm…She also noticed that while my water had indeed already “broke”, it didn’t actually break all the way… so she popped the rest of it herself and within seconds I finally felt that gushing feeling you always hear about! They then upped my medicine and had me straddle a peanut ball for 45 mins laying on each side to help further dilate me. By the time the doctor came back in, I was almost 10 cm dilated and she told me that it was about to be go time!

Our nurse immediately got everything ready and we started officially pushing around 1pm. For almost 45 minutes it was just me, Colton and our nurse pushing through each contraction. When we were nearing the end, the doctor came in with what felt like a cheer squad of nurses to officially deliver our boy! We had about 20 minutes of hard pushing and as everyone in the room was screaming for me to push and that I was “almost there!” our sweet Teddy was born! It’s crazy because even though I had an epidural and could literally feel no pain, I could still fully feel him leaving my body and being put into my arms. It was hands down the craziest feeling and more surreal experience of my entire life and brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it. It was a flood emotions and memories of the past 9+ months and to think finally… here he was! 

We had decided on the name, Teddy Harrison back in February, but I really wanted to “meet him” before naming him, which is why I never announced his name to you guys or any of our family ahead of time. Harrison is a family name on my Dad’s side and Teddy is just a name that we both loved! A lot of ya’ll have asked why we didn’t name him Theo or Theodre and just call him Teddy for short… but we honestly just loved the name Teddy itself. We thought it was super cute/charming and figured if he ever decided he didn’t like it when he was older, that he could just go by either “Ted” or “Harrison” and that there was no need to name him Theodore if we didn’t want to. 

&&& that’s our birth story! 

I also just want to say a quick thank you to all of you who have send sweet sweet, constant messages in regards to our boy. We are so over the moon in love with him and yalls love//support through all of this has meant more than you guys know. I was so scared and in shock when I found out I was pregnant and just to share all of that with you guys, not be judged, have you guys watch my whole pregnancy, go through every emotion with us, finally get to meet him and enter this chapter with me… I’m just wildly thankful. 

Love ya’ll so much! 

xo,

Lauren

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