And Baby Makes Three!!

We are so happy and blessed to announce the arrival of Jackson James-Robert Martin. He was born March 14, 2009 at 5:29 am. He weighed 7 lbs, 11 oz, and was 17 inches long.



I had been scheduled to go in for a c section on March 20. That was after my last ultrasound showed he was already around 7 lbs and was in a breech position. On Wednesday the 11, I had an appointment and my blood pressure was up. They put me on monitors and everything was great with the baby. But my blood pressure wouldn't stay consistent, and it kept getting high. After a few hours, they let me go home, but told me to come back on Friday to be checked again. On Friday, my BP was still high. They did another sonogram and this time it showed that the baby was no longer breech. My doctor sent me over to the labor & delivery at the hospital to be induced. They got an IV started just before 11 am to start my contractions. Daniel has been really good throughout the pregnancy about keeping track of my appointments and calling that same day to see how things are going. When the c section was scheduled, it would have been about a week earlier than his leave started, but we had talked about it and decided we could deal with that. When Daniel called, he was getting ready to go out on patrol. He and I both had hoped it would just be a regular appointment, everything would be fine and that would be all. When I told him I was being induced and would have the baby sometime in the next day, he was in shock. He and I were both upset knowing that meant it would be an almost two week delay from the baby being born to him getting home. He told me to go ahead and contact the Red Cross to see if they could get him home any earlier since the situation had now changed. My mom had been with me since I got to labor & delivery. I had given her a copy of the Red Cross contact information a few weeks ago. At that point I was pretty much just waiting for the medicines to get going well, so I sent her home to make the calls to get that process started. Red Cross had to call me to confirm the message was ok to send to Daniel, and they had to confirm the situation with either my doctor or one of the nurses. When they called me, they explained that they needed to get the medical verification and would be calling the hospital. At the time, the nurse was right there so I just gave her my phone and she verified everything. Not too long after, Daniel called to tell me that he had to wait a few hours for a certain office to open for him to sign some paperwork and that after that he would know when he was flying out. He called periodically to check in and see how I was doing all during the day. Around 9 Friday night, I was feeling quite a bit of pain, so they came in and gave me an epidural. For the first several minutes after it took effect, I was feeling wonderful. But, not too long afterwards, I started feeling pain on my right side. It wasn't as bad as it had been though, so I just went on. As time went by though, I started having more and more pain on the right. They tweaked the dosage of the epidural, and while it helped, in just about 10 minutes I was back to feeling pain on the right. A few hours later, my nurse had them come back in because I was feeling LOTS of pain, and she said with the epidural and the tweaking they did I shouldn't really be feeling anything near what I was. So, they made an adjustment to the spinal catheter. Thought it was better. But again, after about 20-30 minutes I was feeling lots of pain. By this time, my entire left leg was nothing but dead weight due to the fact that the left side was taking effect each time even though the right wasn't. (Later they said they think the spinal catheter was put in just left of center of the spine and that's what caused the issue.) Anyway....thanks to my mom who was there to help coach me through labor, I pushed past the fact that the contractions felt like they were ripping my right side open. Around 5 am Saturday morning, I was to a point where they were ready for me to push. I was anxious, to say the least. I mean, at one point there was a c section scheduled partly due to the fact of the baby's size. I wondered if I was going to be able to do it. Daniel had been checking in about once an hour, but the last time he had called he had said he was going to going to that office to wait for the paperwork, and he had said he didnt know when he could be able to call again, because he wasn't familiar with that area enough to know where phones were. So, after about 30 minutes of pushing, Jackson was born. Just as my doctor was cutting the umbilical cord, my phone rang. I knew it was Daniel. My mom answered it, and Daniel was on the phone with her to hear Jackson's first cries through the phone. How he knew just the right time to call is certainly a blessing. It had been hours since we had last talked and then I hold told him there really was no "time frame" to know when things would happen. I am so thankful that he called when he did. While he wasn't actually there, he at least got to hear Jackson's first cries. I don't think it could have been timed better had we tried. I got to talk to him for a few seconds and he told me he would be landing Sunday afternoon at 2:30. After a flight delay, he walked into my hospital room around 5 pm Sunday afternoon. We have two weeks to spend together as a family of three before he has to go back on March 29. Jackson and I are both doing great. My blood pressure stayed a little high at times, but my doctor is pleased overall at how it has gone down since I gave birth. I'm sore and tired, of course. But being out of the hospital last night helped tremendously. It was so nice to not have someone wake me up every hour for a BP check. Jackson has a little bit of jaundice, but it's a very common thing for babies, and his isn't even enough to have to go under any of the bili lights. Daniel and I are learning how to do all the parent things. I'll add more pics to this post, and I know we will take tons more in the next few weeks, but I'm not sure how often I'll be here to update. We'll be spending lots of family time together. As much as we can until the 29th.