growing up

Over the past month, so many changes have been happening with my son.  He's now rolling over all the time both ways, he's sitting up, he got his first haircut, he has his first tooth, he's eating solid foods, and every day he's able to make a new noise.  All these changes led me and Jack to look back through old photos and videos of Seth last night, reminiscing about the early days of having our first child.  Then I was inspired by a friend of mine to share Seth's birth story with everyone.  It's long, and maybe has too many details, but I didn't want to forget a single thing.  So here it is ... how my son came into the world:

Jack and I both woke up around 4am on October 1, 2010, just unable to go back to sleep.  We laid in bed, talking.  My mom had already been staying with us for a week by that time and when she got up to get her coffee, she joined us in the dining room and played an early morning game of Rummy.  She made us oatmeal for breakfast with honey and dried cranberries.  Mmmm!  Jack got ready and went to Red Rock Café to meet with some guys from church for their men’s study/discipleship.  Instead of going directly to work, he came home to check on me and my mom (he says he had a feeling that he should do so).  Around 9am I started feeling period-type cramping.  It wasn’t painful, just noticeable.  Was I really going into labor?!  Finally after 6 days being past my due date?  At first I didn’t want to tell my mom and Jack because I didn’t want them to get all excited if it was a false alarm.  But when I was getting them every 10 minutes (we were playing yet another game of Rummy and I was watching the clock), I decided I better mention it to them.  Jack decided to stay at home and called his boss stating, “This is it!” on the voicemail he left him.  I took a shower, did my hair and makeup (and my moms!) before we decided to talk a slow walk through the neighborhood.  Both my mom and Jack had their cell phones out and were timing my contractions, which, by the time we got back home, were about 7-8 minutes apart.  Jack called the midwife on duty, Bethany, to tell her that I was in the beginning stages of labor.  I wasn’t ready to go to the hospital, but I was getting there.  Over the next couple of hours the contractions were getting a little more painful and were closer together.  I was sitting/leaning on the blue exercise ball my mom had gotten me a lot of the time, with my mom massaging my hands with vanilla lotion during contractions and Jack timing them.  I started getting the chills and would wrap up in a blanket or stand outside our front door in the sunshine.   

As the contractions were increasing to 5-6 minutes apart, my mouth was getting moist and I started throwing up all of my breakfast.  It was then that I knew I was ready to go to the hospital.  Jack called Bethany again, telling her that my contractions were now 4-5 minutes apart, I had thrown up and knew I was ready.  She told us to come down and she would let the nurses know to be expecting me.  My mom drove and Jack and I sat in the back, him holding my hand and timing my contractions on the way.  We parked and went up the elevator to the first floor to the nurse’s station.  Once we checked in, they brought me into the delivery room and had me undress and get into a hospital gown.  Jack helped me do so in the bathroom, where I threw up yet again (I found out later that Bethany so humbly cleaned it up).  I sat down in the bed and finally was in a comfortable position.  I didn’t want to move!  Bethany checked to see how far along I was dilated – between 5-6 centimeters! – and took my temperature to find that I had a fever of 101 degrees.  I knew I had chills earlier, but thought it was just from the pain.  I didn’t feel sick at all.  We went through a few options with me and we decided to give me a Tylenol and to break my water manually to get the contractions really going.  After that, she had me move into the shower and start water therapy.  I was so reluctant because I was comfortable in the bed!  Of course the contractions still hurt, but were more manageable at the angle I was sitting.  But, I did as she said.  She put a big ball in the tub, had me sit on it and then lean on another ball that was up against the back wall of the shower.  Jack changed into his swim shorts, took the showerhead and showered it all over my back and belly, up and down.  (I found out later that water kept coming out of the bathtub and was flooding the bathroom and down the hallway into the delivery room near my bed!).  After awhile, Bethany had me stand, leaning against the back wall, and then they filled up the tub and had me lay in it.  They turned all of the lights off and, though I had my eyes closed for most of the entire day (no kidding – I had to concentrate on getting through my contractions and every time I’d open my eyes, I’d get distracted), I opened them for a second and saw the little battery-powered fake candles around the bathroom.  My mom was there and calmed me and relaxed me with her words.  Eventually I felt like I needed to push.  After Bethany checked to see how far I was dilated, so said it was okay to start pushing if I felt the urge to.  They slowly got me out of the tub and onto the toilet to start training my body how to push properly (pushing a baby out uses the same muscles to push a poop out, hence why she put me on the toilet to get my mind in the right place).  During much of my contractions and while I started pushing, I was calling on the name of the Lord, saying, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus …”.  Bethany hadn’t said anything at first, but when she, Jack and my mom were all surrounding me while I was on the toilet and I kept saying it, she finally asked me, “Sylvia, when you say, ‘Jesus,’ what do you mean by that?”  and I said, “I love Him.”  Come to find out that Bethany is a Christian too!  She wasn’t sure if I was cussing by saying His Name or calling on His Name.  She asked if it’d be okay to pray with me and the four of us sat there while I was on the toilet praying that the rest of the delivery would go well.  What a blessing!  

After pushing there, Bethany felt that the baby’s head was a bit turned in the birth canal, so she suggested that I get on the bed and push while on all fours (gravity flipping him around hopefully).  Pushing like that really hurt my back, and eventually they had me turn over on my back, classic pushing style.  Little did I know that I was pushing for 2 ½ hours!  When I first started pushing, it didn’t feel like I was doing anything.  I just felt like I was trying to push out a poop that wasn’t really there.  Eventually though, I would hear the excitement from my mom and Jack of seeing the baby’s head which was a huge encouragement to me.  My mom on one side, Jack on the other, I would squeeze their hands while pushing (apparently really hard too … Jack had to take off his wedding ring!).  Finally I heard Bethany saying, “Sylvia this is what we call the ‘Ring of Fire’,” speaking of the pain right at the end … and oh boy was she right!  I screamed only twice – the last two pushes, when I let out the blood-curdling screams.  And then I heard Bethany say, “Sylvia, look!”  I looked down and saw Seth halfway out and she told me to grab him and I pulled him out the rest of the way and plopped him down on my chest. 

It was at that moment that I remembered what this was all about.  I had been concentrating so hard on getting through the contractions that I had honestly forgotten about the wonderful prize at the end – my son!  Once he was on my chest, I was doing the ugly cry.  The cry where you don’t care what you sound like or how ugly and scrunched up your face gets.  You just cry.  And then I realized I didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl!  “What is it?!  What is it?!”  I exclaimed.  Bethany told Jack to look and see.  From the angle Jack was at, it took him a second to see, and then happily exclaimed, “It’s a BOY!”  Seth Warren Osorno.  God’s perfect and precious gift to Jack and I.  Oh I love him more than words can say.

Seth Warren Osorno 

October 1, 2010

8:27pm

8 lbs., 12 oz.

20 ½ inches