When we arrived at the hospital that Sunday morning, I was dilated to a 2…just like when we arrived for Cooper.  I was so relieved to learn that it was not too late to get an Epidural…yay!!  So we got comfy in the most luxurious hospital room I had ever been in.  It was huge!  The bathroom had a massive tub, and was the size of our bedroom at home.  It had a huge bed for Cory to sleep on, where he didn’t have to battle with the bars stabbing him in the back.  We were ready to get the show on the road!

Everything looked good.  I got the Epidural, thank God, and they started me on Pitocin to get things going.  My parents, and Aaron and Berit started heading our way from Iowa, and Dave and Ginny headed back from the Lake.  Soon we would meet our little Crosby!  In my head we had only a few hours until that awesome moment.  The Pitocin would do what it does, and the Epidural would keep me comfortable, the Dr. would check me in a few hours and she would tell me it was time to push.  25 minutes later we would have our beautiful boy in our arms.  Man, that would have been awesome!  I guess it was not supposed to happen that way again.

It had never even entered my brain for one second that I might have to have a C-Section.  Labor with Cooper was long, a few days of  horrible contractions, but overall, not bad.  It is not like I am a small woman, with small hips.  I have no health concerns, and neither did our baby that we knew of.  I had done this before, and with all of the stories you hear about the second being so much quicker, I practically thought he would fly out on his own while I was driving to work or something.

As the hours went by, things were seemingly moving right along.  I was getting pumped full of Pitocin, I was comfortable, I was progressing.  Morning turned into afternoon, and afternoon into evening.  Everyone arrived, and waited…and waited.   I truly thought that things were just fine, and when the Dr. checked me at about 5pm, I was finally dialated to 9 cm.  The time was almost here!!  As everyone waited patiently, the nurse (whom I wasn’t too fond of by the way) said that she thought Crosby was turned.  The Dr. checked, and sure enough the little bugger was facing to one side with his shoulders up and down.  So they had me change my position in bed, moved me all around, on my knees and elbows, on my side…he wouldn’t move.  A few weeks before I had watched “A Baby Story” on TLC, and a woman had the same problem and the Dr’s were able to manipulate her baby to move from the outside.  It looked painful, but worked.  So even with this news, I was completely and blissfully optimistic.

When I asked the Dr if she could just move the baby from the outside, the news was not at all what I had expected.  Evidently that could not be done unless I was dialated to a 10.   Because it seemed that I had stalled out at 9, they couldn’t do it.  She gave me the option of going into a C-Section, or waiting one hour to see if I got to a 10 on my own.  Crosby’s head was down, engaged, and had been there for quite awhile.  The massive amount of Pitocin I had made her worry that my Uterus was working too hard and I could run the risk of having extensive bleeding.  I seriously couldn’t even believe what I was hearing.  How was that even possible?  This was my second kid, and the first was so easy….this couldn’t be happening.

Cory had my mom come into the room.  She had experienced this, and he thought that she would be able to comfort me better.  I don’t know that anything could have comforted me at that time.  I was completely freaked out.  Even typing this right now there are tears welling up in my eyes.  I had never had surgery in my life.  I was so mad.  So mad that I was not going to have the same beautiful experience that I had had with Cooper.  Mad that I was going to have a much harder recovery.  A scar.  A cut through my abdominal muscles – as if it wasn’t hard enough to get even a few muscles back after Cooper, now they would be cut.  To think that I would have to be sitting in an operating room, with a sheet up, and a bunch of strangers looking inside my body.  Having everyone in the room see my baby before me, hold my baby before me.  That I would not be able to have the same connection with my son as I had previously with Cooper.  I was devastated.  I still am I guess.

There was no choice.  The hour came and went and I was not at a 10.  There was no alternative, and things moved so fast the second that realization came about.  People flocked in.  It was like I had lost all control.  Cory suited up.  He told the crew waiting in the lounge what was happening and I was prepped for surgery.  I was moved onto a different bed, brought to a pre-op room to have sheets put on me, and start the proper drugs for the procedure.  It was so cold.  I couldn’t stop my teeth and jaw from chattering.  I don’t know if I was actually cold, or if it was the cold drugs pumping through me, or straight up fear.  Either way, it was uncontrollable.  I was wheeled into the operating room, where a team of people I had never seen before stood in front of trays of cold steel instruments that they were going to use to cut me open.

I remember Cory standing next to me.  Telling me I was going to be ok.  Without his words, his hand holding mine, I honestly think I might have lost it.  I was crying, with tears pooling in my eyes as I laid there.  A large blue sheet in front of me with blood splatters on it.  I thought I was going to throw up, so they gave me anti-nausea medicine.  It seemed like forever, I was laying there just waiting for the moment that I would hear Crosby cry and make every minute of this hell worth it.

And then it happened….I felt the weight of my baby leave my body.  He was finally out.  They rushed him over to the side to clear his lungs.  There was the fear of the Merconium still, so they had to act quickly.  Cory went over to him immediately.  And then I heard him cry.  My baby was ok, he was finally here!  I wish that I could say that from that moment on, the previous few hours just washed away, but they didn’t.  They still haven’t.  I know that someday my beautiful boy Crosby will read this, and I want him to know one thing…it was worth every second!  I will never forget how he came into the world.  I know I am not the only woman on this planet who had to have an emergency C-Section.  I realize that many women have had it WAY worse than I.  I am probably one of the most stubborn people I know.  I had a plan, and this was not in it.  But at the end of it all, when I look past the events of that day and night, there is one thing that will stay with me forever…I gave birth to a gorgeous little human being named Crosby, who made me and our family complete.  It was worth every second!