March 3, 2007 Dustin and I decided it would be okay to start trying for baby #2. We knew we wanted another little one, but we didn't want too much of an age difference between Jaxon and the new baby. We thought it might take a while, so we decided against getting my birth control prescription refilled. I hadn't been on it for over a month, but I also had not been with Dustin. He was in Sugar Land, and I was in Dallas preparing for our wedding. On the exact night we decided it would be okay to start trying, we got pregnant! Just my luck! We weren't exactly prepared, but we thought we had a few months of trying before it actually happened.
We got married March 10, 2007. We didn't want to depend on anyone to keep Jaxon for a week, so we planned our honeymoon around him. Galveston it was! One of Dustin's co-workers had a HUGE beach house that he let us stay in for a few days as a wedding gift to us. It was AMAZING! Dustin thought we would celebrate our nuptials with a nice dinner and margaritas. I just KNEW I was pregnant. I never took naps, and our first day at the beach house I fell asleep in the middle of the living room floor. I decided I had better take a test before I had one of Dustin's margaritas...they're pretty potent. I didn't tell Dustin I was taking a pregnancy test...it would have wrecked his day. He had just bought everything for the margaritas, and a $50 bottle of Patron. I took the pregnancy test, and I already knew what it was going to say. I was right..."PREGNANT". I gave the test to Jaxon, and told him to take it to Daddy. Little did I know...Daddy was having "quiet time" in the bathroom. Jaxon opened the door to the bathroom, and Dustin told him to get out. Jaxon threw the test at him, slammed the door, and ran to the living room where I was. That night we celebrated with margaritas...Dustin made me a virgin one, and he made himself a blender full of not-so-virgin ones:)
I suckered my doctor into performing a sono at 16 weeks, so we could sneak a peak and see if we could tell the sex. I was pretty sure I knew what I was having, and it was confirmed when my doctor said, "You see that?". From previous experience I knew what "that" meant. Another boy:) At that point I already had a boy name picked out. I loved Aiden, but as always...I had to be different. I changed the spelling to Ayden, and gave him my brother's name as his middle name. My brother was murdered the March after I had Jaxon. Jimmy was a great guy, and had a heart of gold. I knew if I had another boy, his middle name would be James. So our fetus, formerly know as "Cletus the Fetus", was now known as Ayden James. At that point we started referring to my belly as "Ayden" so that Jaxon could get better acquainted with his baby brother. Jaxon has got to be one of the funniest kids I know. There were several funny stories involving Jaxon and my pregnancy with Ayden, but one stands out in my mind right now. I had taken Jaxon to the grocery store with me one night to get a fruit plate...one of my many cravings! I decided we didn't need a cart, because I knew what I was getting and planned on getting it and getting out. Jaxon broke away from me in the checkout line, ran over to a woman in the line next to us, poked her belly, and yelled "Ay'en! It's Ay'en!". Lucky for me she was pregnant, and not just a little thick around the middle! I was SO embarrassed.
My pregnancy was pretty uneventful until our 20 week sono. The doctor discovered Ayden had enlarged kidneys. They really weren't telling me too much about what was going on. I was told that if it hadn't corrected itself by our sono at 32 weeks, then he may have to have surgery shortly after birth. I was also told if it was worse at the second sono they may have to take him early so they could perform the surgery earlier. I was so upset. Somewhere in that conversation they also mentioned that enlarged kidneys were a marker for Down's Syndrome. They failed to mention it was only 1 marker out of a possible 20. So for the next 12 weeks I held my breath.
On the morning of September 11th I woke up at about 1AM with the worst cramps of my life. I ran a warm bath and sat in it for about an hour, with no relief. During that hour I was up and down throwing up until there was nothing else in my stomach to throw up. Then came the contractions. When I was able to time them, I knew it was time to go to the hospital. I was trying to stay calm, but I was only 26 weeks along. I worked in the NNICU for 4 years, so I had seen plenty of 26 weekers. I knew that there was a chance of survival if he was born that soon, but it would be a long, hard road. I tried to stay calm, but with each contraction I got a little more nervous. I was sent straight to L&D and hooked up to all kinds of monitors. The nurses were so rude. One nurse asked me why I was there, and I told her I had been throwing up all morning and started having contractions. She replied, "Then why are you in L&D? If you're just throwing up and you're worried about it, you should be in ER.". I politely reminded her that I was also having contractions. She didn't believe me until she hooked me up to the monitor and saw that I was, indeed, having regular contractions. I was given fluids through an IV, and the contractions stopped. I was released from the hospital a couple hours later, and went home to rest. I didn't know that Dustin had called Dr. B. and told him what was going on and how worried he was. About an hour after we got home, my doctor called the house and told us he wanted us to go to a different hospital that had a great NNICU, and he would meet us there. At that point the contractions had started up again. I was hooked up to all of the monitors, yet again, but had a much better experience with this hospital. The nurses were AMAZING! They continued to pump me full of fluids, and did a sono to check Ayden's lungs. They were amazed at what they saw. They said Ayden had the lungs of a 35 weeker! They watched him for 30 minutes, and he never missed a breath. He was doing some practice breathing, and did really well. They decided against the steroid shots because he was doing so well, and they said my contractions were brought on by dehydration not because he was trying to "escape".
At our 32 week sono Ayden looked great! One kidney had totally corrected itself, and the other had shrunk in size. They were almost positive the left kidney would continue to shrink, and he wouldn't have to have surgery. It also looked like I was going to have another big baby. They were estimating an 8-9 pounder. At last I was able to rest easy, and enjoy the rest of my pregnancy:) Okay...I say "enjoy", but by the next appointment I was ready to talk induction. Ayden loved sticking his feet in my ribs, and at one point I even had a visible bruise on my ribcage! How does that happen?! At my 37 week appointment I was given my induction date. Ayden James would be joining our little family November 12th!
I was unaware, until 3 days prior to my induction date, that I would be induced at 6PM. 6PM?! I didn't want to be induced at 6PM! That meant I would more than likely have a November 13th baby. His birthday, at some point, would fall on Friday the 13th, and that was NOT going to happen if I had anything to do with it! We arrived at the hospital at 6:15PM. I settled in, got comfortable, and prepared for what I thought was going to be a very long night. I was very happy to see that my nurse for the night was the same nurse I had when I went in for contractions at 26 weeks. At 7:15 they gave me Cervidil, and that's when the fun began! Apparently Cervidil is just supposed to ripen your cervix, not really induce labor. They were planning on doing the actual induction at 3:00AM with Pitocin. Almost immediately after they gave me the Cervidil I started getting really uncomfortable, and begging for drugs. I thought I was being a sissy, because I was told that it wouldn't really "induce" labor, it was just supposed to prepare me for induction. Either way, I wanted drugs! The nurse came in, checked me, and looked a little worried. She said, "Well, I know why you want drugs. You progressed 4 cm in 1 hour!". She gave me a shot of Stadal, something I hadn't had during my labor with Jaxon. That was some good stuff! Dustin tried to convince the nurse to sell him some to take home with us. He said that I was really nice to him once the drugs kicked in:) I could still feel the contractions, and they were HORRIBLE, but in between contractions I was totally out of it. I saw things floating around my room...it was bizarre. My water broke at 9:15PM, and that's when the contractions got extremely intense and much closer together. They were about about 2 minutes apart...lasting for 1 and half minutes with a 30 second break. I waited for what seemed like forever for the anesthesiologist to get there. When he finally arrived, he was a total jerk. I told him I was having a contraction, and he insisted on inserting my epidural right in the middle of it. After he left the room I was still in SO much pain. I asked my nurse if she could check my epi and make sure it was placed right. It was in the right place, but the jerk inserted the catheter with no meds! The nurse found him in the hallway chit chatting with a group of nurses. I must have called him every name in the book! The meds were all hooked up by about 10:30PM. Meanwhile, the nurse was trying to page my doctor with no luck. He lives right by the hospital, so instead of sleeping at the hospital while he's on call he just sleeps at home. At about 11PM the nurse checked me and I was complete. She paged the doc again, and he finally called back. She told him I was complete, and he told her to have me "wait it out"..."no need to rush the baby.". The nurse was pretty peeved at this point, so she came in and told me to do a test push, and that she would call Dr. B. and tell him I felt like I needed to push, and that he needed to get there ASAP. I did a little push, and there was Ayden's head! My nurse said, "No more pushing! He really does need to get here!". Dr. B. strolled in at 11:57PM...keep in mind I did NOT want my baby born on the 13th. He washed his hands, told us how his wife kicked him out of bed b/c his pager kept going off, and said he would see what he could do about getting us a baby before midnight. HA! I showed him what I could do! As soon as he got to the foot of my bed I pushed once, and Ayden was here! He made his arrival at 11:59PM on November 12th, 2007. Ayden James weighed in at 7 lbs 10 ozs, and was 20 inches long. My EXACT prediction on length and weight! I had such a great experience, and we were the talk of the L&D floor the next day:)
November 12, 2007...
6 months later...
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