The Delivery

In the hopes of everyone being able to be here for the birth of Bentley, we talked with the doctor and scheduled to induce on Monday, April 25th. When we were at the appointment I joked with the doctor that all he had to do was schedule the induction and he would come on his own. Well, I didn't know how right I would be.

Nick's parents arrived on Saturday afternoon and we decided to go out to dinner. While we were eating I started to have some weird back pain, but I didn't think too much of it. It continued off and on throughout the evening but I slept fine, until about 3:30 am when I woke up and could not go back to sleep. I was getting very nervous about the induction. I had envisioned my water breaking and our rush to the hospital for the past nine months, and now knowing that it was going to be a scheduled procedure made me a little scared.

Trying to put all of those thoughts behind me, we went to church as usual. It was Easter after all. During the service I became pretty uncomfortable. Every time he moved it hurt, so I had to stand in the lobby for the last 15 minutes. When we got home I started to have some mild contractions but I was sure they were braxton hicks. Nick went for one of his long runs before his parents came over for dinner, so I decided to rest for awhile. At 1:45 I had only been lying down for about 5 minutes when I felt a pop in my stomach and then a gush. Luckily I ran to the bathroom in time so I didn't make a mess on the couch. :) Well this time it most certainly not a false alarm. I called Nick right away and of course he didn't answer so I called my mom, though I don't know what I thought she could do from Yakima. :) She was surprisingly calm, which was odd since the last few times I had called her she was almost giddy thinking that "this" was "the" phone call. I guess it was good because she calmed me down enough to wait for Nick to call back. He did just a few minutes later but told me that he was about 4 miles away but would run back as fast as he could. As he started back he was hoping that a police officer would pass him since for some reason one always did when he was on that particular run. It just so happened that one did pass but they didn't see him trying to flag them down so he decided to call dispatch to see if they could get him to turn around. When I heard this story I laughed. I always thought that it would be me who made the panicked call to dispatch, not Nick. Anyway, the officer turned around, picked him up, and ran code all the way to our house. While Nick was showering and packing his bags (even though I had been telling him to do it for a week) I started to count my contractions thinking that we probably had plenty of time to slowly make our way to the hospital. Boy was I wrong! They went from 5 minutes to 3 minutes in 5 contractions. By the time we got to the hospital an hour after my water broke they were a minute apart and stayed that way until he was born.


This is getting ready for the trip to the hospital. I had to stop for a few contractions first.


I always knew that I wanted an epidural but things didn't go as fast as I thought they would. I assumed that they would have it waiting for me at the door. :) Silly me! First I had to get hooked up to all of the monitors, then have my blood drawn, then an IV put in, then I had to intake an entire bag of fluid, then we had to wait for the blood results to come back from the lab, then we had to wait for the anesthesiologist to show up and THEN I got the drugs. This process took about an hour, during which my husband and my in-laws watched me get in just about every position possible to help ease the pain. I eventually ended up on all fours in the middle of the floor. Had I not been in such intense pain I know I would have thought twice about putting my hands on the floor of a hospital room. So, at the beginning of the hour the nurse checked my progress and said that I was still only 2 cm dialated. At the end of the hour (without the epidural mind you) the nurse checked me again. She had a very startled look on her face which in the midst of labor is not a comforting sight. She asked me if she could get a second opinion. Another nurse came in to check me and happily stated that I was 9 cm! 9 CM!! They called me a freak of nature and said that was the closest thing to natural childbirth that I could have experienced minus the "ring of fire" part. The nurse also told me later that with the next child I need to come in at the very first contraction or I could be giving birth in the car. :)


Before the epidural...

...after the epidural


After I got to 9 cm things started to slow down a bit and it took me about another couple hours to be fully dialated and ready to push. Luckily that gave everyone a chance to get to the hospital. I pushed for an hour and then the nurse had me rest for half an hour and then she came in to ask if it was alright if I waited awhile longer. Apparently another woman had come in who needed a c-section. They said that she was less stable than I was so I graciously let her go first. :) They said that they would be monitoring both Bentley and I so I wasn't too worried and we were having a big party in the delivery room anyway. By the time the came back in two and a half hours had passed so we were pushing midnight at that point. We all were taking bets on how big he would be and when he would come, though I don't think any of us were even close on the time.

Bentley missed being an Easter baby by 27 minutes, but I'm just glad he decided to come on his own time. Who knows what my body would have done on pitocin! I hope I never have to find out. There were many funny things that happened during delivery too, but I'll save that for my next post since this one is getting a little long.

Playing catch up

Wow am I behind! Between getting my classroom ready for a long term sub and getting the house ready for a baby, I have had no time to write. Let me see what I can remember...

Normally, babies "drop" just a few weeks before delivery but Bentley decided to encroach on my bladder at week 33 causing excruciating pain one morning. It felt like someone was cutting him out of me! Luckily it only lasted a few hours.

We have successfully passed all of our baby classes, though there were nights I was sure we were going to get kicked out. During our first class the instructor had the dads go around and introduce us and state one thing that we wanted our baby to have, i.e. a full head of hair, blue eyes, etc. Well, my oh so hilarious husband told the class that the only thing we really wanted him to have was boy parts. :) I'm sure no one forgot us after that.

As I am nearing the end I am getting more and more uncomfortable. Sleeping is next to impossible and my trips to the bathroom have been upped to every half an hour. As of today (38 weeks and 4 days) we have had two false alarms, which Nick had predicted a few weeks ago. The first was last week when we were at a funeral. I started having pretty strong contractions but of course after suffering through them for about an hour, they slowed down to about one an hour after I walked for awhile. The second false alarm was yesterday. I can't even believe that I am about to admit to this to all of you, but apparently it is very common for pregnant women to think they have "sprung a leak" when really they have just peed on themselves. Nick will never let me live that one down!

The good news about that last false alarm (thanks goodness something good came out of all of that embarrassment) was that we got to talk to the doctor about inducing. At the end of our appointment he said that we should probably start making some plans. This was perfect for us because Nick's parents will be here next week and at that point we thought that my mom would be starting her daily radiation treatments on May 2nd and we really didn't want any of them to miss it. So, we have a date! We will go in to start the induction process at 5 am on Monday morning. We are however still praying that he makes his own appearance before Monday so that everything is a little more natural. We will be taking the laptop to the hospital so hopefully I will keep you updated.

Disappearing Act

While all of my reading and research has prepared me for many of the pleasantries of pregnancy, it did not prepare me for this...the disappearing belly button. In a matter of weeks it has gone from normal to nearly nonexistent. I suppose it may have something to do with the fact that my uterus is the size of a soccer ball now, which is finally a visual that Nick can relate to. :) It is exciting to see the growth and I'm trying to remind myself that it will go away once the baby is here. Bentley is moving more every day, though so far I've been the only one to feel it. He never seems to kick in the same spot twice. He'll kick and I'll put my hand on my stomach and he'll stop, until I move my hand then he'll do it again. Hopefully Nick will be able to catch him soon.

Nick has been spending all of his free time lately on baby stuff. This last week he finished the wainscoting in the nursery and he has spent all weekend building the crib. When I say "building" I don't mean that he just pulled one out of a box and is assembling it, he is building one from scratch. It looks amazing! He is great at everything he does and I'm glad he wants to use his talents towards things for Bentley. I'll post pictures when he is completely done with it.

Unexpected Surprise #2

This week we learned that God gets a kick out of keeping us on our toes. :) We had our official gender determination ultrasound on Thursday. I was really excited to get to see the baby again, but I wasn't expecting any surprises since I was pretty confident in the doctor's 75% prediction that it was a girl. Apparently we need to send Nick to Vegas because I know he was secretly holding out for that 25% and he was right! The first shot we had was a between the legs shot which I could tell right away was different from what we saw the week before, though since the ultrasound tech wasn't looking for the gender at that moment he moved on the take all of the measurements. When he was finally ready to look the baby had moved so it took awhile. He did eventually find what he was looking for and said that we were having a boy, though his exact words were, "I'm pretty sure it's a boy." We are very happy to be having a boy, I'm just hoping he is right. I'm going to ask the doctor for a "tie-breaker" ultrasound when we go in at the end of the month just to make sure. So as of now it looks like little Bentley Jay Knoll will be joining us in May.

Unexpected Surprise

We had another appointment today with the doctor. It was the regular monthly appointment where the doctor answers all of our new questions and then he listens to the heartbeat and we are on our way. Today was unexpectedly different. He started to get ready to listen to the heartbeat and I asked if we could get the heart rate this time, since the women I work with want to start taking bets on the sex. :) He laughed and said that we would have to use the ultrasound machine for that. Luckily it was free so we switched rooms and got ready. Then, the doctor said one of the best phrases ever, "You are far enough along that we could probably tell the sex today." I have already been counting down the days-almost the hours until our ultrasound appt next week so I was absolutely beside myself! I can't believe how big the baby is now! We could see the little legs and arms and even a hand that was waving at us. So far I've been pretty good about keeping it together during the ultrasounds, but not this time. I was crying and I'm even getting tears in my eyes now thinking about it. So, the moment you've all been waiting for...(or at least we've been waiting for) he said that he is 75% sure that it's a...girl!!! It looked to me like he had a pretty good shot so I was surprised that he was only going with 75%, but it's better than 50%. :) We'll still have our big ultrasound next week to be sure but for now it's so nice to be able to call "it" "her" now. As I was crying at the screen the doctor looked at Nick and said, "Sorry Dad. But it's a good thing that you are in law enforcement so you can chase all of the boys away." I've apologized to Nick about 20 times already but he says he's not disappointed. I just keep reminding him of what my mom pointed out, the relationship between a father and daughter is a very special one.

First few appointments

I realize that I am very late on the next few posts but better late than never. We had our first doctors appointment on September 8th, which also happened to be our three year wedding anniversary. We were a little nervous about finding the right doctor since we knew we would need one with a sense of humor, but about three minutes into the appointment we knew we found the right one. Dr. Kim is wonderful! For the first check up the baby is too small to do an ultrasound on the stomach, so I tried my best to prepare Nick for what I thought the appt would be like, but it didn't work. He was beyond shocked and slightly mortified. I think God knew what he was doing when he gave us 9 months to prepare for babies. I only hope that will be enough time for Nick. :) During that appointment we found out that our little corn kernel (as the doctor called it) wasn't as far along as I thought and our due date is really May 1st, so hopefully I won't have to go back to school at the end of the year. We also heard the heartbeat and the doctor said that everything looked great.

Our next appointment was 2 weeks later since they like to see the baby at 8 weeks. This was a shorter appointment where the doctor was able to do the ultrasound on my stomach this time. As Dr. Kim was looking at the screen he said, "Yep, they really do look like little gummy bears at this stage." I glanced at Nick and noticed that the color had drained from his face. He looked absolutely stunned for a moment before asking, "...When you say 'they'...do you mean that generally, or specifically...?" (*This was why we knew we needed a doctor with a sense of humor!) Dr. Kim laughed and told him not to worry, there was only one. He said that he hated to refer to babies as "its" at this stage so he thought "they" was a better choice. Nick pointed out later that it was not a better choice. :)

First Positive!

We had heard and read so many things about trying to get pregnant. The spectrum was pretty equal between those who said it would take a long time to those who told us not to be surprised if it doesn't take long at all. Well, we apparently we are part of the second group which is perfect because I really wanted the entire summer to spend with the little bundle before going back to work in September.

We received the first positive result on August 25th. I am sure that was perfectly God's timing since my family would all be together that Saturday for Lindsay's going away party and Nick's family was coming for a week long visit. With everyone living in different states and countries I was so afraid that we would have to share our news over the phone or in an email, but that's not how things worked out.

Lindsay's going away party was at a restaurant in Tri-Cities and we decided to get her a "going away" present to tell her. I found an Irish jewelry box that was just big enough to store a rolled up onsie. I found a perfect one in Huskey colors that said "My Auntie is #1!" Of course before she opened it I had to stress that this present was not from the dogs, since I was sure that would be her first thought. When she opened it her face was blank for a minute and then we could see it click and my mom said, "Really!?!" about 12 times. It was great to see everyone so excited.

For Nick's family we decided to make a slideshow. Nick is really good at making slideshows and since they are always helping with projects around our house we decided to make that the theme. It had a bunch of pictures of different projects around our house and then about 3 slides from the end it said, "What should our next project be?" The next slide said, "We decided to expand our house by 2 feet." And the last one had a background of two little baby feet and it said, "More specifically, we decided to expand our family by 2 feet in April." Once his parents and grandparents got over the fact that we weren't really expanding our actual house by 2 feet they all cried. That was a reaction that I wouldn't have wanted to miss.