The Hempler Family: Robert Clayton Hempler Arrives!

Here is my birth story...if you don't want to read it all skip to the pictures at the bottom. Last night at about 8:30 my contractions started up and we decided to make the trip to the hospital around midnight. I was a little reluctant to go in because I really didn't want to be sent home again. Luckily the nurse said my dilation had gone up to a 4 and that we should walk the hospital floor for an hour to see if it increased. It did a little and since my blood pressure was a little high we were sent to a room and told to try and sleep and then begin with Pitosin in the morning. So we went to sleep at 3:00am but unfortunately I was woken up just 30 minutes later to a flood in my bed with my water breaking. The nurse helped clean me up and then I went back to bed just to be woken up a little while later to extremely bad contractions. I fought them for awhile and then decided the only way I'd be able to get a little more sleep is to get my epideral. So about an hour later I had been given my epideral but noticed I still had sharp pains on my left side. Around 7:30 a different doctor came in to look at my epideral, by this time I was in immense pain with contractions, and started telling me that there was a good chance my epideral was only going to take on the one side and that I'd probably need to take a narcotic to ease my pain or attempt the epideral again but there was a chance I would lose the whole thing. All the while he was telling me this I'm having contractions, almost crying, and trying to figure out what to do. I kept wanting to know the side affects for the baby if I used the narcotics and the best answer I got from him was that the baby wouldn't die but it would have to be stopped prior to delivery. So I decided the best option was to reattempt the epideral. He tried about 7 times, I had 2 tries with the first doctor, and decided it wouldn't work. So I took two doses of the narcotics and spent the next two hours crying to Eric as he calmed me down every contraction, which was almost constant, and made me breathe and not tighten up my muscles. At 9:30 I was told that I was 10 cm and to let them know if I wanted or felt like I needed to push. Pushing sounded like a great idea but had to wait a few minutes while everything was prepared for the delivery. After 2 hours of pushing, and feeling lots of tearing, cutting, vacuuming at the very end, our little guy arrived at 11:45am.

He was immediately evaluated by the NICU staff who was waiting for his arrival in our room. Scored a 7 on his first Apgar and 9 on the second and was diagnosed a very healthy, big baby. The ultrasound I had down last week said he'd be about 9 1/2 pounds and he weighed in 9lbs, 4oz and was 21 inches long. His head, which I was told would be about average size was in reality very big which caused his momma lots of pain. After NICU cleared him I spent a few minutes with him and then was brought to the OR to be stitched up, had a 4th degree tear, while daddy took him to the nursery for a bath and the doctor's evaluation.

We named him Robert Clayton after my dad and maiden name. Lots of people joked about his stubborness during the last few weeks and said that my dad was already impacting him. Although we had this name picked out for him before we knew he was a him I found comfort in knowing that the name we had chosen would be a perfect fit. The only thing I regret about the name is that our niece Lyric was the only one to figure out his name prior to birth and I had to lie to her that it wasn't it because we wanted to keep it a secret. We hope that her figuring out the name is just the start to their bond in years to come.

Here are some pics of the little guys first day of life. More to come!