March 20th - Happy Birthday, Luke!

The fun began around midnight on Sunday, March 20th. Drew and I had spent all day Saturday helping out at the Vision Conference at church. We went grocery shopping in the evening, then headed to bed. Just after midnight I woke up to find that my water had broken! Needless to say, Drew and I were extremely excited :) I called the doctor, and she said to head over to the hospital. So we packed our things and headed over to Women & Babies.

We spent the first hour or so in Triage, where they took all my information, started monitoring contractions and the baby's heartbeat, and spoke with my doctor.

Next I was admitted, and we were moved to room 65 in Labor and Delivery. They went ahead and hooked up my IV and got me started on Pitocin. Now that we were all settled in, we went ahead and started making phone calls to the soon-to-be grandparents! It looked like it would be a while, so we told them not to worry about coming to the hospital yet.

At first, my contractions were quite bearable and pretty far apart. However, the more they increased the Pitocin, the worse it got! Around 7:45am I decided it was time to ask for my epidural. Unfortunately three other laboring mothers asked at the same time, so it was 10:30am by the time the anesthesiologist arrived in my room! It was actually a pretty easy procedure, and soon enough I was a happy camper once again. Drew and I both decided it was time for a nap, as we had been up most of the night. So I slept in my hospital bed, and Drew used the recliner.

Throughout the day they continued to increase my Pitocin, and finally by dinner time we were getting close. Unfortunately this meant that my pain was coming back, so the anesthesiologist came back and gave me a boost. At 5:00pm it was time to start pushing! After an hour and a half, Luke Andrew Williams was born at 6:30pm. He weighed 6lb 2oz and was 18.75 inches long.

When he was born, his umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck, which resulted in him having a low heartbeat. He was breathing, but "stunned", so he wasn't very responsive at first. Because of this, he was immediately taken to the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit). Drew went with him while they finished up with me in Labor and Delivery.

Shortly after that, Drew came back and we got an update from Luke's doctor. He was already doing better, and was going to be kept in the NICU overnight so that he could be monitored.

Drew went out to the lobby to share the good news with family, and shortly after that I was moved to my room. We were able to go to the NICU for a few minutes to see Luke on the way to our room, then we spent some time with family before crashing for the night - Drew had a migraine and I was absolute;y exhausted!

While it was a huge bummer that Luke wasn't with us, it meant that we were both able to get a full night's sleep, which we both really needed.

Here are some of Luke's photos from that first evening: