The Crowther Clan: Welcome Lucas!

Thursday, July 18th, Abbie went up to Cherry Hill with Grandma Karen and the gang for the annual Nielsen camp out. Then, Friday afternoon Brandon and I met them up there. It was SOOO HOT! We all thought we were going to die. We even took a trip to a nearby library just to cool down for a bit. By the evening it was feeling better and we were able to enjoy chillin' with everyone. As we were getting Abbie ready for bedtime, my water broke. I didn't realize it at first, I thought I might have peed my pants. But it kept leaking and I quickly realized that my water did indeed break. I was kind of panicky and not sure what to do. Luckily my mom-in-law was there and was calm and told me that we should go to the hospital. So, we quickly gathered up most of our stuff and jumped into the car. We checked in at the hospital around 9 pm, they confirmed that my water had broken, and got me all hooked up. My mom-in-law took Abbie home and put her to bed. Eventually my mom went and got her and took her to her house.

I was still only dilated to a 2, with very minimal contractions. It took 5 tries to get an IV in me (boy did those hurt and leave impressive bruises) and then I got my epidural. I wasn't really progressing on my own, so they started pitocin. It was a really long night. The nurse came in about every hour to check on me. Around 3am, when the nurse checked me she said I had a blood clot, and that baby's heart beat was dropping at the wrong time during contractions, etc. and that it was a possibility that maybe the doctor might decided to do a c-section. That freaked me out. So, they stopped the pitocin, which helped baby's heartbeat get back to normal, but also stopped labor progression. Anyway, like I said, it was a long night, I only slept for about an hour.

Sometime in the early morning they put me back on a lower dose of pitocin, because seriously my body wasn't doing anything on its own. My mom, dad, sisters, and Abbie came by in the morning to see us. At that point I was probably dilated to a 7. A few minutes after they left, I called the nurse in because I suddenly felt like I needed to push (probably around 10am). She confirmed that I was at a 10 and ready to go. The on-call doctor (because of course my doctor was out of town) came shortly after and I pushed for like 5-10 minutes before Luke was born. The doctor immediately handed him to me.

He didn't cry until a couple of minutes after he was born. The nurse got him cleaned up, and then I held him skin to skin. He was born at 10:38 am, weighing 7lbs. 6oz, and was 21 inches long.

Abbie, my family, and Brandon's mom and dad came and saw Luke when he was only a few minutes old.

First, and I think only, family photo

About an hour after delivery, I was moved into another room. We were able to relax/sleep for a little while.

The rest of the day was filled with visitors :)

Abbie holding Luke for the first time

First bath- around 10pm

It was a long night once again, but at least I got more than an hour of sleep. The pediatrician and on-call doctor said we were doing great and approved us to be able to go home that day.