Sunday, April 02, 2006

Happy Birthday Luke



We were scheduled to go into the Waukesha Memorial hospital on the morning of Thursday, March 30th and Alyssa would be induced. As it turns out we weren’t allowed to come into the hospital until 12:30 pm because they had about 5 - 6 women in labor.

We were taken to our room and settled in for the evening. Alyssa was put on a Pitocin IV, hooked up to a contraction monitor, and a fetal heart monitor. After a few hours Alyssa started to have very minor contractions but nothing of consequence. At 7 pm after no progress in contractions or dilation the doctor decide to stop and continue pitocin in the morning so she could get some rest. They applied prostaglandin gel to soften the cervix and planned to do this again at midnight.

However, Alyssa’s body had different plans. She started have contractions on her own at 9:30pm. They became intense very quickly – about a 1 minute long and 2 minutes apart. I will spare you the details but at 1:30am she was only 3 cm dilated and the doctor offered her the option of the epidural. She chose get it since she had been awake for 20 hours and wanted to be rested before having to push. Alyssa felt much better almost immediately after the epidural was administered.

They broke her bag of water to help her body continue to move the delivery process along. Alyssa was able to rest and even sleep for about 3 hours until 5 am. They checked her again and she was 8 cm. At 6 am she was fully dilated at 10 cm and ready to push. Everyone left the room and we had a chance to pray together. A few minutes later room started to fill up with a lot of people and equipment. Alyssa started pushing at 6:25 am.

I helped hold one of her legs and counted 3 sets of 10 as she pushed on every contraction. Everyone was impressed with how strong she pushed and gave her words of encouragement. After 37 minutes she delivered our son, Luke David Krause, at 6:57 am on March 31st.

I cried as tears of joy streamed down my face. The doctors did their checks and within seconds Luke was crying and they placed him on Alyssa’s stomach. In that moment I saw Alyssa became a mother. She held him and had an expression of love I had never seen before. As she cuddled with him, I got to cut the umbilical cord.

He was bigger than I imagined - how could he have been inside Alyssa. Luke was officially 7 lbs 14 oz. and was 19-3/4” long. He has a full head of hair, dark eyebrows, and long eye-lashes. Alyssa first impressions...."I had this love for Luke that was deeper than I imagined. I was relieved and amazed at how healthy he was. I love to love him. I think he is perfect. And I thank God for the great gift of my son.”

As you might imagine we have had a multitude of emotions over the last few days, and it is hard to express them through writing. Strong emotions such as deep love and great joy. But I hope you got a small glipse by reading this.

We have enjoyed and appreciated all the prayers, calls, and visits from friends and family. We hope you can meet Luke soon.


1 comment:

Megatron said...

Now that's a sweetpea if I've ever seen one! He's so beautiful! I'm so happy for you both and I can't wait to meet Luke this summer!
Love you,
Meghan