Many people don't know the story of Declan's big entrance, so I thought... What better place than the blog?
A few weeks ago my doctor diagnosed me with Cholestasis, which is a pregnancy related liver illness in which my liver wasn't functioning correctly. On Monday, April 15, the doctors sent a sample of my blood to be tested. The problem...? The test takes 2 weeks to come back! The problem with Cholestasis is if babies are carried to full term there is an increased risk of still birth. By the time we got the results back to confirm, we would have been full term. This left Kevin and I with our first big decision as parents.... Wait until full term or induce early? We decided to induce; the chance of still birth, no matter how small, was nothing we wanted to mess with.
Tuesday, April 16 at 8pm we were admitted into Yale for our induction. We spent the night trying to get my cervix to dilate (I'll spare you details!) When we woke up, I was 3cm dilated so we started the pitocin to induce labor. By the time 5 rolled around, I had not made any more progress and it was decided to stop pitocin for the night and try again in the morning. Thursday morning the pitocin was started again and the doctor broke my water. HELLO, LABOR.
We labored through the day on Thursday and overnight. Kevin was the absolute best husband and father I could have dreamt up throughout the entire thing, He never left my side, fielded text messages and calls from both our phones, handled the doctors and nurses for me, and gave me more love and support than I could have ever imagined possible. He is a rock star :)
I labored through the night, and finally the early morning hours of Friday hit. We pushed for almost 4 hours and Declan literally made no progress! Our midwife knew how badly we wanted to avoid a c-section, but after 20 hours of labor, Kevin and I made the decision to let the doctors perform a c-section.
At 7:58am Declan Jackson Monahan made his big entrance into this world. I'll never forget hearing him cry for the first time, or the look in Kevin's eyes as we both realized our long journey was finally over and our son was here. The doctors gave Declan to Kevin to hold and this incredible amount of love overcame me as I spent my first moments with my family.
Sitting here writing this blog, I had to stop and think fairly hard abut how to word that last paragraph. The way I feel about Declan and Kevin is too surreal for words. Nothing I say could adequately describe my love for them. I thought I was the happiest woman alive when I married Kevin.... But now I see how much more love I have for him and it blows my mind...
Welcome to the world little man. Mommy and Daddy love you.
