Allie Meets Life: Dylan's Birth Story

**WARNING: VERY LONG!!**

I wanted to get this down somewhere before I forgot all of the details. I wanted to document it for myself and for Dylan, but also for any soon to be moms. I know I loved reading birth stories before Dylan was born because they gave me all different experiences of what was in store for me. And let's face it, I have never been more scared or nervous about anything in my whole life.

Everyone (including my doctor) told me how common it is for first babies to come late so I had that in my mind from the beginning. I was SURE she was going to come after her due date. So I was very surprised when it became a possibility that she was going to be here almost a week early.

Kyle really wanted to be with me for the whole experience and had expressed worry about being at work or something when labor started. I told him that he would still have plenty of time to get to me and he wasn't going to miss anything regardless of when I went in to labor. However, his worries must have been heard because I had my first contraction the second he walked in to the house after work on Monday the 20th. I had just taken a shower and was drying off when he walked in to the bathroom to tell me he was home. That's when my first contraction hit. It wasn't too terribly painful but I did have to sit down to breathe for a second. I'm not sure that I ever had Braxton Hicks contractions so I was concerned that I wouldn't know what a real contraction would feel like. Even before they were very painful, they definitely had a rise and fall rhythm to them that told me they were definitely contractions. At first they were pretty far apart, so we just went about our evening.

We ordered Olive Garden to go and went to pick it up. My contractions were coming closer together and getting more painful but I kept telling myself that it was false labor and even if it wasn't, I didn't want to get sent home from the hospital for coming in too early. Kyle, however, was pretty sure from the get go that it was the real deal and finished packing his bag and gathering all of our stuff together. He asked me if I wanted to tell the parents that evening that I was possibly in labor, but I didn't want to let everyone know until it was a sure thing. ( This turned out to be a little bit of an oops).

My doctor told me to call once I had contractions that were consistently one minute long, five minutes apart for one hour. My contractions never got to be THAT consistent ( some were 7 minutes apart, some were 1 minute apart) so I just kept waiting. We tried (unsuccessfully) to lay down for the night and Kyle finally convinced me to call the doctor at two in the morning.

We arrived at Baylor shortly thereafter ( good thing there's NO traffic at 2 in the morning HA). They checked me and told me that I was 5 cm dilated and was definitely being admitted for delivery. The anesthesiologist came in just a couple of minutes later to give me the epidural. It didn't really hurt at all, I'm not sure if I even felt the prick of the needle. Kyle looked and said afterwards that the needle wasn't even that big. Kyle started calling all of the grandparents to let them know that we had been admitted. He got ahold of everyone except for my mom.

The grandparents started arriving a little bit after that ( around 4 am by now I think), but we still hadn't been able to get ahold of my mom. Saundi ended up driving to my mom's house and knocking on the door to wake them up, HA!

From there it was a bunch of waiting. Dylan was in a little bit of distress throughout, especially when I was laying on my right side so I had oxygen off and on and kept flipping from side to side. The epidural was amazing, but I could still feel a little pain/pressure up high in my chest when I was having a contraction. Sometime in there they called the doctor to break my water. I didn't feel anything. I stalled out around 7cm and they decided to start some pitocin to get things going again.

Kyle tried to get a little sleep and the parents took turns hanging out with me because there was no way I could sleep. I remember it was very dark in my room the whole time. At first it was because it was night time and then because they kept the curtains closed, I assume because we were on the first floor. Finally, around 11:30 or so, they checked me and told me I was 10 cm and it was time to start pushing. The nurse told me that it wasn't uncommon to push for up to three hours. I was like "oh hellllllll no".

At this point it was myself, Kyle, the nurse and my mom in the room. Kyle had already decided that he didn't want to see the all of the gory details so he hung out my head, rubbing my hair and talking to me. The nurse held one leg and my mom held the other. I remember my mom asking the nurse " this isn't your first time or anything right? " haha. I thought it was weird that they didn't call the doctor, but the nurse said that they wouldn't until the last second. I was a little weary about how they would get that timing right but sure enough, she did. I ended up pushing for about forty-five minutes. That sounds like a long time but it didn't really feel that long. At first it was hard to push correctly since I was completely numb down there but I eventually got it right.

They called the doctor ( My doctor was out of the office of course on that day so another doctor in her practice who was on call stepped in) and she (and a team of other nurses) arrived for what turned out to be my last set of pushes. Honestly, Jack from down the street could've caught the baby ( I know, I know, the doctors are important but she was in my room for probably 5 minutes total). My nurse was definitely the rock star of the day. My mom and Kyle told me later that when the doctor and other nurses ( i guess?) came in, they were more concerned that there were only large gowns in the room for them and they were looking for smalls, than me over here having the baby. Haha. Kyle did end up looking at the yucky details downstairs for a minute as Dylan was being born and doesn't appear to be scarred for life. Just an FYI for the future dads out there. The actual delivery was the easiest part, I didn't feel a thing! I would choose an epidural every time, just FYI.

Dylan Paige Hausmann was born at 12:23 PM on Tuesday, July 21st, 2015.