Karsten Michael Beckemeier is here!

Last night I was sent to Labor and Delivery by the oncall OB because the baby got overly active for a long period of time. By overly active, I mean frantic, struggling type movements--the likes of which I've never experienced in any of the three pregnancies. They put me on the monitor and it was reassuring to hear his little heart beating away. They noticed that I was contracting some, albeit very irregularly. During these contractions, his heart rate kept decelerating so they decided to keep me overnight. If it was better the rest of the night the plan was to send me home. If not, I'd be induced today. By 5:45 am the contractions had gotten regular to every 6 minutes or so. Then they stalled. My OB came in around 9am and said that his HR was continuing to decelerate so he didn't feel comfortable sending me home. I was only six days away from my due date anyway so he wanted to go ahead and get things going. Pitocin was started at 10am and I was dilated to 2cm and 70% effaced. At 1pm they broke the bag of waters and at 2pm I got an epidural. By this time I was at 4cm, contracting every 2 minutes and in active labor. The epidural took quite a while to help, at least 10 contractions. I rested for a bit and then a little after 5pm I was complete and ready to start pushing. They had me try a test push and quickly made me stop because it was apparent that I wouldn't need to push for long. They paged the doctor and he got there and they got the room set up. I took one push on the next contraction and out came our little 10 lb. 12 oz. bundle of joy. He looks more like a toddler, really! Since he came so quickly, they had to suction out his nose and mouth to help him get all the fluid out. The doctor commented on how his arm was tired from holding him for so long and guessed he be closer to 10 lbs than 9 like the other two were. They put him on my chest and he was soooooo purple. I immediately thought it was heart related but they explained that the cord was indeed wrapped around his neck so it would take a little while for his color to return. Plus, being so big, he's a bit bruised as well. He's the perfect baby so far and seems to be nursing like a pro already. I guess so, he's so big he's probably going to be starving all the time! His APGAR scores were 8 and 9.