Baby James' Birth Story • leighanngoodin.com

In 2020, I hope to do a better job blogging. Here we are, Baby James is three months old today, and I’m just now sitting down to write out his birth story. Better late than never! Life as a family of four is busy and there’s never a dull moment in the Goodin house.

Since we were expecting a big baby and wanted to avoid a C section, my doctor scheduled me for induction at 39 weeks. Dixon had been 8 pounds 11 ounces at 38 weeks and a day, and James was measuring ahead as well. I loved my induction with Dixon and I like to plan ahead. So on Monday, August 26th, me and Josh dropped Dixon off with Grammy and Pops (my parents), and headed to Grandview to get the party started. We got all checked in, and about 10 pm I got my first dose of medicine. I was still just 1 cm dilated at that point. I didn’t sleep at all that night. Maybe 30 minutes. I tossed and turned, made the nurse mad that she kept having to come fix my monitors, and around 1 am contractions started. She came in at 2 am to give me my second dose of medicine, and after that the contractions were definitely not going to let me sleep. Around 4 am I asked her to check me and told her how much pain I was in. Just 2 cm. But she brought me something for pain! At that point, I got some much needed drug induced rest until about 7 am with shift change, a doctor visit, having my water broken, etc.

At that point, I had a new nurse, and my pain medicine had started to wear off. I felt a ton of pressure, and desperately wanted an epidural. I was checked and found to be at about 4 cm at about 8 am, and the nurse got the anesthesiologist in to get the epidural done. I was in so much pain at that point, I was crying. I felt like such a sissy. Women did this every day without medication. The anesthesiologist and my nurse were amazing in coaching me through being able to breath through the contractions and be still enough to get the epidural. Josh held my hand and let me squeeze him really hard and never complained.

Finally I started to get some pain relief. The nurse got me settled in bed and situated on a big figure eight style medicine ball to help my body progress. I was very embarrassed and apologetic for my inability to handle the pain and thanking her for getting the anesthesiologist in before her next C section. The nurse was having a lot of trouble finding James’ heart rate, when in rushed the charge nurse and another nurse. At the nurses station my alarms were going off. They immediately took the medicine ball off the bed, threw an oxygen mask on me, and took a look. I was at 10cm. I had gone from 4 to 10 in an hour. It turns out, James was already down in the birth canal and ready to go, which is why our nurse was having trouble with the monitor.

They called Dr. Winston in and I told Josh to let my mom know it was time to push. With Dixon’s induction, he didn’t come until 8 pm, so I had asked for prayers that James would come faster and not take all day. So at 9:03 am, after just ten minutes and five pushes, James made his grand entrance weighing 8 pounds 15 ounces and being 21 inches long. Our prayers were answered!

They put James on my chest for just a split second before they took him over the baby warmer to work on him. I honestly don’t remember what was wrong. Either his heart rate or oxygen were a little low, but nothing that required any major intervention. At that point, in came our birth photographer, Kelsey Hubbard. Everything happened so fast, she was parking her car when it was time to push. She was so upset she missed the birth, but as much pain as I was in and how fast everything happened, I think she arrived at the perfect time.

While the nurses were getting James all cleaned up, at some point I had Josh call or text my mom to tell her. They were on their way to get Dixon from preschool to bring him to the hospital. After what seemed like forever, but was really probably 10-15 minutes, they finally brought me my baby!

Shortly after, my parents arrived with Dixon to meet James! We had James “bring” Dixon a gift, and Dixon got James one too. So the first thing Dixon asked for when he came in the room was not about the baby, but about his gift 🙂 So we spent some time introducing Dixon to his brother. Josh got to change the first dirty diaper.