Rowen’s Birth Story

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He’s finally here! Rowen Gilbert Seghetti was born on June 25th at 4:08 PM, and came into the world as noisily as possible. After a very eventful and emotional pregnancy, we were happy to finally have him in our arms. Here’s how it happened.

We scheduled his induction due to worries about size since he was measuring about 2 weeks ahead. His stats were in the 90th percentile according to ultrasound measurements. Even though we know those measurements can be off a bit, I always have bigger babies and I was very worried that he would be as big as his older brother (Kaiden was 10 lbs 12 oz at birth, which resulted in a traumatic labor and delivery for both of us). I really wanted a natural labor, but I was just too afraid to risk a large baby which would probably end in a c-section. So I was scheduled to be induced at 39 weeks 3 days.

Arien drove me to the hospital this morning to check in at 8:00 AM. Hunter wanted to be present for the birth as well, and she tagged along. We got settled into a room pretty quickly and the nurses got everything started. By 9:00 AM I had my IV going with a slow pitocin drip. I had my first cervical check at 10:00 AM, and was found to be at 4 cm, 50% effaced and -2 station. If you’re unfamiliar with those terms, it means I was almost halfway dilated but my cervix was still somewhat thick and baby hadn’t dropped down into birthing position yet.

By noon, contractions had started to pick up. They were uncomfortable, but easy to manage. I was contracting every 3 minutes – the nurses even commented that I had the nicest and most regular contractions of any moms on the floor. Rowen’s heart rate was stable, staying between the 120s-140s. Arien and I watched a lot of Parks and Recreation on Netflix to pass the time.

My OB came in at 1:15 PM to check on me. She had ordered my nurse to take things slow because she had to be in the OR at noon and didn’t want me to deliver without her. But at 1:25 PM she broke my water to help things move along a little more quickly. And there was a LOT of water to break. Yikes. She checked me and at that point I had only progressed to about 4.5 cm, with baby still at -2 station. Our Netflix binging resumed.

Hunter had gone home earlier to have lunch and wait for things to get exciting, so we told her she may want to head back to the hospital. She got back at 2:15 PM and contractions were definitely picking up in intensity. At this point there was only about 1.5 minutes from the end of one contraction to the beginning of the next one.

The nurse came back at 3:00 PM to check in, and I asked for her to check my status again since things were getting pretty uncomfortable. I had progressed to 6 cm, 80% effaced and baby had dropped to -1 station. I felt like I might be able to handle the contractions but I worried that I might take a long time to fully dilate because it was difficult to relax (this happened with Aren’s delivery). So I ordered the epidural, thinking I was going to give myself plenty of time to manage the pain before delivery.

Ha. Joke was on me.

At 3:15 the anesthesiologist came in and started the epidural. My contractions were so strong at this point that I was moaning through them and working really hard to breathe the pain away. By 3:45 my epi still hadn’t fully kicked in, but I was feeling a LOT of pressure during contractions. The nurse checked me and I was complete! The epidural was barely even taking the edge off of my pain, and it was time to deliver.

We waited for my OB to arrive, and I was able to relax enough to joke with Arien and Hunter. I made them both guess on Rowen’s weight. Our predictions were:

Hunter: 9lbs 2oz
Arien: 7lbs 14oz
Me: 8 lbs 12oz (I won, haha)

My doc walked in around 4:00 PM and we got things started. I could still feel a lot of pressure from the contractions, but the majority of the pain was dull. With the next contraction I had, I pushed. And that was all it took! I pushed for 10 seconds, took a breath, pushed another 10 seconds to get his head out, took a breath, and pushed once more to fully deliver my baby boy. He was born in just one contraction! Easiest delivery out of all 4 of my children.

At 8 lbs 13 oz and 20 inches long, he was the perfect size. I didn’t tear at all, no stitches needed. He was a little gurgly from being born so quickly, and needed to have some fluid suctioned out of his mouth a few times. And other that being VERY vocal right after he was born, he was absolutely perfect! He let us know how he felt about the whole thing.

He has quite a bit of dark hair on his head, and lots of dark lanugo (hair) all over his shoulders, back, and legs. He’s already breastfeeding like a champ, and sleeping well.

We are so happy to have Rowen to complete our family!

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