Bowers Blog: It's a boy! Mack has arrived!

Sep 1, 2013

It's a boy! Mack has arrived!

Ok, so I know everyone knows that the baby is here and a boy, but I'm finally getting a few minutes to sit down and load some of the pictures on to this blog. As many of you know, we did not find out the gender of the baby until it was born and it was a boy!

We thought Mack would never arrive. I had my 40 week doctor's appointment, Tuesday August 20th. At that appointment, I had made progress, but mine and the doctor's concern was how big the baby was possibly getting. Due to low platelets, I can't have epidurals or spinals - which means if the baby was huge and I couldn't get it out, I would require a c-section and general anesthesia - which was not what I wanted. I wanted to be awake when the baby arrived. So, we decided to induce on my due date the next day, Wednesday August 21st. Well, I got home from the doctor's appointment and my water broke! My mom was already on her way to spend the night with the girls since we had planned to be going for induction early the next morning. I texted Worth to let him know that I might be heading to the hospital earlier than planned (Worth was on call that night.)

Worth came home and picked me up, and my contractions were just starting to get ramped up. After several hours of labor my contractions were 2-4 minutes apart but I had stalled at about 7 cm of dilation. My doctor came in and they realized that all of my water had not broken, so we decided to break the rest of the water and see what happened. Unfortunately, as soon as they did that, the baby's heart rate dropped significantly and they started preparing me for an emergency c-section. It got very scary in there for a few minutes. Keep in mind Worth was on call that night, so they were trying to get the back up anesthesiologist in there to do the c-section so Worth wouldn't have to do it. I was in so much pain, it seemed like there was a tornado of people swirling around me. Then, I felt the urge to push and knew I wasn't going to make it to the OR. They called the doctor back in the room (he was on the phone with the other anesthesiologist and trying to call down to get the OR ready.) With 3 pushes I had Mack out. As soon as his head came out the heart rate went back to normal. It was a VERY stressful few minutes. It felt like hours to me.

The baby came out healthy and that's all that mattered until the doctor held him up to my face and I immediately saw that I had a son! I have to admit that I was completely shocked, because I was expecting to hear "It's a girl!" I just turned to Worth and said "It's a boy?" just making sure I was seeing what I thought I saw, and he replied "It's a boy!" I still didn't believe it until I got confirmation from the OB and a nurse that was standing nearby. The girls were thrilled to have a baby brother, I will attempt to include the video of them meeting him at the end of all the pictures in this post. I will break the posts up into several throughout the week since there have been so many pictures taken of our little angel, who I might add arrived promptly on his due date all on his own.

And, he's here!

E.W. came when I went into labor and had been in the waiting room the entire time! He was the first grandparent to hold Mack and gave Mack his first gift: a football and Worth's hand warmer that he used when he played football