Jack's Birth Story

Jack's due date was July 9th, 2010. I was scheduled to be induced July 13th, if Jack had not come yet. I was pretty confident that Jack would not arrive any earlier than his due date since Evie had been born seven days past her due date, but I was wrong.

I woke up at 3:30 am July 1st, 2010 having an occasional 'real' labor contraction. The contractions were fairly far apart at 15 minutes, so I continued to try and sleep. Around 6:30 am I got out of bed because, even though the contractions were still far apart, they were too painful to sleep through. I decided to take a shower and see if the contractions would stop. They didn't stop. In fact, the more I moved around, the closer and more painful the contractions became. I continued to do things around the house, played some with Evie, and waited for the contractions to make it evident I needed to be at the hospital. I had a Dr. appointment the day before and I was only dilated to 2 cm and 50% effaced, so I figured I had quite a bit of time. Around 10 am, I knew that it was getting closer to time to head to the hospital. I had to stop and really concentrate with each contraction and they were anywhere from 3-6 minutes apart. I also knew that, because I was GBS positive, I needed to be at the hospital with enough time to get two doses of penicillin, four hours apart. Blake called our friends, Shawna and Michael, who had planned to watch Evie when we headed to the hospital. He took Evie over to their house while I stayed home and tried to slow the contractions down a bit by lying down. Blake got home around 10:45 am and I decided to go through one more contraction before getting in the car. During that contraction my water broke. I knew that things were going to start moving along even faster then, so we drove to the hospital and headed to Labor and Delivery.

Once we got to Labor and Delivery, they immediately got me into a room since my water had broken and it was evident that I was actually in labor. I was already dilated to 6 cm and 100% effaced. They set up my IV and gave me my first dose of penicillin. The penicillin burned horribly in my arm as they gave it to me. I stayed lying down on the hospital bed the entire time I was in labor at the hospital. I was already pretty worn out from laboring at home and I decided to stay laying down as the contractions became more frequent and painful. Blake stayed beside me holding my hand the entire time. In fact, the couple times he left my bedside to get me a washcloth, I freaked out because it really threw me off if he wasn't holding my hand as I was contracting. I started to get really dizzy and nauseous so they had me on oxygen, which I stayed on for the remainder of the labor. At 1:30 pm I was dilated to 8 ½ cm. I was starting to get a little panicky because I was exhausted and the contractions were extremely painful. Dr. Lindstrom came in to check on me and asked me if I'd like him to help things move along a little faster. I told him I wanted him to do whatever it took to get Jack here faster. So, he helped get me to 9 ½ cm and by that point I was very ready to push. At 2:00 pm he had me push just enough to get me to 10 cm. Four minutes and four pushes later, Jackson Liam Smith was born at 2:04 pm. He cried immediately and had a scowl on his face just like his Dad. Blake cut his umbilical cord and he was given to me right away, then taken to be measured and tested. His one-minute Apgar test was 8 out of 10 and his five-minute Apgar test was 9 out of 10. He weighed 7 pounds and 12 ounces and he was 20 inches long. Jack was then brought back to me and he began breastfeeding immediately. Due to Jack being born after only three hours of labor in the hospital, I had not received the 2nd dose of penicillin for the GBS. So, we had to stay a minimum of 48 hours after Jack's birth for the purpose of closer monitoring of Jack. Jack did wonderful while we were at the hospital and we were able to get a couple of hours of sleep, with the nurses coming in and out of the room all the time. Grandma, Gramps and Evie came to visit us at the hospital. Then, they took Evie to Phoenix with them for a week while Blake and I adjusted to Jack and his schedule. We were discharged at 12 pm on July 3rd, 2010.

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We are happily enjoying our time as a family of four. Jack is doing extremely well. He sleeps wonderfully and is a breastfeeding champ! In fact, he eats so well he only lost an ounce after a week, instead of the common pound babies usually lose. He currently weighs 8 pounds, 1.5 ounces at two weeks old. He's gonna be a chunker. :) Evie is doing extremely well adjusting to having Jack around. She's very helpful and wants to be near her brother as often as we let her. I'm feeling good and ready to be more active again. I'm doing well at taking it easy for now, but I do look forward to being able to run, etc. Blake is enjoying his 5 weeks paternity leave. He officially turned in his two-week notice, so he's completely done with his job. He's pretty much on 'vacation' until we move to Portland! We're very thankful he has this time to be with our family, help me out, and keep Evie on her schedule as I focus on Jack. Thank you, Jesus, for your many blessings!

Heather