Liam's Birth

Thursday evening at 7:00 we checked in to Women and Infants' Hospital. We met with an in-house midwife who informed me that they were going to start "ripening" me to be induced right away. Starting at about 9:00 on Thursday night until Sunday morning, they did exactly that. I will spare you all the gory details, but it was not a fun 60+ hours. They did all they could to get labor going. Unfortunately, my body and the baby were well-informed and knew that this pregnancy still had at least three weeks left to go and did all they could to reduce the induction. Baby Liam was not ready to come out and my body was doing all it could to keep him in there.

As a bit of history, Will and I had been working very hard the past nine months preparing to have this baby with as little intervention as possible. We were planning on birthing in the alternative birthing center at the hospital and took classes to prepare us for a wonderful natural birth. When we came into the hospital on Thursday we still thought that could happen, for a few days (!!).

After all of the trying including an entire day of extremely painful induced labor on Saturday and a night of a really strange reaction to morphine, I was exhausted beyond my ability to cope. About 4:30 on Sunday morning, Will gave me a beautiful Priesthood blessing and I was finally able to sleep. Will got up early Sunday morning and went to his graduation from Brown (Yay!!!) and when he came back, together with an amazing midwife and surgeon, we decided that my body was just not going to give us this baby and that it was urgent enough to get him out that a c-section was probably the best option. Once we had made that decision, everything came together very quickly. We told the midwife our decision right around 2:00 and Liam was born at 4:11. The operation went super-smoothly and there were quite a few confirmations that we made the right choice for him to come to the world the way he did.

Here are some pictures:

This is the view from our room (nice sunsets saved my sanity more than once).
Heading in to the OR.
Also heading in to the OR.

Just a few minutes later. Baby Liam's first photo.

Dr. Bowling giving me a peak at our little guy. Note how unhappy he is that we found a way to get him out despite his strong resistance for several days.

First family photo.

Mom and Liam in recovery.
Dad and Liam a couple days later - the first time we were able to catch him with his eyes open.