Cayson Budd Arnold :: Birth Story

Our sweet little man has officially been with us a month! And it has been both the longest and shortest month of my life. Most nights he was sleeping like a champ, only waking when we woke him to feed. But the past week we have gotten to enjoy the joys of a fussy baby… Ha. But I still wouldn’t have it any other way. The pediatrician also just gave us the green light to let him sleep as long as possible at night, so fingers crossed he starts sleeping for longer stints soon. {Any tips?} Anyways, now that I’ve had time to soak up some sweet moments with our little guy- I’m finally sharing his birth story. We actually vlogged most of it so you can kind of see our full experience.

As I shared before, we knew we were being induced ahead of time, so our bags were packed and we went out on date nights every night leading up to our induction. So on Thursday, March 8 at 9:40 PM we grabbed our hospital bags and hopped in an Uber and headed to the hospital for our 10 PM induction time. If I am being honest, I hadn’t given too much thought into the process. Mostly because I was terrified and wanted to avoid overthinking. I was shocked at how quickly everything moved once we got there. By 10:10 PM we were all settled in our room and ready to get the ball rolling. They gave me my epidural first, which I could not have been more thankful for. I hate needles and was terrified of getting it- and if I’m being honest, it hurt like crazy. And they actually had to do it twice because the first one was too far on the left and made my left side tingle right away. Not fun. But I would get it again in a heart beat because it made the rest of the process 100 times easier. You can see more about when I got the foley bulb and pitocin in my vlog below. Around 2 or 3 in the morning I actually ended up with a mask to help regulate my breathing because Cayson’s heartbeat wasn’t exactly where they wanted it. They kept the mask on me for about an hour.

We spent most of the night simply hanging out, talking, attempting to sleep and watching HGTV. Most of the labor process was incredibly easy, especially since the epidural was so strong. But there were a couple things that happened during his birth process that we never would have guessed would happen. The first one occurred around 9 AM when the hospital’s FIRE ALARM STARTED GOING OFF!! I mean- WHAT?! How does that even happen? To this day we still have no idea why it went off, but the staff remained extremely calm despite the fact every husband had his head poked out of their delivery rooms. Talk about seriously stressful! And 30 minutes later we learned I was dilated to a 10. Praise the Lord our delivery story didn’t get much crazier than a slight scare.

The second event occurred while I was pushing. As I mentioned before, we had been watching HGTV for a few hours. Once it came time to push, there was so much going on that we didn’t even think to turn off the TV.  But the funny part was, in-between pushes the TV caught my eye. Once I glanced up I had to take a double take. IT WAS ME ON TV. Ha! What are the chances that one of our episodes of Flea Market Flip would be playing on HGTV while I was pushing? It was a great distraction in between contractions.

Around 9:30 I started feeling some serious pressure from his head, but thought it was just me feeling more since my epidural dosage was lowered. After about 10 minutes of feeling like I needed to keep my legs crossed I rung for my doctor and learned we were officially dilated to a 10! It was baby time. I instantly called my parents because we thought the baby would come some time between 12 PM and 5 PM. My mom completely missed the urgency in my voice when I said I was dilated to a 10 and it was time for her to jump in a cab. Rather than recognizing my statement she began making idol chit-chat. Ha! It was only once I repeated myself a second time that she realized I was serious. It was go time. I instantly began praying she would make it before I needed to start pushing. And let’s just say the pressure was real. She hopped in an Uber first and naturally, the car broke down as she was driving over. Seriously- I’ve never heard of this happening to anyone. Of course it would happen when she was on the way to the hospital. She then jumped out of the car and jumped into a yellow taxi. When I called my dad was downstairs swimming laps in his building’s pool. A member of the staff came frantically running into the pool room and started yelling at him to get out. He initially thought something was wrong with the pool water. Finally the staff member told him it was baby time and he dashed to the hospital too.

When my parents arrived I was still completely numb. Like literally couldn’t scratch my face with my fingers- that’s how numb my hands were. And there was no chance I could even roll over from my left side to my right side. The doctors even asked if they could bring a student in to use me as a teaching lesson about rare side effects that could happen. Luckily the epidural made me chilled out enough that I didn’t mind. They ended up deciding to turn off my epidural so I could begin feeling my body again. Yikes. They did end up giving me an extremely low dosage later, but it must have been extremely low because I felt everything. I ended up pushing for 1.5 hours, which was so much longer than I expected… I knew pushing could last for hours, but for some reason I really thought I would be one of those lucky few who pushed a few times and he would just appear… That was definitely not the case, but the time did pass decently quickly. And my mom and Caleb took turns praying over me through each push and contraction. I literally don’t know what I would have done without them. After he was born the staff let me hold him for a decently long time before checking his vitals. I was absolutely exhausted, but it was such sweet time.

We were then moved up to our new room for recovery. If I’m being honest, for me the recovery was harder than labor. I tore pretty badly {find my postpartum essentials here}.  We spent two nights in the hospital after he was born and then made our way home. Since then we’ve been enjoying his precious little snuggles all day every day. I can’t wait to watch him grow and to take him on adventures!

Happy one month to our baby Cayson! I love being your mom!

nightgown :: lip stain {lasted my entire labor & delivery!}