Well, here he is!
Jackson Thomas Parris was born January 14th, 2009 at 2:17 p.m. weighing 6lbs. 12.5 oz. and measuring 17 3/4 inches long.
And here’s the story…. Skip to the end if you just want to see the pictures!
We were told to give the hospital a call at 5:00 p.m. on the 13th. When Stephen finally got home Tuesday afternoon around 5:15, I anxiously made my call. Babysitter was in place, bags packed, ready to go.
But the nurse said,
Oh, I’ll call you back. If you don’t hear from me by 7:30, call me back.
7:30?!?! It took everything I had in me to keep cool until 5:00! What in the world am I supposed to do for 2 more hours?!
We finally decide to just go have dinner and hang out for a little bit. As we pull out of the driveway, I call the hospital again.
This time I’m told to just get comfy, they’ll call me when they have a room. Could be 20 minutes…could be 3 a.m.
So, we head to Macaroni Grill. I figure I’ll carb up for labor.
10:00 p.m. arrives, and Stephen calls again. He explains we live a long way from the hospital. Should we come hang out and wait, or should we go home?
She says….go home.
So, we go home and watch American Idol on the DVR with Jon and Paula and Terri.
Then we head to bed. At 1:00 a.m. Disappointed…
At 3:21 a.m., the phone rings. Stephen sleeps through it. Are you kidding me?
I climb over him with my large pregnant body to retrieve the phone. And I hear that blessed little voice that tells me I can come in now.
We pack up and get in the car. By 5:00 a.m., we’re checking in.
6:15 a.m. they begin the Pitocin.
7:30 a.m. the doctor who’s going off shift comes in to see me, pat my leg (why do they do that?), and ask if I have any questions.
Around 9:15 a.m. or so, the doctor who WILL be delivering that day comes in to check. Still just 2 cm. She breaks my water. I ask when I can get that epidural. Nurse says as soon as I finish my bag of fluids.
10:30 a.m. fluids are finished, and they page the anesthesiologist. Nurse hooks me up to the finger thingy that checks my pulse and says that as soon as the anesthesiologist sees it, he’s going to take it off of my hand.
Nurse leaves to get other things in order. Mr. Angel of Mercy (I mean, The Man With the Good Drugs) comes in and rips the thing off my finger.
Nurse and Angel of Mercy have a good-hearted battle about whether he needs that thing. I’m thinking, Let’s leave it on if it measures anything that has to do with my well-being.
He proceeds with the epidural, and my leg gets such a shock from whatever he’s doing to get that thing in that it jerks off the bed. I don’t remember that happening with my last epidural.
Minutes later, I’m feeling good. Tara Jensen gets to the delivery room. We chat, but I notice that I am getting extremely itchy.
Itching gets worse and worse and worse, so much so that I think that I might rip a hole in my skin.
Terri Hamby drops the kids off at Courtney Reimann’s house, and heads to the hospital. She’s been there for the birth of all of my kids. And by that, I mean, BEEN THERE…witnessed them all come into the world.
Nurse keeps reassuring me that the itching will get better, but after an hour and a half, I’m about to jump off the bed. Well, if I could anyway. I’m pretty much paralyzed from the waist down at that point. Yet, I could still feel the itching…weird.
Nurse calls doctor. He says that I can have Nubain in my IV. It is a pain med, but it will also help with the itching.
Literally seconds after the nurse drops that stuff in my IV bag, I’m loopy. I could’ve fallen asleep right there. I’m told that I began talking about turning my epidural up like a “pot of water on the stove”. I think Tara made fun of me at that point. But I was too out of it to care.
Then…it wore off.
I started feeling my contractions more and more, and by this time they were pretty intense. It started with just one side, and the next thing I knew, I’m grabbing the bedrails practically begging for a sledgehammer to hit myself over the head with.
They page Man With The Good Drugs, and he comes back to see me.
He told me everything he was doing, but I don’t remember a thing. Something about pain in my ears or tingling in my mouth. Or visions of bunnies jumping through fields of clover. I can’t quite remember.
He leaves promising me that things will feel better soon, and if not, he can re-do the entire epidural.
Tara and Stephen stare at the computer screen showing the strength of the contraction, and when they start asking me, “Are you feeling anything? Cause you really should be right now if you’re going to…this one’s HUGE.” Thanks, guys. 
But no. Anesthesiologist Dude had done his job, and I was in HEAVEN. Even more so than I was initially.
The contractions keep coming and things keep trucking along. The itching has subsided but the Nubain Crazy Head feeling is gone too, and I told Stephen to tell the nurse not to give me anymore because I didn’t want to be out of it when the baby was born.
Lunch shift takes over for my nurse, and they begin to notice that Jack’s heart rate is dipping with the contractions…a good sign that we may now be very close to pushing. Right before my nurse left for lunch, she checked me. I was a 5.
At 2:00, she comes back on. I’m a 10 and baby is “right there”. I love it when they say that. They always say…”baby is RIGHT THERE”. But really, where else would it be at that point?
So, they page my doctor who pops over from the office across the street. They begin setting things up for delivery, and I’m just sitting there. I totally could have fallen asleep I was THAT relaxed.
Stephen said,
You look so calm.
I think I responded with,
Yeah. Wow. And I’m about to have a baby.
(Notice there were no exclamation points in that sentence. Not that I wasn’t excited, but I think that Nubain was having some residual effects over my state of conciousness.)
Well, about 3 minutes and 3 pushes later, he was out. It was that simple.
Stephen got to cut the cord, and when he did, the doctor noticed that the “single umbilical artery”, while present, was larger than normal…so it had probably been doing the work of two arteries anyway. The cord was also very long…I don’t know if that means anything, but she said it was longer than average.
They take little Jack away for clean-up and prep, and the pediatric nurse shouts out “TWO VESSEL CORD”. I guess maybe they have to confirm it or something, but I really felt like she was yelling it out to announce to the world.
They clean him, swaddle him, weigh him. Apgar scores were 8 and 9.
They hand him to me. And then…
the staff all leave.
And it’s just us.
I couldn’t believe it. It was so quiet. I had prepared myself for them to whisk him away for testing because of all the problems that have been associated with this pregnancy.
I was afraid of oxygen, suctioning out his lungs, respiratory distress, low temperature.
But, like the meaning of Jackson’s name, GOD HAS BEEN GRACIOUS!!!
Born earlier than his sisters at 37 1/2 weeks, he was my biggest baby by far.
The girls both required extra monitoring and attention within the first hours of their birth. Jackson was cleaned, checked, swaddled and given to me to hold. And the medical staff…left.
“Congratulations!” and they were gone.
He is perfect.
We have had a wonderful time getting to know this little guy who had us all worried for so long. He is a joy. A treasure.
GOD HAS BEEN GRACIOUS.
His sisters love him, too. They got to meet him a few hours after he was born, and Caia kept wanting to touch him and love on him. “BABY! Oh, BABY!”
Tonight, when Kenni came to visit, she held him for the first time. And the look on her face was priceless. She rubbed his head and kept giggling.
I LOVE my baby brother, Jackson. This is my baby brother Jackson. Look at his little feet! They’re so little!
It’s going to be so much fun to bring him home and get settled in with everyone. It will be work, and I am nervous…but it will be fun.
Kenni did ask me, when she saw my tummy (which TOTALLY still looks pregnant),
Mommy, how did you get him out?
Hmmm, what to say? What to say?
Well, baby, the doctor got him out.
She didn’t miss a beat.
HOW did the doctor get him out?
Welllll…….
It takes a lot of work, and they just….get him out. (LONG PAUSE) Would you like some animal crackers, Kenni?
So, here are some pictures of little man. We have a ton, so it was hard picking just a few. And you should all feel privileged that I am letting you see my post-delivery photos. (You can click on the photos to make them larger. Well, I THINK…)
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