CADEN SAMUEL PIERCE born May 19th, 2009

The Long Story of how we got sweet Caden so early..... here it goes:

Caden came as a HUGE surprise coming 6 weeks early. I thought I was just having really bad cramps all weekend because of a stressful work week and I was pretty stressed about speaking at a seminar for work on Saturday as well as doing Sharing Time in Primary with my Sunbeams on Sunday. So when Monday rolled around and I was still having the cramps and I wasn't stressed anymore, I started to wonder if there was something wrong.

I had a late lunch around 2pm and called my mom to tell her about the strong cramps I was having about 10 minutes apart and I wondered if I should call the doctor. She said it was probably all normal and to take it easy the rest of the day. Well I started to get more and more nervous when I went home for lunch and laid down and the cramping continued. So when I got back to work I called the doctor and left his nurse a message letting him know what was going on. The nurse called back about an hour later and said I should come in to the hospital to have it checked out and to get a shot to slow down the cramps.

Asking to leave work early is a huge no-no at my office. So instead of asking, I just told my boss I was leaving to go to the hospital and I didn't think I'd be back the rest of the day (it was 3:30pm). Brandon came to get me and we went in. We hadn't had our tour yet so we didn't know where to go or where to park even. People saw how confused we were and pointed us in the right direction. The nurses were very calm and did the routine check up, asking me questions and hooking me up to machines to test for contractions. Sure enough the cramps I was having were contractions and they were shocked I had endured them all weekend. They said they were pretty strong ones and very close together. So they gave me a shot to slow them down.

Next they decided to check if I was dilated. I guess I shocked the nurse again because she said she thought I was already dilated to a 6 and wanted to confirm it with other nurses. So I got "checked" like 3 or 4 times - everyone confirming I was at a 6 or even a 7 by now. By the way, getting checked HURRRRRRTS!!!! They told me since I was already dilated I was pretty much staying at the hospital until the baby came out.

Brandon and I were so surprised by this, I started to cry. We didn't have ANYTHING yet. We weren't prepared at all for this. The only thing we had was a stroller/car seat combo, luckily. The nurses and Brandon were great at making me calm down and feel better about everything, but I was scared and felt completely unprepared - a feeling I HATE.

Monday night was long, nurses and doctors came in frequently to check how I was doing and to monitor my contractions. My water had broken but I wasn't getting any more dilated because of the shot they had given me. They also had to hook me up to penicillin since I was going into labor so early - and the penicillin hurt more than the contractions.

Finally Tuesday morning the doctor came in and broke my water completely. After that the contractions got stronger and were right after another. It was more painful than I imagined and exhausting. Sweet Brandon had to be reminded to not copy my breathing - it was starting to make him lightheaded watching me. I kept asking for the epidural but they were waiting on the new shift change and they told me I was one of the first in line to get one.

By the time he came in to give me the epidural (which was like an hour later) I was totally exhausted and in so much pain, I hardly felt the needle. It kicked in fast and I fell asleep for a couple hours. When I finally woke up they made me start pushing. After about 45 minutes of pushing baby Caden was out! YEAH! Caden was born at 12:42pm that day. We are so happy to have him. The doctor and nurses were pleasantly surprised how big Caden was for is "age". They were expecting him to be much smaller. They thought maybe he was closer to being 36 weeks along rather than 34.

As soon as he was born they were concerned about his jaundice, sucking and breathing, and hearing. Luckily he slowly passed all his tests and spent most of his time in the hospital with us.

We love our baby Caden!