Welcome Israel David

Pictures taken by Aunt Amy

Thursday, January 15, 2009

It’s our first morning home with little Israel David. For the moment, he is sleeping, and I’m praying he’ll stay that way long enough for me to write about one of the very most significant events of my life---his birth.

Last Sunday felt like any other Sunday of my late pregnancy. I was huge and uncomfortable and growing more and more excited as Israel’s due date grew closer. I recall that as I was leaving church one sister asked me when I was due and telling her that I had 10 more days. She told me sympathetically that I looked like I was ready to pop at any moment. In parting I said, “Well, maybe I won’t see you next Sunday,” with my fingers crossed, but I didn’t really think I’d be that lucky.

I spent the afternoon napping and then playing games and hanging out at Kristen’s house with Adam and Paul and the Patels. My mom called to talk for a bit and see how I was doing and to tell me how and where to reach her in the event that I went into labor, but we speculated together that this being my first that I probably had a least two weeks to go, which was what I was planning on. I had substitute positions scheduled for nearly every day up to his due date and was expecting that I’d most likely be working at least a couple days past that.

That night, Hiram and I started reading The Articles of Faith by James E. Talmadge together, and I tried to get him to listen as I read Harry Potter aloud, but he’d have none of that. (These are details that right now don’t seem all that interesting, but maybe sometime down the road, I’ll be glad to remember the silly, little things.) Around probably 9:00, events were set in motion by our little baby who I assume had had enough of being cramped up in my uterus and wanted out. He started to move around a lot—really big movements that Hiram and I could see and feel and didn’t stop for the longest time. He kept pushing his feet into my upper stomach forcing his head down harder and harder into my cervix, which I assure you was as pleasant as it sounds.

Shortly after Israel calmed down, at about 11:00, I began experiencing short periods of lower back pain, which I later learned were contractions. I had work in the morning, so I had gone to bed, and this pain was enough to wake me but didn’t last long enough for me to think too much about it. But at 2:00 or so, my back hurt enough that I called Hiram up from playing video games downstairs to ask him to please massage it for me for a little bit, and when he went to bed, I decided to get up and investigate a little on the internet. Nothing I found was really too helpful. I read a lot of comments about labor and what it feels like and when its real, but everyone described it differently, and my personal experience didn’t match much with anything I read, so I tried to go back to bed but the night was not a very restful one.

The contractions kept coming and seemed to be increasing slightly in intensity, so I’d get up and pace and wonder if I should call Guy, but then they weren’t really regularly spaced and didn’t last as long as they’re “supposed” to to be serious labor, so I really didn’t want to interrupt his sleep. I eventually called McKay-Dee just to explain what I was experiencing and to ask what I should do, but the woman at Labor and Delivery told me curtly that she wasn’t allowed to offer advice and I should just call my doctor. I felt kind of shut down and didn’t want to get that again from Guy, so I decided to just deal and see how I felt in the morning. They did taper off a bit so that I got some sleep and when my alarm went off, I got up and got ready for work. I didn’t want to lose my consecutive days’ pay if this was just a false alarm.

I went into Gramercy Elementary at 8:00, and that’s when the contractions decided to get serious. They started getting very painful as opposed to quite painful and started coming more frequently, though they still weren’t coming at regular intervals or lasting a consistent length of time. I was going from class to class for about 15 minutes each to allow teachers to go into interviews with representatives from the district, and in each one, I’d have a few moments when I had to grab my lower back and massage it while taking deep breaths and trying to control my facial expressions so as not to frighten anyone. =) When it got too ridiculous, I waddled down the hall and told the woman in charge that I really needed to go, which she of course had no problem with, and then I waddled out to my car and went home to collect my husband. If this wasn’t real labor, I didn’t care. I needed an epidural for this pain, and I was getting one!

At home I showered and called Guy’s office to let them know what was going on, and then we grabbed our cameras and not much else and headed off to McKay. I couldn’t quite believe that I was on my way. We got to the hospital at 1:00 or so, and the first two hours were the roughest because by that point I was really hurting and because the customer service totally sucked until I got into my room at 3:00. We had no idea what was going on, and I was just put in this bay in a room with a few other women waiting in it already and left for long periods of time. I was embarrassed cause for some reason I was the only woman moaning and whimpering and saying repeatedly, “Son of a…” (that is really all I said—I didn’t finish the phrase) or “What the hell?!”

We did finally get into a room at 3:00 and from that point on, my McKay-Dee experience was wonderful. Really it was. My first nurse, Jeri, was super quick to tell me that we’d get me an epidural right away and did. Bless her heart and the heart of Dr. Patel for administering my relief. And every other CNA and nurse on down to my discharge was kind and helpful and just everything I could have hoped for. My labor experience, on the other hand, wasn’t what I’d call wonderful, although I’m not complaining because it was a far stretch from what our pioneer ancestors went through to bring their posterity into the world. There were just a few things, really. For one, I wasn’t started on penicillin right away, so my labor was longer than it needed to be, and a couple more hours is a big deal. Also, I couldn’t get comfortable, or the monitor stopped picking up the baby’s heartbeat and a nurse would come in to make me move. And then I was nauseous and threw up five or six times, and finally, I had to push for what felt like forever.

Of course it was all more than worth it. I was at a three when we got to the hospital. Not long after I got to my room, my water broke. I remember Hiram looking at it and saying, “That’s disgusting.” When Guy came in, he broke the rest of it, and it didn’t take long to get to a seven. Then just a little bit longer and I was at a nine and then a ten and just had to wait to start pushing until I got all my penicillin. Then an hour and a half or so of pushing and some snipping and whahla! At 11:14 pm on Monday, January 12, 2009, Israel David came into the world and was suctioned and whatever else and then put on my chest, and I had never seen anything…or anyone, I guess, more beautiful. What an amazing, amazing experience. And I was so happy that there to share in that special experience were my husband, my sister, two of my awesome aunties, and my grandma.

Of course, there is so much more to write about like about how wonderful it was to see my husband holding his son for the first time, or about how much I already love our little baby, about the long, nearly sleepless nights, visits and gifts from family, etc., but I guess those will have to wait for the time being.

Don’t anyone think that my son actually slept long enough for me to write all this. Its taken me nearly eight hours to finish this epistle with all of his interruptions.