Introducing Eric Joseph Leo!

Eric Joseph Leo
Tuesday, December 7, 2010 - 6:11pm -- 7 lbs, 15 oz -- 19-1/2 Inches

For those who are interested, and because I want to document it while it's still fairly fresh in my memory, here's the story of how Eric came into the world.

On Monday, December 6, we had our 39 week appointment. My blood pressure had been consistently high throughout our third trimester and the doctor had been following it closely. At this appointment, it was again high and Dr. Aldrich decided the best thing to do would be to induce the following day. So, we spent the rest of the day in an out of body state of surreality and preparation for the following day. One always imagines the middle of the night rush to the hospital with contractions and water breaking, so knowing that "tomorrow we're going to have a baby" makes for a very strange and exciting evening.

Tuesday, December 7, we arrived at the hospital at 6:00am prepared to be induced with pitocin.

The plan was to have as little intervention as possible. When I went in, I was 2 cm dilated, so we had a long way to go. We were in for a long day. Throughout the day, I was breathing through contractions and anxiously watching the monitors. A few hours after the pitocin was started, the doctor came in and broke my water. She told me that a little while after she did that, my contractions would start getting a lot stronger, and she was NOT kidding! At some point, I was not really able to talk through the contractions, and Peter's jokes were no longer funny. He said after the fact that he and my mom were wondering if they should try to convince me to get something to take the edge off the pain. Apparently I was making sounds that he'd never heard come out of me before! It's kind of a blur to me. I just kept thinking it had to peak soon!

At the time I was about 8cm dilated, there was about a minute in between contractions. This was not a minute of reprieve, however, as the pain was residual through the breaks, and I was so exhausted that I was drifting in and out of consciousness and in and out of a dream state for a while. Apparently, my blood pressure was also skyrocketing at this point. These two factors, combined with the fact that the nurse came in and said it could still be a couple of hours before we were to 10cm, led me to decide to get something to take the edge off the pain. they offered me something through my IV, but I had heard enough about how that can get to the baby and decided for an epidural. I thought that if I could just rest a bit for the remaining two hours, I'd still have the strength to push and hopefully, my blood pressure would come down a bit if I wasn't feeling so much pain. I was getting concerned that it would lead to a more emergency situation.

Now numb from the waist down, I could no longer feel my contractions, but apparently the epidural calmed me down so much that I progressed to 10cm almost immediately and it was time to push. Having expected a couple of hours before getting to this point, we were pretty surprised, but happy that the end of the whole process was coming and we were going to get to meet our baby! He was so low that I only needed to push for about 15 minutes and he was out!

The umbilical cord was positioned just so, so that we couldn't tell if he was a boy or girl at first. The doctor asked Peter if he could see to tell and he finally did and said, "Honey, it's a boy! We have a son!!" Peter cut the cord and they put him on my chest. We named him Eric right away, and Peter asked if we could give him Joseph as a middle name. He cried and was beautiful, and we cried as we became a family. It was truly the best moment of our lives.


Shortly after they took him to get his initial clean up, footprints, weighing, etc., my blood pressure tanked and I felt like I was going to pass out and get sick. The adrenaline in my system was also making me shake violently. I told the nurses I was feeling this way, and the next thing I knew, they were asking me to keep my eyes open and stay with them and there was a rapid response team in the room doing all sorts of things. This time is fuzzy, and all I really remember is focusing on Eric in Peter's arms to keep awake, and really wanting them to hurry up and make me better so I could have my baby.

A short time later, I told the nurses I just really wanted my baby and they laid him next to me. I was even able to breastfeed for the first time, and he latched on right away.

After a while, they took Eric to the nursery for a while and I stayed in the room until the epidural wore off and they could take us to our recovery room. The next two days were spent getting to know our new little baby, greeting visitors and countless nurses, doctors and hospitality people, and trying to get some rest before we headed home.