Keeping Up With Kolson : Kolson Patrick Miller: Birth Story

Since we are basically caught up until October I will make part two relatively quick so I can get to the good stuff! Let's start with November...

National Bump day! Patrick wearing an empathy belly haha :)

The last two weeks of October I did everything I could to try and get Kolson out. By the last trimester of pregnancy I felt like I had been pregnant for 18 years. I walked two to three miles everyday and at night I bounced on a birthing ball until I couldn't feel my legs. A few people suggested drinking two tablespoons of castor oil to guarantee that he would make his grand entrance. Apparently Kolson was really comfortable where he was because I tried Castor Oil three times from October to November with no such results (by the last time I didn't even go to the bathroom once). I'm still convinced my mom worked some magic to make sure he wouldn't be born until she got here.

35 weeks pregnant

Fashioning a belly on my first day of classes

My parents flew down to Beaufort on November 2nd and from that day on we were on baby watch. We all thought it would be any day because every time I went to the doctors they told me he was measuring ahead and he could come at any moment. Boy, were they wrong. Every day we would hope it would happen. I made sure Patrick had his phone on loud when he went to work just in case. Every night I went to bed disappointed. I didn't experience any BH contractions during my pregnancy so I had no idea what I was in for.

Aren't they just adorable :)

The night of November 10th Patrick and I were joking around. He was saying that since he got the Veteran's Day (the next day) off, he was going to do nothing but relax all day. Well, Kolson thought otherwise. Around 8 that night I started to feel very sick. I had a headache and was very tired and irritable. It was starting to feel like my period was coming. Around 11 my stomach started to hurt and it felt like I was getting mild cramps. I thought that maybe I was finally getting BH contractions and hopefully Kolson would get here by the following week. I went back to sleep and around 12:30 I was woken up with some pretty powerful contractions. I wanted to get excited but I kept telling myself at my appointment a few days ago I was only 2 cm dilated so it probably was nothing. I started to time them and when they got really uncomfortable I began walking around the house. My mom was awake and we decided around 5 am when the contractions were still pretty powerful that we should start to get ready. I woke Patrick up around 6 and at 7:30 we all started to make our way to the hospital.

When we got there, I was put on monitors and the nurse would have to call the doctor to see if they should admit me. After a couple hours of waiting with serious contractions, the doctor came in to measure me. He said even though I was only 3 cm dilated I was 90% thinned out and having strong contractions so they would admit me!!! I was moved into labor and delivery and told they would give me some pitocin to get the process moving faster to see if my water would break on its own. A few hours later and there wasn't much progress. The doctor recommended getting an epidural before he broke my water because after that the labor would move along quickly.

I got the epidural (did not hurt at all) and he said to get ready to go into labor soon. I was so anxious to meet my son, but unfortunately there was no progress. I stayed in that delivery room (not able to get out of bed because of the epidural) from 10 am to around 11 that night when the nurse finally said I was fully dilated and ready to start pushing. She did some practice pushes with me before calling in two other nurses to help me get where I needed to be before the doctor came in. I pushed for almost 45 minutes with them and they said the baby wasn't going anywhere so the doctor came in to talk to me. He told me he wanted me to push continuously for the next hour and if there was no improvement he would have to do an emergency c-section since the baby had been trying to get out for so long. Tired, hungry and extremely frustrated, I began to push...and push...and push. I asked my mom and Patrick how long it had been and everyone kept saying they weren't sure. By this point I'd just about had it and was begging for a c-section. My body was shaking and I was completely drained. No one told me I had been pushing for well over two hours straight. Finally the baby started to move down and the doctor was called in. After about 10 more big pushes Kolson was finally out. Poor little guy had the biggest cone head ever from getting stuck in the birth canal for so long. He didn't cry for a little bit which was very concerning to me, but eventually he let out a few little cries. Welcome to the world Kolson Patrick Miller!! Born November 12, 2015 at 2:22 in the morning. Weighing 7 pounds 3 ounces and 22 inches of pure perfection!

My prefect little angel a couple hours after he was born :)

Kolson's favorite way to have his hands!

His crib tag :)

After that everything went by in a blur. I held him for a while and when Patrick went to bring my parents back home the nurse took him to do some tests (which he passed with flying colors!) and I basically went into a sleep coma. The nurse woke me up to take a shower and to show me how to bathe and care for Kolson. I didn't end up going to sleep until around 8 that morning.

Later that same day Kimber her sister, and a co-worker all came by to meet Kolson. Kimber's sister took some really great pictures of Kolson in his Monsters Inc. onesie. When they left Patrick went to pick up my parents so they could come by for the day and spend some time with their new grandson. The rest of the first day went by very easy and we all just spent the day just enjoy our little one.