Owen’s Birth Story… – The Paulk Pack

Owen’s due date of Friday, September 27th came…and went. Of course, I was ok waiting a short while longer for him to make his debut, but it certainly was uncomfortable. On the night of his due date, Charles and I, along with our parents and my Aunt Valerie, went to Provino’s (my very favorite Italian restaurant) to partake in their famous “Eggplant Parmesan.” It has been said that eating the eggplant will cause you to go into labor within the next 24 hours. Regardless, it was a great night out and we had a blast.

On the way home, we stopped at the new Krispy Kreme in Roswell to grab some donuts and also took a dozen to our neighbors Kristin and Rob. When we got home, we thought it would be really funny to leave them on their front porch, ring the door bell and run. Charles crept down to their house and I waited by the pool. As soon as he rang the bell, their dogs started barking and we ran as fast as possible back into the house. It was quite hilarious watching them from our windows. They thought we were hiding in the shrubs and tried to find us, but we beat them!

I went to bed that night tell Charles that I thought I overdid it with my sprinting and that I was having a little cramping in my lower belly. I didn’t think too much of it since I had had random cramps throughout my pregnancy.

The next morning, we got up early and had lots of errands to run. Our laundry room was still under construction (and still is!) so we had to get some items for that room as well as return the leftover flooring tiles we had purchased.. We needed to get some supplies for the boathouse and I also needed to grab a few more items for my hospital bag, so we stopped in at Target as well. The next stop was the AJRA boathouse to drop off supplies and Charles had to repair a few things while we were there. Throughout the morning, I kept having cramps that would come and go, but I wasn’t sure it these were actually contractions or not. While we were making our way through the list of errands, I decided to start tracking the frequency of the cramps/contractions. As a few hours passed, they were getting more and more frequent. I told Charles that I thought this was really it!

We stopped and grabbed lunch to take home and by this point, the contractions were enough to stop me in my tracks. I was moving slowly but had SO many things at home I needed to do before we left. Being without a washer and dryer for the past week led to a pile of laundry in my baskets and I quickly started the wash as soon as we got home. Charles went down and took care of all the animals in the barn and then spent some time playing with our pups. He helped me vacuum the house and we started getting our bags finally packed up and ready. My most laughable moment, looking back, was the insistence of sealing the new tile floors in our laundry room…at least under where the washer and dryer were going to go. So yes, I crawled around on the floor sealing tile as well. It was the nesting instincts in full force!

Around 6 PM Saturday, Charles called Dr. Marshall and let her know we were having regular contractions and she told us to head in to the hospital. We called our parents and let them know we would be on our way to the hospital shortly. We both showered and had a light dinner. Our bags were packed and we kissed the pups good bye. We pulled out of our driveway at 8 PM and my contractions were consistently 4 minutes apart the entire ride there.

We got to the hospital and I was brimming with anxiety. I was scared, excited and in pain! As we checked into the hospital, we filled out paperwork and got assigned to a labor and delivery room. Once in our room, I was hooked up to monitors and waited to see the doctor. Once we were on the monitors, my contractions were not as consistent and became much less frequent. This was really discouraging. The doctor came in and let me know I was not dilated and that this was probably just “early labor.” She gave us two options:

Go home and wait until my contractions became more frequent (really more frequent that 4 minutes apart?!), my water broke, etc. She said I could possibly be back in 2 hours or 2 days…seeing as we live about 35 minutes from the hospital with no traffic, this wasn’t my top choice.
The next option was for the doctor to give me some medicine to relax and sleep overnight at the hospital and recheck me in the morning to see if I had made any progress.

Seeing as I hadn’t had much sleep in the past few weeks, we opted to stay overnight and hope for some progress. Throughout the night, I was sleeping soundly and Charles reported that the monitor showing my contractions was pretty much flat-lined…meaning I obviously wasn’t having them.

The next morning, our nurse came in between 8-9 AM and pretty much told us that we were probably going to end up going home. Charles was packing up as we waited for Dr. Marshall to arrive. Once she got there about 10 AM, she said the same thing…plan to go home, get some rest, and wait it out. Then, she checked and looked up surprised, saying “Wow! You’re about 3-4 cm dilated! We didn’t see this one coming!”

At that point, the nurses and doctor told me to feel free to shower, get some juices and relax before they hooked me up to the IV with the pitocin. Again, my excited anxiety was back! Today was going to be the day!

By late morning, I settled in the hospital bed and they started the process of getting everything in place. The pitocin was on a slow drip but it certainly made my contractions very apparent. Charles and I just hung out and he helped me as the contractions came and went. Early afternoon, they were getting much more painful and I decided to opt for the epidural at that time. About half an hour later, the neurologist came in and injected the epidural. The process was really painful as I was having contractions as he was injecting it. Charles and the nurse had to hold me still long enough for him to get the epidural in place, but once there, it nearly made the contractions seem gone.

At this point, I told Charles to go grab some lunch. Things were calm in our room and the staff just told me to relax and wait…

Charles went down to the cafeteria and called our parents to update them. He had lunch and came back about an hour later at 3:30 PM and I was in extreme pain. I had paged the nurse and told her something wasn’t right. The pain was almost unbearable. I didn’t have enough energy to call Charles while he was gone so I just waited until he got back to the room and asked him to please find someone to help find out what was going wrong. The nurses came in and determined that the baby was moving down into position and was pressing on the catheter. She took it out but the pain at that point was too much. They told us Dr. Marshall wouldn’t be back in the hospital until 4 PM, which was only about half an hour but seemed like eternity. I told Charles to call our parents and tell them to head that direction.

At 4 PM, Dr. Marshall came in and sat down with us to prep for delivery. She was instructing us on what the process would be and helped ease my anxiety. She then checked and, looking surprised, said it was time to go. She immediately paged her nurses and started putting on scrubs. She was telling me to “PUSH” as nurses were running in the room with all the delivery supplies and the bassinet for the baby.

During this time, Charles hadn’t left my side. He was doing his very best to encourage me and help me get through the pain. At 4:13 PM, Owen was born. They placed this tiny little baby on my chest and he was squirming, crying and just amazing in every way. I can not express all the emotions that were running through my body to finally see this amazing creation that I had (not so) patiently waited to meet for so long.

It happened so quickly, I can’t recall a lot of details after that. I briefly held him before the Special Care Nursery Team had to take him and make sure he has not ingested any miconium into his lungs. They bathed him, took his stats and it seemed like forever until I had him in my arms again. Thankfully Charles was able to be across the room with him and tell me all the details of our sweet baby boy.

Apparently Owen arrived before our parents could even get to the hospital. That night, our parents and my Aunt Valerie same to see us and meet our little Owen. His Aunt Jessica also stopped by a bit later in the evening once we were settled into our hospital room. That night was such a whirlwind as we got to know our little man.