Birth Story: Landon James Halvorson

Around 3:00a on Tuesday morning, November 2nd, 2010, I woke up with some cramping pains. Having not had any contractions nor any other signs of labor in previous weeks, I just kind of brushed off the pain as the Braxton Hicks ("practice") contractions and tried walking around the house to ease up the crampiness. Erik woke up but I told him to go back to sleep and I assured him it was nothing.

In the meantime, the pains were coming more regularly every few minutes and I started to finally have my suspicions that something (THE thing) was going on. Then I went into crazy nesting mode, putting things away in the nursery, cleaning up the kitchen, etc - stopping every couple minutes to breathe through a contraction. By 5:30a, I told Erik it was time to call the doctor. They told us to come in to the hospital to be checked - yay! And yet: I hesitated some more. I told Erik I wanted to take a shower and repack my bag - I was pretty sure once we left, we weren't coming back. I think I was hanging out to absorb the last few quiet moments, as well. There was excitement in the air as Erik and I were anticipating what lay ahead and it was just a very special moment. We arrived at the hospital around 6:30a, Erik with coffee in his hands and me with a pillow stuffed in mine as I worked through the contractions.

Sure enough when we were evaluated at the hospital, we found we were in active labor. But when the nurses were checking me, they looked slightly quizzical and a debate started whether they were feeling the baby's head or the baby's butt. Sure enough, it was butt. Poor guy was getting his buns poked at. The doctor came in with the ultrasound machine and confirmed that the little booger was indeed breech. This means somewhere between his Thursday appointment and Tuesday morning, he had a disco party and flipped around. Erik and I thought his movements were odd throughout the weekend, but we did our "kick counts" and everything seemed fine movement-wise. Now we know that - after months of being in the correct position for his grand exit - he was poised for a different entry into the world.

I sat in labor for another hour or two - they tried to slow things down with medicine, but everything was moving along a little too quickly to nip the pain in the butt. I have a whole new respect for women who naturally progress through labor without relief - those several hours of contractions were admittedly very painful and all attempts at breathing/focusing were half-assed in effort as my eyes begun to cross.

By 9am, we were headed to the OR to prep for our c-section and Landon James Halvorson was born at 9:43am. It took a few seconds to hear his cry, but when the sound hit our ears, Erik and I started crying immediately. The doctor's first words were "Wow, what a nice round head you have!" And then it became known to us that the kid had a full head of hair. To our surprise: It was a full head of brown hair. Erik and I both kept commenting that we thought he would be blond. Erik was able to walk over to the clean up area to meet Landon right away and follow him to the nursery. I was able to greet him with a kiss while the nurse nuzzled him against my face and it was of course a ridiculously special moment that was far too brief. I hung out for another 20 minutes or so while they finished up the business on my tummy. I was then reunited with my new little family about an hour later in the recovery room.

So overall things did not go as envisioned originally, but what really does in this life, anyways? He is here and he is healthy... and I believe he is happy. It will be our mission to keep that going for the rest of his life.

All our love...