Kellen Walker is here!

Kellen Walker Foley was born on April 24, 2010 at 6:29pm. He weighed 8lbs, 2oz and was 20 1/4 inches long.

Kellen and his daddy

Mommy & Kellen

Family of 3!

Heading home!

Kellen's Birth Story

My last day of work was Friday, April 23. I had originally scheduled my last day for Wednesdsay, April 21 but we had state testing that week and I needed to be there until Friday. All day, I had horrible back pain. I had this feeling that labor would be starting soon. Josh and I went out for Mexican that night. When we got home, I was exhausted and went to bed early.

On the morning of April 24, I woke up around 5am and had some strange pains below my belly button. I had experienced Braxton Hicks contractions since around Week 20 in my pregnancy. These pains I was experiencing were not BH. They felt like severe gas pains. They weren’t too bad, as I was able to fall back asleep. After being woken up a few times by these pains, I decided to wake Josh up around 6am and told him I thought I was having contractions. His response was, “Really? Really?!” The contractions were getting closer and closer together. We decided to start timing them around 6:30am. They were coming about 5-7 minutes apart and were around a minute or so in duration. They started getting even more inconsistent, going to 9 minutes apart. I decided to call my doctor just to get his opinion. He told me it did sound like I was in early labor but he wanted me to wait it out until the contractions were consistently 5 minutes apart.

I decided to get up and take a shower, just in case this was the real thing. I continued to get contractions while showering—yelling out to Josh each time so he would be able to time them. After getting out of the shower, I was about to dry my hair and didn’t feel too great. This was around 9:45am. I decided to lay down for a minute. As soon as I got to the bed, I experienced a horrible contraction. It was so painful I started crying. I called for Josh and as soon as I did that, I thought I felt Kellen kick. I was wrong. Immediately after that, I felt a trickle of fluid coming out. I told Josh I thought my water had broken. Then the flood gate opened and a huge gush of fluid came out. Josh grabbed a towel and put it under me. Meanwhile, I was still crying from the intense pain of the contraction, but started laughing uncontrollably because the gushing of fluid felt so strange. Every time I would laugh, more and more fluid would come out. Josh began to laugh as well because he wasn’t sure what to do with a wife who was in extreme pain but was laughing! After I gathered my composure, I called my doctor back and told him that my water had broken and it was a bit bloody. He told me to come on in to the hospital. I decided to jump back in the shower because of the bloody show and ruptured membranes.

After doing that and taking care of the dog, we left the house and headed for the hospital. On the way, I realized I was starving and we decided to run through McDonald’s since I wasn’t going to be able to have any food in the hospital. We pulled through the drive-thru at 10:58am. The employee told us that they didn’t serve lunch until 11:00am. Josh said, “So, we have to wait 2 minutes then?” The employee told us that there was a car behind us that may want breakfast, so to pull around and come back through the drive-thru. Ridiculous, but we did it. When we got back up to the speaker, the employee said, “I’m sorry, we’re still serving breakfast.” Josh said, “The hell with it, we’re going to Wendy’s!” I couldn’t stop laughing. I was in labor and we were arguing with the people at McDonald’s! We ran through Wendy’s and headed to the hospital. Because of the commotion at McDonald’s, my mom and sister had beaten us there! My mom couldn’t believe how calm I was!

I was admitted to the hospital at 11:30am and we got settled in to our room. The nurse came in and took all of my vitals, put in my IV, and checked my dilation. I was 5-6 cm dilated! She said, “Honey, we’ve got to get you your epidural!” I was experiencing pretty intense contractions that were only 1-2 minutes apart, so I was more than happy to hear the word epidural! The anesthesiologist came up and had the epi in by 1pm. The hardest part of that was sitting still during a really tough contraction. She did a great job and explained everything she was doing, which was nice. Once the epi was in, I went through about 2 or 3 more tough contractions, and then everything was ahhh-mazing! I felt so good! I didn’t even know I was having contractions. The nurse said she would come back and check me in a few hours. She did and I was between 8 and 9 cm dilated. She said it would be a few more hours before I would be fully dilated. She came back an hour later, after I complained of increased pressure, and sure enough, I was complete! It was 5:30pm and it was time to push! My baby boy was going to be here soon!

After an hour of pushing, at 6:29pm, Kellen Walker Foley entered the world. He was crying as soon as he came out and swallowed some amniotic fluid. He had to stay in the nursery for observation that night, in case he needed extra suction from the nurses. After delivery, the doctor repaired my second degree tear and became concerned about my loss of blood. They pumped me full of pitocin and had to give me a shot in my thigh because of this. My blood pressure dropped extremely low for the next 12 hours or so, but began to rise to a normal level once I was able to move around a bit. Overall, my labor lasted 13 ½ hours—not too bad to end up with something so precious and special as my little guy.