avery mark westphal

avery mark westphal arrived december 24, 2009 at 6:26 pm. little man came in at a whopping 8 lbs. 15 oz. and measured 20.5" long.

shortened birth story: at around midnight the previous evening, i started having consistent contractions about 7 minutes apart. then aaron and i went to the hospital around 3 a.m. when the contractions started coming closer together. when we arrived at the hospital i was only 2 cm which was what i was at my appointment earlier that morning. my contractions were about 3-4 minutes apart so i decided to labor naturally til the doctor arrived to check the next morning. she arrived around 9 a.m. and checked and i had only progressed to 3 cm. she then broke my water and the baby had a bowel movement while in utereo. since his heart rate was good she wasn't too concerned. i decided then to go ahead and get an epidural and that's when we decided to add pitocin to help progress the dilation. around 4 p.m. the nurse came in and asked if i shifted positions cause the baby's heart rate had dropped. she started shifting me around to find a position the baby would like. unfortunately it was difficult to do. the doctor checked again and i was only 4 cm by this time. she thought maybe since my contractions were coming so close together it was causing the baby stress. she also said the baby was still riding high and if i didn't progess much in the next few hours we'd have to consider a c-section. at my final check, barely any progress had been made and with that and the meconium in the amniotic fluid we decided it was best to do a c-section. we went in at 6 p.m. and 26 minutes later i could hear the cry of our little big man. "no wonder you weren't making much progress," the doc said, "he's huge!" after getting a clean bill of health we were soon holding avery in our arms.

so our lives have been pretty hectic the last few weeks. hopefully with a little down time i can update the blog fully. i'll try and post daily til i can get updated. lots of pics and news to come. stay tuned.