Kayson's Story

The night before I had him fishin on the river

Well I'm realizing how fast you forget everything after having a baby so I wanted to write this down before I forget anymore of the details.

Kayson was kind of a stubborn little guy before he was born! One week before he was born on Thursday, October 1st I went to the doctor and to my surprise I was dialated to a 4!! Dr. Meredith stripped my membranes and pretty much told me that I should be having the baby within the next day or two and definately before the weekend was over!! On my way home it really hit me and I kind of panicked! On my way home I called Bridger and told him and I think he kind of panicked too! So I went home and cleaned everything spotless!! I got everything ready and packed my bags for the hospital....and waited.........and waited.....and walked up and down and up and down our stairs. I had contractions but they were pretty random: not regular at all. Well Monday came and now I was starting to get anxious! I called the doctor office and asked if I could come in and see if I had progressed at all. Dr. Lovell checked me this time and said that I was dialated to a 5 and it was very thin (efaced) he stripped my membranes AGAIN and told me he predicted to see me in the hospital at 2 a.m. So once again I went home made sure everything was ready... walked some more stairs, and waited... NOTHING!! By this point I was just sick of being pregnant and ready to have this over with. Tuesday night Bridger wanted to go fishing in the jet boat up the river so I decided to tag along...of course in the back of my mind I was thinking all the bumps going up the river just might put me into labor!! Well we didn't catch anything and I still wasn't having regular contractions... just enough contractions to make me uncomfortable! Well the next morning I told Bridger I think we were going to have a baby today! I got out of bed and my water was.... leaking. I didn't really think a lot about it because I thought when your water broke there would just be one big gush and you would hurry and get to the hospital. Not quite how it worked for me. By like 10a.m. it was leaking more and more so I decided to call the doctor's office and see what they thought. When I told the nurse she asked, "are you sure it's your water?" Seriously! What did she think I was just peeing my pants all day!? So she told me to come into the office at 2:30 and they would check me. So I once again got everything ready to go made sure the house was spotless and I had everything I needed for the hospital. I called Bridger and told him to meet me at the doctor's office in case we needed to go straight to the hospital. My mom was on her way home from Idaho Falls and stopped by and decided she should take me to the doctor so we wouldn't have both our cars there. Dr. Lovell checked me again because Dr. Meredith was out of town. I was dialated to a 6 and he sent me up to the hospital!

We got to the hospital around 3:30 p.m. It was definately not as intense as I thought it would be! We just checked in went to the room and just hung out!! The nurse put the IV in me and hooked me up to the machine that showed the contractions. By like 6p.m. I hadn't progressed much so they started me on PIT. They wanted to speed things up because my water had been broken for 12 hours and after 18 hours me and the baby would be at risk for infection. They also asked if I wanted the epidural but I was doing just fine so I told them I would wait. Then me, my mom, and Bridger just hung out in the room... it was pretty laid back, there wasn't much excitement going on! They upped the dosage of the PIT every half hour. I was having a lot of contractions but they still weren't very regular. I would have some big contractions and some smaller ones and they were just kind of random. By 10:30 p.m. the contractions were definately getting a lot harder but still kind of random. After that everything was kind of a blurr.. I asked for the epidural when I was dialated to an 8 the anestheseologist took forever to come because they had to page him. He came in (he was kind of an idiot) and gave me the epidural. I had waited a long time to get it and I was finally ready for some relief. But that's when things intensified. About 15 minutes after the anestheseologist left I got the most horrifying pain in my tail bone and pelvis. I honestly never even imagined you could have a pain that bad. We asked if the anestheseologist could come back in but the nurse said it probably wasn't anything to do with the epidural the baby just might have dropped and was putting a lot of pressure there. Well after 45 minutes of complete pain and agony the called the anestheseologist back in (he took forever to come back in) and he took the epidural out and completely re-did it because it was in the wrong spot! I was still in so much pain and I was progressing really fast so he put a really strong drug in the epidural. Right then everywhere except where I needed it to be was completely numb. I was shaking uncontrolably and the baby's head was coming out, it was time to push! I pushed for like 45 minutes and the entire time I was puking! NOT FUN! Finally the nurse paged Dr. Lovell and he came in put on his gown, felt where the head was, I said I was having another contraction, He said LETS MAKE A FAMILY, one last push and at 1:33a.m. our sweet little Kayson was here!!! He had lots of brown hair that looked curly at the time and he had the biggest hands and long little fingers. Those were the first things that I noticed. I was still really out of it from the pain medication and still shaking like crazy. They put him on my chest and started wiping him off. He was so sweet. He was 20 1/2 inches long 7lbs. 8oz. Right after they got him cleaned off he was opening his mouth looking for something to eat! So I nursed him for like an hour and a half!! He was wide awake for the first few hours. Bridger and the nurse gave him a bath, he loved it when they ran the water over his hair. I was still really numb so we didn't move into the mother-baby unit until like 5:30 a.m. We tried to get some sleep but it wasn't very easy!

I was so sure I was going to have a huge baby that I took back all the clothes I had in the newborn size and got 0-3 month. Well they were all huge on him so I had my mom get him some newborn sized pajamas and a few things he could wear. He had the tiniest little legs and every time we would change his diaper he would stick them straight out like two little toothpicks. His hair was really thick and long in the back and he had a little mullet.

For the first 3-4 days Kayson kept throwing up this nasty amniotic fluid. It was really scary because it was thick so he would gag on it and we would have to hurry and suck it out. He was circumsized Friday morning. He did really well and wasn't even crying when they brought him back to us. We took him home on Friday around 1:30 p.m. I was kind of nervous taking him home, not knowing at all what we were doing. The first diaper we changed was quite the experience! I was changing it and Bridger was holding his binky in because he was screaming. It was the really nasty black tar looking poop and it was taking forever to wipe him. Well while I was wiping him he starting pooping more and.... peed ALL OVER Bridger!! Well lets just say that was the first of many times we've gotten peed on!

On Monday October 12th we took him to the doctor. He lost a little weight, he weighed 7lbs 5oz. He also had jaundice so we had to take him to the hospital to get his blood drawn. His billirubin level was 15 so we had to rent a billi blanket. He had to be on the light for 4 days. That first week was definately stressful! Kayson had his days/nights mixed up so I didn't get much sleep for quite awhile. During the day he would sleep so much I couldn't even get him to eat and then he would be awake for most of the night.