Logan: Labor and Delivery

Logan Fuji Sato

Born Friday, May 21st, 2010 9:50 pm (1 day after my due date)

8lbs 1 oz - 20 inches long

Brown hair - dark grayish eyes (already starting to turn brown)

Around 13 hours of labor

I started having contractions Friday morning before 9. I started to time them and found them to be all over the place: 1 and a half minutes apart... 3 minutes apart... 2 minutes apart, 15 seconds long... 30 seconds long, etc. There was no pattern to any of them so I assumed that they were Braxton Hicks contractions and just tried to distract myself. Needless to say, it is ridiculously hard to distract yourself from contractions that are that close together. I kept thinking that real contractions that close together are supposed to be more painful and real contractions and supposed to follow a pattern and these didn't. I drank water, trying to get rid of them (since Braxton Hicks are often set off by dehydration). This didn't help. I tried to research on the Internet if this was a pattern that some people have when they go into labor...but I found nothing except a bunch of people complaining that they were having contractions 10-15 minutes apart - nothing like my situation. So I continued my day from 9am to 2pm thinking that I was not in labor even though I was experiencing constant, painful contractions. Finally around 3pm I decided that these were getting too painful to not call the doctor about (Anthony had been saying so too, but I didn't want to go in to the hospital and be told that I was just being silly and I was only having false labor. I had similar false labor on Sunday eveing that went away before I considered calling the dr.). The doctor told me to go ahead and head to the hospital to get checked. That call was made just after 3pm. Anthony headed home and we packed up and drove to the hospital. I was still afraid that they were going to send me home because I felt like my contractions just weren't painful enough to be real active labor. We finally checked into the hospital at about 5:15 or so (we took our time getting there :) ).

When they checked me out I was told that I wasn't going anywhere.... Anthony timed the contractions I had after we checked in because they were finally consistent. They were about three minutes apart at this point.

From there on out labor moved quickly and became more and more painful. Anthony was an amazing source of comfort for me. Letting me hold and squeeze his hand (really, really hard), coaching me through breathing, telling me how good I was doing and how proud he was of me, and massaging my back during transition labor. At one point I managed to open my eyes and looked at his finger. It had turned bright purple because I had been squeezing it soo hard! Poor Anthony!

God blessed me immensely and I was able to endure the whole labor without any pain medications (the doctor encouraged some kind of local shot at the end when the baby is crowning to ease the pain of tearing, etc. This was fine with me because it was not going to bother the baby at this point). There were three selfish things I wanted to happen (or, rather, didn't want to happen) going into labor: I didn't want to be induced, I didn't want a c-section, and I didn't want to take any pain meds if it was at all possible. God made all three things possible! I had no idea what my pain tolerance was so I didn't know if I could do it, but God sustained me through it all and as a result we have a healthy baby boy and I had a minimal recovery.

After pushing for about 10-15 minutes or so, baby Logan joined us at 9:50 pm.

We couldn't have asked for a better experience! God is so good to us! He continues to bless us beyond what we could even think to ask for.

We had great nurses and a great doctor. (My original OB had a stroke a month before my due date and so I started to see another doctor at the practice who ended up delivering Logan. Thank the Lord for two great doctors!).