Dave & Chelsea: August 2011

A few hours after Jaxson came, I went home to get Kayden. He was being watched by our neighbor-friend Kelli Broadbent (Thanks again Kelli for watching him)! The last few days before Chelsea was induced, you could tell Kayden knew something different was about to happen to our family. We were anxious to find out how Kayden would react to a baby in his "space". When we arrived at the hospital, we was VERY excited to see his mom and to look at all of the cool buttons in the room. Most of the time, he just wanted to open and close a sliding glass door to the bathroom. This video was what we saw when Jaxson and Kayden met for the first time...

Let's just say we don't have to be careful that he doesn't like him, but that he doesn't lay on top of him to give him a hug or pet his head too much.

The following novel is for our records, but you are more than welcome to read it:

Chels and I woke up at 4:15 am Monday morning to head to the hospital. She was checked in, and by about 6:00, had her IV in (she did MUCH better with needles this time around.. still a little shaky, but great). The waiting game started around 6:30 am, when she was given pitocin. We watched a few episodes of 24, which allowed the time to pass quickly. At 8:30, Chels was checked and was dilated 5 cm. Dr. Layton came in at about 9:00 and checked her again, and she was dilated 5.5 cm. By 9:30, Dr. Layton broke her water, a feeling she did not like. 10:00 arrived quickly, when she was ready for her epidural. We both knew that as soon as the epidural was done, the hardest part was over (for Chels). The anesthesiologist was awesome though, and explained to Chelsea everything she was going to do before she did it. It all went so well, that she didn't even need muscle relaxants! It was definitely fun for me to watch the size of the needle being inserted into her back! At about 10:45 AM, Chelsea decided to try and get as much sleep as possible before she had to push a baby out. The nurse had checked her a few minutes before, and announced that she was still only dilated to a 5.5, and 80% effaced. Dave was then mandated to go to the cafeteria to get something to eat. After a short discussion about this, I finally got up and headed for the cafeteria. Meanwhile Chelsea was back in the room and woke up from a very short cat nap with a lot of energy and anxiety, she didn't have me in the room and couldn't find her call button but was having a lot of pressure. She immediately knew Jaxson was coming out and no one was there. Her nurse just happened to walk in and said she would check her. It took about 10 minutes for me to order my food, and it looked real good! I took a few bites before I got a phone call from Chelsea. As soon as I answered, she said I needed to run back to the room because we were having a baby! Yeah.. she went from being dilated 5.5 cm to 10 cm in about 30 minutes.. AWESOME.

I asked for a few plastic grocery bags to throw my lunch in, and headed out. I ran down the hallway to our room and she was already breathing real hard. She was doing her best to hold the baby in, since our doctor was at his office with other patients (only about 3 minutes away). He had already been paged, but I didn't know if he would make it. I tried talking with Chels through the pain of holding in a baby, which seemed to last 5 minutes. The anesthesiologist rushed in, and gave her more medication to numb her up even more so she could hold in the baby. It was only a few minutes later that Dr. Layton walked in (11:10). He looked at Chels, and said "Okay, start pushing whenever you want", as he was washing his hands, and putting on his scrubs. No one was around the birth canal, which was pretty interesting. I think I had pictures in my head of Chelsea pushing once, and Jaxson shooting across the room and dropping to the floor. Chels started pushing moments later.

Her first push came by surprise to me and the delivery nurse, Renee. We both rushed over, grabbed one leg each, and encouraged her to push (probably the closest I'll ever come to being a cheerleader). After her second push, I could easily see Jaxson's head. After the third push, his head was out, each push lasted about 10 seconds. That was a little less than 2 minutes of pushing! After a little push and a laugh, Jaxson popped right out (not too different from what I originally thought about when she was given permission to push with no one near her). After he was cleaned off a little and his cord was cut, he was given to Chelsea to hold on her chest. That was an awesome moment for us (especially Chels) because we weren't able to spend that time with Kayden. We were excited to know that Jaxson didn't scream NEARLY as loud as Kayden did when he was born.

We feel extremely blessed to have had the birthing process run so smoothly without any complications. The velamentous cord didn't appear to be a serious issue at all, which was great. He seems to be a low-key kind of guy, which was more great news. We couldn't be happier.