Pierce Jackson

On Saturday, October 10th I enjoyed a great day of shopping and getting some last minute things done around the house. I really did not think that I would be having a baby that night. I had convinced myself that it would be at least another week. I really had no idea though. Since I wasn’t taking any kinds of shots with this pregnancy to stop labor, I was anxious to see just how soon after coming off of bed rest before I had little Pierce.  Well, I am very confident that the shots worked in the previous pregnancies.  At about 10:00 on Saturday night I started having pretty intense contractions. I didn’t tell David of course, because he would make me go to the hospital and I was so worried that it was false labor, that I didn’t want to go until I knew for sure. I had been having contractions for about 30 minutes and they were about 2 minutes apart. David could tell and jumped out of bed and started pacing and saying we needed to call someone to watch the kids and head to the hospital.  I still wasn’t convinced that it was true labor, so I told him to calm down and leave me alone. About 10 minutes later I told him in between contractions that we should probably call Trish and tell her to be on stand by just in case. David told her to head this way right away! She was in the middle of a date, but thankfully ditched him and headed over right away. All the kids were asleep, so we woke little Dave up and told him we were going to the hospital and that Trish was on her way.  We got to the hospital and got checked in. I was dilated to a 3. The nurse that I had was amazing! I wasn’t progressing as fast as they would like for me to stay at the hospital, but she could tell that I was going to be having a baby soon and didn’t want me to have to go home, so when she checked me a couple of hours later she was very generous, when she said I was a 4.   By 6:00 a.m. I was only dilated to a 5 and was in a lot of pain. The epidural I got wasn’t working very well and I could feel quite a bit of pain.  I didn’t want to get another dose of the epidural, because I was scared I would be too numb like I was with Elizabeth and wouldn’t  be able to feel anything to be able to push. The doctor came back in though after some painful amount of time and gave me fixed it, however they do! They were going to give me Pitocin to help speed things up, but they couldn’t get the results on whether or not Pierce’s strep test was positive or negative and couldn’t do anything until they had the results.  Finally at about 9:00 a.m. they were able to broke my water. I told them that once my water breaks, it is usually pretty fast after that. My doctor jokingly told me, if I could start pushing at 10:15 that would be great! He was ready to get that baby! Sure enough at about 10:10 I told the nurse that I thought it was time. She checked me and I was ready for sure! Right on time! I pushed about 3 times and then at 10:26 a.m. on 10-11-2015 Pierce Jackson made his appearance weighing 7 pounds 8 ounces and 19 inches. He was having a hard time breathing and after letting me hold him for a minute, they rushed him over to give him some oxygen. He was having a hard time breathing on his own.  His blood sugar was also low, so they were concerned. He was also “premature”  I say that very loosely. He was born at 36 weeks and 6 days. He just had about 14 hours to go to be full term, but he was still considered a preemie.  They took him to the nursery for the first few hours to keep an eye on him because of his low blood sugar. They got me all cleaned up and to my new room and then I was able to go see him again and feed him.  After staying with him for a little bit, I went back to my room and was completely exhausted! I could barely keep my eyes open, but I had a bit of a scare. I had quite a bit of bleeding and the nurses were very concerned that I was hemorrhaging. We had about 9 nurses in there at one time helping me and quite panicked. I still couldn’t walk because of the epidural, so when I had to walk to the bathroom I had 4 nurses walking me there and couldn’t bend my knees and I really felt like Bambi, the first time he tried walking.  After they got me checked and cleaned up I was out cold. I was so tired. I slept for a little bit and then I remember the nurses were telling the other nurses what was going on and I heard them talk about Pierce and his grunting and low blood pressure and just started balling. I think I had a flashback to when David was born and was grunting and all the trouble he had. I was terrified that I had him too early and then I started blaming myself for not waiting until I was 37 weeks to go off bed rest. Lack of sleep, lack of food and all the hormones made me a crying machine that first day!

After about 4 or 5 hours of monitoring him, they finally let him come to my room . I was so excited to have him with me. Then David brought the kids over to visit. They were all so excited to meet him.  They were wired!! After about an hour they headed home. Since Pierce was a “preemie” he had to stay until Tuesday morning. I really don’t mind staying in the hospital because I know that I will get fed all 3 meals without lifting a finger and I don’t have any other kids there popping in on me.  They were still concerned about his blood sugar and so I was supplementing him to help keep it where it should be at.  They poked his poor feet so many times. Poor little guy.  He had his first bath there too and was not a fan of it! He screamed the whole time.  On Tuesday morning we got to check out about 10:00 a.m. but unfortunately David was running a little behind. We had some fraudulent charges in our bank account somewhere in another country, so he was trying to get all that figured out. He finally got there and we headed home. Biscuit was very concerned about this new person we brought into our house and did a lot of sniffing and whining that first day. Any time Pierce would cry, he would get so concerned and try to get to him to comfort him. It was pretty cute.  We are so glad to have this little bundle of joy. He is a sweet baby. He is not nearly as easy as Lizzy was, but also no where near as hard as Parker was, so he is a good in between baby!

We had to go to the pediatrician the first week about 3 times to monitor his bilirubin and blood sugar. So even more pricks in his poor feet. One time the nurse didn’t get enough blood and had to do the withdrawal a second time. It was terrible. He was in so much pain and let us know it! Finally the Saturday after he was born his bilirubin was going down and so we didn’t have to go back after that!! Time is flying by with him and he is growing way too fast already. We love our newest addition.

Off Bed Rest!!

After 7 looonnnggg weeks of bed rest, I was 36 weeks and got off of bed rest. I was so excited! It had been a long couple of months, but somehow we all survived mom being no help at all.  On Sunday, October 4th we had General Conference for our church and I celebrated by making a big dinner for our family as a thank you for helping us out so much.  Then on Monday I got busy decorating for Halloween and shopping to get all the things that I needed for little Pierce.  I also stocked up on groceries to be on the safe side if I did go into labor, so the kids wouldn’t be stuck without any food. It is truly amazing how much money we saved though with me being on bed rest and David in charge of the groceries. The kids were so excited to have some of their normal lunch stuff back in the mix and that I made breakfast for them! It was so nice to be able to do things again and to be able cook or get whatever I might be craving that day! That was so hard to wait for food and have to have someone else get it for me.  I was lucky that Giselle had done all the laundry for Pierce and gotten all the baby things ready, so that I wouldn’t have to worry about it. It was so nice to shop again, except that I was in so much pain! Apparently there is some kind of syndrome in pregnancy, where your bones actually break and I had that. So any kind of movement sent extreme pain through me. It was terrible! It felt like my bones were rubbing together and it was not a good feeling. I couldn’t find any relief except with my baths. Thank goodness for our new house and our big soaking tub. It made such a difference. I was also having contractions constantly for hours at a time for the last week and a half before I went into real labor, but they would be irregular and not too painful so I knew it wasn’t real labor.  So I kept doing things like mowing the lawn.  It really is a long time to do nothing, but so worth it.