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Kevin Grant Burns came into the world at 9:06 p.m. on January 10, 1997. He weighed 6 lbs. 14 oz. and was 20 inches long. Here is our story:
I woke up that morning of January 10 at about 4 a.m. I had been having regular painful contractions for several days and we had even gone to the hospital 2 nights previous thinking it was time, only to be sent home. My due date was 2 days away and I had felt like a walking time bomb for quite a while, knowing that any day this baby would be ready to make his entrance into the world. I had lost my mucous plug on Tuesday, January 7, which added to my excitement and anxiety. I had also been leaking fluid for a couple days, but at the hospital during our "false alarm" it was determined that it wasn't amniotic fluid. By Friday morning, I was exhausted from lack of sleep, achy and a nervous wreck. On one hand, I was thrilled that any time I would finally meet this little creature who had been growing and moving inside me and hold him in my arms, but I was scared about the prospect of labor and delivery and I had enjoyed my pregnancy so much (especially after 5 years of trying to conceive) that I didn't feel quite ready to give it up. I was still leaking fluid but it seemed more than before and I had started wearing maxi pads. I was also still having contractions, painful enough that I was already doing breathing exercises when they hit. My husband, Kelly, went to work, assuring me that he had his pager and his cell phone with him and that he would call to check on me periodically as he had been since I started my maternity leave a week before. By late that morning, I was so anxious I finally called my doctor's office and spoke to Janine, a nurse practitioner. I told her I was leaking more fluid than before and having a lot of contractions, that I was concerned but didn't want to go to the hospital again if it wasn't really time. She told me to go into the office right away so I could be checked there. She said they would determine if I was leaking amniotic fluid, the concern being that if it was, it could lead to infection even if I wasn't in active labor. Janine told me that if I was leaking amniotic fluid, I would probably be sent me right over to L & D. I left the house fully expecting to be back home in an hour or so with instructions to wait because it wasn't time yet. I had 3 or 4 contractions during the 20 minute drive to the doctor's office, and there I was on the freeway, gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles and doing my Lamaze breathing each time a contraction came on. Janine took me into an examining room and checked me and said that there was quite a bit of fluid in my vagina and did a litmus test which came out positive for amniotic fluid. She then spoke to my doctor and came back a minute later telling me to go straight to L & D where I would be given pitocin to move my labor along. I started bawling . . . I was shocked and scared out of my mind and kept thinking I didn't even say goodbye to my dogs! I wasn't ready! It wasn't supposed to happen like this! I called Kelly at work (about an hour's drive away) and told him what was going on. He was taken by surprise; of course, he knew I had been having contractions and that it could happen at any time, but like me, he just didn't think it would be today. He had called me at home to check on me a couple hours before and all I had said was that I was trying to nap. I drove to Kelly's parents' house, about 5 minutes from the hospital, so I could leave my car and Becky, my mother-in-law, could take me to the hospital. Luckily, my "labor bag" and overnight bag were still in my car from our last trip to the hospital on Wednesday night. I called my office on the way to my in-laws' house to let everyone know I was going to the hospital to have my baby. I talked to my friend, Sue, who cried with me and told me everything was going to be okay. I cried all the way to Kelly's parents' house. It was hitting me like a ton of bricks that within a matter of hours my whole life was about to change forever. We had planned that Becky would be with us for our baby's birth. She is like a mother to me and was so thrilled for us that we were finally going to have a baby after all our years of heartache and disappointment. I was admitted to Labor & Delivery at about 1:00 p.m. and almost as soon as they got me in a gown and in bed, my contractions became stronger and consistently 4 - 5 minutes apart. I was only dilated to 1 ½ cm. Becky sat with me, rubbing my back, demanding extra pillows for me, and helping me to the bathroom. Suddenly I was starving and wished I had eaten something before I left home that morning, knowing that all I would be allowed over the next several hours would be ice chips. Kelly got to the hospital at about 2:00 and the pitocin was started. Within an hour my contractions were down to every 3 - 4 minutes and very, very painful. I have a very low pain tolerance and throughout my pregnancy, I had planned on having an epidural when the time came -- no heroics for me! The breathing exercises were no longer helping much. By about 4:00 I was begging for something for the pain. I was told I couldn't have an epidural until I was dilated to 4, but at about 4:30 I was given a shot of morphine and within seconds I felt stoned out of my mind. I still felt the contractions, and they still hurt, but I was finally able to relax a little. Kelly breathed with me when the contractions hit and I stared at the little stuffed giraffe my mother-in-law had given me to use as my "focal point" thinking, "This is NOT helping!" We anxiously watched the fetal monitor I was hooked up to. Everything was going well; my labor was moving along perfectly and the baby was doing fine. Kelly began making phone calls to let friends and family members know that the baby was on its way. I had packed some snack foods in my labor bag for Kelly but he didn't have the heart to eat anything with me laying there nibbling on ice chips. Becky had also given me a hand-held fan to put in my labor bag, and Kelly turned it on and pointed it at me, trying so hard to make me more comfortable, but it just annoyed me and I snapped at him to get it out of my face. My friend from work, Sue, came to the hospital as soon as she got off work. She sat with us in the LDR room for a while, talking with us and reassuring me. My dear friend, Dorothy, who had thrown my baby shower and who was going to be our baby's godmother, also came. She was almost as scared as I was and had been warning me for months that she didn't know how long she would be able to stay because she just didn't do well watching someone else in pain. But she stayed . . . At about 6:00 my membranes ruptured. I was only leaking before, but now I felt and heard a "pop" and the water just gushed out. After that, things really moved along. The morphine had worn off and I was in so much pain I was crying. Finally at about 6:30 I was given an epidural, and it was such a relief -- at first. After about an hour, it started wearing off on the left side of my body, so on that side the contractions, which were by then about every 2 minutes, were becoming unbearable. It's all kind of hazy now, but I remember lying there breathing, breathing, breathing, crying and telling Kelly that I couldn't do it, that I wanted to stop and just go home. He was wonderful, a Rock of Gibraltar. He held my hand and breathed with me and told me over and over, "You can do it, you're doing great. Let's just get through this contraction. It's going to be okay." My nurse gave me the news that the anesthesiologist was assisting with a c-section but that he would be right in after that to give me more epidural. For over an hour I was in agony, just wanting to give up and waiting for the anesthesiologist to come back. Kelly's mom happens to be a nurse in the cardiac care unit of the hospital we were having our baby at. A co-worker/friend of hers came over to L & D when her shift was over to see how we were doing. Although we had only planned for Becky to be with us during the actual birth, it turned out to be a good thing that her friend, Cindy, came by because by the time the baby was being born, Becky was too emotional to handle the video camera for us, so Cindy stood in and recorded the events for us. It is really true what people say about losing any sense of modesty when you are about to have a baby -- at that point I couldn't have cared less who was there. At about 8:30 I started feeling the urge to push with each contraction and I panicked because the nurse was not in the room -- she had gone to check on the anesthesiologist again. Kelly kept telling me not to push and I felt like I was going to throw up and pass out from the pain. The nurse had said she would check me once again for dilation before I got more epidural. When she came back she warned me that I probably still had a long road ahead of me. Then she checked me and said with surprise, "You're complete, it's time to push." No kidding -- I knew it was time to push because it took every ounce of willpower I had not to push! This meant, of course, no more epidural -- it was show time. She instructed me to push when the next contraction came, so in a couple minutes I grabbed my thighs and began to push with all my might -- 3 pushes to the count of 10 with each contraction. Kelly was on my left and Becky was on my right and they counted to 10 with the nurse with each push. They had placed a mirror at the foot of the bed so I could see everything. I was still in a great deal of pain but the pushing was a relief. When my baby's head crowned, the doctor on call was called into the room. Seeing the round blue-white shape of my baby's head was the only thing that urged me on at that point. The doctor did an episiotomy and I pushed so hard I thought I was going to pass out, but because I was still partly numb from the epidural, it didn't feel like I was accomplishing anything by pushing. I was accomplishing something, though, because it turned out that I only pushed for about 10 minutes before he was born. When his head and shoulders had been delivered, the doctor told me to reach down with my hands. I thought he was just going to let me touch my baby before he was out all the way, but he had me take Kevin and lift him out of my body and place him on my stomach. It was the most incredible thing . . . there are no words to describe my emotions at that moment. The placenta was delivered shortly thereafter and Kelly cut the cord. At first, Kevin wouldn't breathe. He turned bright purple before our eyes as the doctor massaged him and suctioned mucous from his nose and mouth and he just laid there completely unresponsive. They took him away from me and over to a warming table where they gave him oxygen and continued to massage him. He finally let out a loud cry and I just laid there crying uncontrollably while Kelly kissed me over and over and told how proud he was of me. The doctor said the baby's failure to breathe right away was probably due to the fact that he was born so fast and it stunned him -- strangely enough, the same exact thing apparently happened when I was born. Kevin was beautiful from the first minute -- no mis-shapen head or blotchy skin or anything, just a perfect, beautiful little person. After his initial cry, he was very quiet and alert. I will never ever forget what it was like to hold him and look into his eyes for the very first time. After he had been cleaned up and weighed and measured, the first order of business was to nurse him for the first time. I was all thumbs and the nurse helped me get him latched on but he was not interested, and actually didn't have a good feeding until the following afternoon. I got worried until then because he just didn't seem interested in eating, but I was told that was normal. By the time we got him home Saturday night, he was doing well, nursing about every 2 - 3 hours. Because I had an epidural, I was catheterized, so I had to wait for the epidural to completely wear off before I could attempt to use the restroom. Peeing for the first time after giving birth is apparently a really big deal! At about midnight the nurse helped me to the restroom and I sat there for what seemed like forever just peeing and peeing -- it seemed like gallons! Then came the diaper-sized pad, the medicated spray and Tucks pads for my episiotomy site. In the hospital, Kevin mostly slept and hardly fussed or cried at all. Our first night at home was a little frustrating because he cried whenever I put him down. When I became desperate enough for sleep, I finally brought him into our bed (I had been afraid to for fear of rolling over on him or getting his face buried in the blanket or something) and he was fine there, sleeping and waking to nurse every couple hours. From the very beginning, he was very alert, calm and easy to soothe. He was so tiny, and yet I was (and still am) amazed that this whole little person was growing and moving in my belly such a short time ago. When I left the hospital and went home, I still found myself putting my hands on my stomach looking for that little butt or a foot or something. It was very strange not to be pregnant any more and I felt empty. I loved being pregnant and knew I would miss it but wasn't prepared for the incredible sadness I felt. I almost felt as if I lost a body part or something and I mourned that loss for a long time. When Kevin was inside me, I was so close to him all the time, he was a part of me and when he was born he became a separate little person and when I remembered how quickly it all happened, I would cry. Even though I knew a lot of it was post partum hormones, I felt terribly guilty for having these crying jags when I had this beautiful, perfect baby. In the beginning, I was overwhelmed. I wasn't prepared for it to happen the way it did -- like I said, when I left for the doctor's office Friday morning I fully expected to be back home a while later -- with baby still in belly. When we came home from the hospital, Kelly's mom followed us and video taped the homecoming for us, and when we took Kevin into his room, I lost it (again) and just stood there crying. Everything leading up to that moment came back to me -- from the time we started trying to conceive a few years ago, through my wonderful pregnancy and then Kevin's birth, and there we stood with our son in our arms in his nursery. Talk about a labor of love . . . Epilogue - July 20, 1997 Kevin is now a happy, healthy six-month-old. His mellow, easy going personality from birth has stayed with him. He is still long and thin like he was when he was born. As of his 6 month checkup last week he weighed in at 14 lbs. 1 oz. and was 27 1/4 inches long. He cut his first two teeth a couple weeks ago and they made their debut with no fuss at all. Kevin is all boy -- he is very active, very physical and very vocal. His little legs and arms are always going, going, going. He loves to roll around, to be tickled and bounced and he babbles all the time. He is discovering the world around him and seems excited about each new discovery, from a fistful of the dog's fur to the sound his toys make when he bangs them on his highchair tray. We are still happily breast feeding and plan to continue at least until he is a year old. We started introducing solid foods to him a few weeks ago and he is an eager diner -- he seems to love every new food he tries. I returned to work part time when he was 2 months old, which was hard. Becky, my mother-in-law, watches him one day a week, Kelly stays with him on Saturday mornings when I go to work and he is in group day care at a woman's home three mornings a week. Kevin is the light of our lives and we love him more than we ever thought possible. Motherhood has been quite an adventure so far, and nothing, not any person or class or book, could have prepared me for it. Nothing can prepare you for the fact that you will bring this child into the world and love him so much it hurts. Although I felt an instant bond with Kevin when he was born, I spent a long time mourning the loss of my pregnancy. I still miss it and look forward very much to another. Maybe next time I will be a little more prepared . . . I will savor every single second, even if my head is in the toilet, knowing that it will quickly come to an end. In the meantime, my days are filled with Kevin and hoping that he doesn't grow up too fast.
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