The Sweet Treasures: Afton Paul Reber

Our beautiful son Afton Paul Reber was born Saturday, August 4th at 3:56 AM.

He weighed in at 6 pounds, 10 ounces and was 19 inches long.

I have to preface this post by saying that I think my birth experience with Afton was somewhat different then most people's experiences and definitely not the norm...at least that is what is seems like. I am also fully aware that in the future my next delivery will probably not go as amazing as this one did. That being said, my birth experience with Afton was, in a word, easy. Comparatively of course...

In the weeks leading up to Afton's delivery, I was in a lot of pain. I had killer back pain (little did I know it was back labor), bad hip joint pain, and I was having a lot of false labor and Braxton Hick's contractions that were fairly consistent, but never constant. I would have contractions every 5 minutes for an hour or so, but then they would stop. All this really did was irritate me and make me very impatient for our little boy to arrive.

The Thursday night before Afton was born I began having painful contractions every 10 minutes. They quickly became more constant and started coming every 5 minutes...for about and hour and then they stopped. Irritated, I brushed it off as more false labor. In hindsight, that really was probably when my real labor began. For the rest of the night and all of Friday I continued to have painful contractions, but I wasn't timing them because I was so sure that my baby wasn't going to come until his due date or after it. So therefor, I didn't know that I was actually in labor. On Friday I went grocery shopping, kind of tidied up the house, and had my good friend Marissa over for dinner. Later that night we were supposed to go see Snow White and the Huntsman at the dollar theater in Rexburg with some friends. Thank goodness they called us to cancel because they were sick, or my water might have broken in the movie theater.

Anyways, instead of going to see the movie Cortney and I stayed home and watched the second part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. We finished the movie around 11:00 PM and, exhausted from the previous night of contractions, I got ready for bed. I remember laying in bed around 11:20 and thinking "I'm so sick of being pregnant. I don't think I can do this anymore. This baby better come soon or else I'll be too tired to deliver." And just like that, my water broke. I yelled for Cortney to grab me a towel and for him to put our hospital bags and the baby carrier into the car while I quickly took a shower and got dressed. We were in the car and on our way to the hospital about 20 minutes later, and arrived a little after midnight at the hospital.

Once in the delivery unit of the hospital, Cortney told the nurse that I was in labor and that we "were here to have a baby!" in his chipper positive voice. At that point I was in extreme pain because my contractions were coming every 3 minutes, and if I didn't get my epidural ASAP I was going to rip the nurse's head off. So what did she do? She attempted to put me in an exam room to make sure I really was in labor, to which I not so nicely informed her that my water had broken and I was definitely in labor. Her response? "Are you sure your water broke? You know you could've just peed yourself." Now I know that apparently its a common thing for women to come in claiming their water has broken when really they have just wet their pants and not realized it, but I was gushing fluid here. Involuntarily. Continuously for a half hour. I definitely had not peed myself.

After finally getting into our labor and delivery room, they had me change into a hospital gown and checked to see how far along I was in my labor. Turns out I was dilated to a 5 and totally thinned out with his head super low. I asked the nurse if I could get my epidural, and she went to go grab the anesthesiologist while another nurse hooked me up to some monitors for his heartbeat and an I.V. drip. While I waited for the anesthesiologist to arrive my nurse asked me a bunch of medical history questions that quite honestly were very difficult to answer in my current state of pain. At one point I asked the nurse if she could spare me a hand so I could squeeze it to death, and she kindly obliged. Cortney at the time being was in the corner of the room trying to figure out where he was allowed to stand or what he was allowed to do.

By the time the anesthesiologist finally arrived I was having very painful back labor and my whole body was shaking from the pain. I was also very nauseated. Little did we know that at that point I was probably in transition from a 9 to a 10. They had me sit up in my bed while they inserted my epidural into my back (didn't really hurt at all since I was so wrapped up in focusing on my breathing), and after a little bit of maneuvering they got me propped up on my right side so my epidural could move from my left side to the right. It took a while for it to kick in, and when it did I had to give myself an extra boost of medication because it was still pooling all on the left hand side and doing so was supposed to help move the medication over the right. But hey once it did kick in, oh man was I in heaven!! I fully endorse and recommend epidurals. So worth it.

At this point Afton's heartbeat was dropping dangerously low with every contraction so they put me on an oxygen mask to flood my system so he would get some extra oxygen into his system. Once I was comfortably drugged to a blissful state my nurse left us and said she would come in around 5:00 AM to see how I was progressing, seeing as how it is typical to dilate a centimeter an hour, and I had come in at a 5 and it was only about 3:00 AM at that point. So if all went well we were "supposed" to have a baby around 6:00 AM. She told me to tell her if I felt any pressure and to take a nap. Well, I stared off into space trying to fall asleep for about ten minutes before I called her in because I had started to feel some pressure. She hesitantly checked me and we were all surprised to find out that I was already at a 10 and ready to go!

So then the pushing commenced. As I previously mentioned, I had given myself an extra boost of medication not too long ago so pushing proved to be a bit difficult since I couldn't feel anything at all. I kind of had to imagine and visualize, so to speak, the whole pushing sensation. But really all I ended up doing was pushing so hard that I thought my eyeballs were going to pop out of my head. And I looked like that too I'm sure. After pushing for about 30 minutes, the nurse called in the doctor to deliver the baby. Side note: I never knew that doctors are literally only there to "catch the football", so to speak. Unfortunately for me another woman with my same doctor was just a few minutes ahead of me in her delivery process so I had to wait for him to deliver her baby before he could help me out. I only had to wait for about 5 or 10 minutes but man was it hard to not push once I was at that final stage. There is just so much pressure that you feel (despite being totally drugged) that its hard to resist the urge to push. Anyways, my doctor came in soon after and Afton was born about 10 minutes later after about 3 or 4 sets of pushing. They immediately set him on my tummy, so I could see him before they took him over to the warmer to clean him up.

In those first few moments I remember thinking he was incredibly tiny! I had felt like he was taking up every inch of my insides when really he was just a tiny thing. While Afton was being cleaned up and tested to make sure everything was working right, the doctor delivered the placenta and stitched me up. And I'll admit it, I had the doctor show me it, which I totally had thought I wouldn't want to see. But hey, at that moment I was open to a bit of science exploration, and I'm glad I did see it because it was kind of cool to see where my baby had been hanging out for the past 9 months.

Once things calmed down I was able to hold my baby for the first time and attempt to nurse him, which was not as easy as you would think it would be. Afton was just so little and warm in my arms. He just snuggled right in and kind of fell asleep. It was so interesting because in the delivery room, and later in the recovery room, every time the nurses held him and he was crying he would always quiet down when either me or Cortney would talk to him. It was so cool! He totally recognized our voices from day one.

After resting in the delivery room for a little over an hour, the nurses helped me get up and got me to try and take a shower. I really wanted to just stand there and soak in the water for a while, but that did not happen. I almost passed out after being in there for only about 2 minutes and that was the end of that. Bummer. Once the room stopped spinning around me the nurses loaded me into a HUGE wheelchair meant for someone two times my size and wheeled me and Afton over to our recovery room. From there we all got into bed, me in my comfy hospital bed, Afton in his bassinet by me, and Cortney on the pull out chair and well all fell asleep until lunchtime.

The rest of our stay in the hospital was fairly uneventful. Afton was such a good baby and slept most of the time, allowing us to stock up on some much needed rest. When we were all awake, we often spent our time watching the Olympics on T.V. which was something Cort was extremely excited to do because we don't have T.V. at our house anymore. Overall, our hospital stay was really relaxed, and we were both kind of sad to have to leave at the end.

My mom then came to help us out for a couple of weeks, which was a lifesaver!!! I don't think I would have made it through those first few weeks without the help she provided. We were so sad to see her go!

Now Afton is over a month old and I can't help but feel like time is slipping quickly away from me. He already looks so different from when he was just a very little newborn. Every day he is different and a bit more of his personality comes out. It is so amazing and wonderful to watch him grow! I just hope that I can capture all of these precious moments and never forget them. Afton is such a wonderful little baby. He is incredibly sweet, patient, loving, trusting, and just overall good. I couldn't have dreamed up a better little boy than him to be my son and I'm so glad he is here in our family.