'Birth Day'

Hello Friends!  Long time no talk.  Between welcoming our first child into our family and having our computer crash, I have had a lot of reasons not to be blogging this past 10 weeks. We are finally settling into our new life as parents and we got a new computer so tonight I felt like I was ready to get back into it but was having a hard time deciding where to start as our lives have changed more than I could ever write about in the past 10 weeks.   I finally decided to write my reflections on Thor's 'Birth-Day'.  Please note that I have been very open in sharing my story so if you don't like hearing about 'labor' than you might as well stop reading now :).  Don't say I didn't warn ya! :)

It was a Wednesday morning February 1st, 2012. Four mornings after I was released from 2 months of bed rest.  I was not expecting to make it this far.   I had been having labor pains a couple days before this, but here I was.....waking up another morning with no baby.  I did not go back to work after being released from my bed rest because the doctors and I knew that as soon as I was up and moving around it was just a matter of time before baby would arrive.  

That particular morning I woke up happy and refreshed from the best nights of sleep I had received in a long time.  I kissed Michael as he headed off to work.  I laid in bed awhile and around 8ish I got up and got on Facebook to check out what had been going on the night before.  I realized as I looked down at the computer that we had made it to February.  The actual month of my due date.  I thanked God right away as I didn't think we would make it this far with all the pre term labor I had experienced. 

That morning around 8ish, I made my Facebook status something to the effect of 'Welcome February, this is the month we get to have our baby!'.  Little did I know that we would get to meet our sweetie that very day.

Around 8:30am just a few minutes after my Facebook post I began to get a stomach ache.  That lead to the beginning of multiple trips to the potty......to go potty.......with a sick stomach......get the picture??  Anywho, without getting to detailed these 'episodes' continued to happen over and over. 

The night before, my mother in law had stopped over to our house and took Michael and I out to eat at The Sports Page in Ankeny for dinner.  I over indulged in greasy food so I thought my stomach was having a reaction to what I ate the night before.

11am rolled around and things really weren't getting much better.  I was home by myself and was not feeling well.  I started to notice these 'stomach aches' getting closer and closer together.  I called my mom and told her and her words were, 'hunny, you need to call the doctor, you may be in labor.' 

For some reason, timing contractions was a confusing thing to me.  I could never decide when to say my 'stomach aches' started and when they stopped so I decided to start writing down every time I got one between 11am and noon.  When noon hit, I looked at my sheet and I had experienced 9 'stomach aches' that hour.  60 minutes divided by 9 equals about every 6.5 minutes.  I decided to call the doctor because the week before I was 3cm dilated and 75% effaced at my appointment so I didn't want to let things get too far along as I knew I wanted an epidural. When I called the doctors office and talked to the nurse I was so calm that she didn't think it seemed like I needed to come in but because of my pre term labor they wanted me to check me right away just to be safe. 

I called Michael and said, 'I think we are going to have a baby today' and he came rushing home.

My mind started to race at the thoughts that this could be more than a 'stomach bug'.....this could be labor.  Eeekkk  Even though I had been pregnant for 9 months did not mean that I was feeling mentally or physically capable of handling the task at hand at that point.  I was straight up scared.

I could barely wait for Michael to get home.  He works in Ankeny and came home immediately but those minutes felt like hours as I gathered the hospital bags and waited for him.  I became emotional, tearing up and feeling terrified and not equipped for what might be coming my way.  It hit me that this could be the last few hours, 'just the two of us'.  I walked around our house for the last time trying to imagine bringing another person home with us the next time I walked through these doors.  Overwhelmed. 

Michael walked in the door, smiled and gave me a kiss and ran to the bathroom for a 2 minute shower than we headed for the car. 

This was taken right before walking out the door for the hospital.  I definately have what I call, "The Look of Labor".

As always, he was my rock and kept me calm and collected. We could not believe that this could be our big day!

It's hard for me to remember the car ride but I do recall my stomach pains getting worse and telling Michael I wasn't feeling the greatest.....he drove faster and prayed for God's protection over me and the baby and for the potentially exciting day ahead of us. 

We got to Mercy hospital in Des Moines a little before 1pm to check in.  When we got to our delivery room we were greeted by our nurse.  Right away I had a calming feeling come over me.  She was very warm and inviting and she introduced herself as, Kathy.  She was about my mom's age and was incredibly reassuring.  She was the perfect nurse for me as she had a mothering nature and I could tell we connected immediately.  She was truly there for me.  I needed her maternal yet direct personality at that time.  She did not allow me to doubt myself.  She made me feel confident, competent, and strong.  She and Michael believed in me.  I could feel it.  This was empowering. 

Waiting for the epidural.

Kathy gave me my gown to change into and had me get settled in.  I was very calm at this point..... So much so that she started to give me the spiel about the possibility of getting sent home to let me progress if things weren't moving along.  Checking me in and getting my info into the system took about 30ish minutes.  She then decided to check my cervix to see how I was progressing.  Much to her surprise I was 7cm dilated and 100% effaced.  The baby's head was 1 stage away from coming out.  She said, 'this is when you are going to see a bunch of nurses start to run around but don't panic'.  Needless to say I started to panic.  I had the feeling that everything was happening too fast.  I wanted things to slow down.  I didn't know if I was ready.  I looked at the clock and it was around 2ish.  There were nurses rushing around bringing in tables with all the tools for the labor and delivery. They were also getting the warming bed heated up for the baby.  I was getting sooo nervous. I was scared for the 'pushing' part as I never had the chance to take a Lamaze class because of  bed rest. I didn;t know what to do.  Kathy assured me that most of it would come naturally and that she would coach us through the rest. 

Getting warmed up for baby.

At this time, the contractions continued to get stronger and stronger.  I wanted an epidural and they knew they were going to have to get me one quickly to get it to work since I was already so far progressed.  Unfortunately, I needed to have a blood test done first to make sure my blood platelets were sticking together (or something like that...I don't understand those things).  The lab was taking a long time to get my results back as the labor and delivery wing was extremely busy that day.   Finally, we received word that my results had come back and everything looked great.  I could have my epidural!  I was about 9cm when they gave me my epidural and it was 4:30ish at this point.  As a side note, it was about this time that I heard the lady in the room beside me screaming.  This freaked me out as I knew I was about ready to embark at what she was experiencing at that time.  Needless to say we shut the door to try and block her out.

The epidural was a strange experience but not painful.   I really wasn't that nervous about getting one because I always knew I wanted one.  I don't regret getting one even though I was handling the labor really well up to the point I got mine.  Michael and the nurse said they could barely tell when I was having a contraction because I was so quiet and calm.  Michael kept asking 'are you hurting?'  I would tell him, 'yes' and he would say, 'you are doing awesome because it's hard to tell you are feeling the pain.' :)  The epidural took really well on my right side but on my left side I still had feeling in my back and around the front of my abdomen. 

This actually really worked to my advantage as I could still feel my contractions and could tell when I needed to push without watching the monitor.  This made me a much more effective 'pusher' I guess. 

Once I had the epidural she checked me and I was at 10cm by 5ish but the baby was sitting sideways.  Because of this, I they had to lower the bottom part of my bed where I rested my knees and I placed my arms on they higher part of the bed.  They had me rock back and forth (more like side to side) in this position.  This positioning was a lot like kneeling besides your bed.  I stayed in this position for about 25 minutes and after that time she checked me and the baby's head had turned into the correct position. 

At 5:50pm Kathy said, 'it's time to start pushing'.  This part was so neat as it was just Michael, Kathy and myself. Michael holding one of my legs and Kathy the other.  I had back labor which was very painful but I could only feel it on the left side.  Michael gave me back massages in between pushes.  I always imagined a room full of people like on the movies.... but it was nice, just the 3 of us.   Kathy had me push 3 times for 10 seconds each during each contraction.  She would count to 10 for me then ask me to breath then push again for 10 seconds.  This pattern was very effective but also very tiring.  For any of you mommies out there that used this rhythm/method of pushing, by they third 10 seconds were you out of breath??  I was! She then let Michael count for me.... he counted sooooo slow that I could not push through the whole 10 seconds.  We actually laughed about this during that time.  I asked him if he was trying to kill me.  Needless to say, I asked him to count faster.  LOL.  :)

One of the things that was motivating to me at this point of the labor was not only the suspense of not knowing the sex of our baby but also the fact that they could see that the baby had hair.  I always pictured our baby being bald since I was a bald baby.  I couldn't wait to see it!  About 15 minutes into pushing, Kathy called the doctor in as she knew I was almost to the point of pushing the baby out.  Dr Fagerland came into the room and was so calming and awesome.  We had only met him once before when I was in the hospital for pre term labor a few weeks before.  We really liked him that day in the hospital and we were happy that he was on call that night.   Dr Fagerland watched my pushing and agreed that I was doing a great job but mentioned there was a chance he needed to give me an episiotomy as we had a baby with a Stensrud size head which was having some troubles finding room to come out.  He let me try a couple more times before very discretely giving me the episiotomy during one of my contractions. I had no idea it happened.  About 3 seconds later at 6:22pm, 32 minutes after I started pushing, they laid a beautiful crying baby on my chest.  I remember them holding him up side down in front of me for a second as they suctioned him out right before laying him on my chest and I could easily tell he was a boy.  About that same time someone said, 'It's a BOY'.  I was overcome with joy and amazement at what had just happened.  I cried tears of joy and of the overwhelming feelings that were coming at me. I was a mother.  I had a son.  We were parents.  God had been so faithful in giving us so much more than we deserve.

Meeting our boy for the first time.

We decided to name him Thor Michael Stensrud.  Most people probably think we got his name from the SuperHero movies that are coming out but that is actually not the case.  This past summer we were in Decorah with our friends Zac and Stacie for a weekend of canoeing.  Because our friend Zac is an avid bike rider and the Tour De France was going on at that time, we were always checking in on how the race was going.  One day, we were sitting in a restaurant in Decorah casually watching the race and I noticed the name of a Norwegian bike rider named Thor Hushovd.  He is very popular in the biking world and his name stuck out to me.  Michael is 100% Norwegian and Thor was a Norwegian name so I thought it would be a neat name for a boy.  I didn't think Michael would go for the name but when I asked him about it later that day he said he really liked it.  That was our boy name from that point on.  His middle name is after both his daddy and grandpa Mike.  We believe its simple yet masculine sound suit him very well. 

They had thought the baby would be 6ish lbs before I delivered because I really was not that big, but after he came out they said, 'hmm, I think this guy is a little bigger than 6 lbs'.  I was so grateful for having him at 37 weeks after finding out he was 8 lbs 2oz 21.5 inches long.  He would have been a VERY big boy had I carried him to 40 weeks. 

His special features were dark brown wavy hair, blue eyes, wide fingers, and a small birth mark on his lower back and a tiny one on his butt.  He also didn't seem to resemble either mommy or daddy but simply had some of each of our characteristics.  I always imagined having a little boy first so he felt like perfect fit into our new little family. 

I laid in bed while the doctors took care of my unfortunate 3rd degree tearing and watched Kathy and Michael take care of Thor on the other side of the room.  Michael was snapping pictures and beaming.  The joy I saw on his face made me glow with love for him as I watched Michael falling in love with our first born son.  I thanked God for an amazingly supportive husband for the millionth time.....But this time my prayer was different as I was not just thanking God for my amazing husband, I was thanking him for the amazing man he had chosen to be my child's father.  Grateful.

After about 30 minutes of monitoring the baby in our birthing room they decided to take him to the nursery to be put on oxygen because of his shallow breathing.  It was nothing bad, they just thought he had swallowed some fluids and needed some help breathing for the night as well as constant evaluation by the nurses. 

We were sooooo grateful and thankful to be greeted by BOTH our WHOLE families who were there to see us right after Thor was born.  They all came to came in to see us as I waited to be released from my birthing room.  It was so fun to finally be able to introduce our son to our families although that night they were only able to see him through the nursery window. 

The rest of that night was a whirl wind.  At 11:30pm I finally had the chance to have Micheal wheel me to the nursery to see our little boy again as I had only got about 30 minutes with him after he was born.  Meeting him again in the nursery was so surreal.  Looking at this perfect little being God had designed for us and entrusted to us. A reflection of Michael and I's love for one another.  The one I had felt move inside my womb.  He was beautiful.  I was overwhelmed with gratitude.  Our journey was just beginning.

I will write more about our journey into parenthood soon.  It has been awesome but also incredibly challenging.  We will share some of our experiences both good and bad over the next weeks! We hope this will be encouraging to our readers. Thanks so much for all your prayers during my bed rest.  They helped to bring us a VERY healthy and beautiful son into this world!  Praise God from whom ALL blessings flow! :) 

We love you Thor Michael.