Claire Elise Esser’s Baby Story

It was a brisk fall morning, Saturday October 21st when we took the test that changed our lives. Actually, I took the test, and Matt woke up to my reaction… “oh my gosh!!”. We were pregnant. It was 6 am, but it didn’t matter, we were too excited to go back to sleep and we wanted to tell the whole world but we also wanted to confirm the results. We talked about how our lives were going to change, and how we couldn’t wait to see if we would have a boy or a girl. We talked about who to tell first, and how Christmas would seem different this year. We talked and talked… and then realized – we have to wait 9 months?! This is going to take forever. Little did we know that 9 months of pregnancy is actually 40 weeks… do the math. That’s almost 10 months. Almost 10 months until we would meet our little Claire.

I made a doctor’s appointment first thing Monday morning, and scheduled it for Wednesday. I knew that if I was leaving work in the middle of the day, people would wonder why, so I did the next best thing and just called in sick to work. Wednesday I went to the doctor and the first thing she said when she walked in to the exam room was “Congratulations”. You think that the shock of that news would be enough for one day, but next thing I knew nurses were handing me samples of baby formula, coupons, a free diaper bag, prescriptions for prenatal vitamins, appointment cards, and pamphlets on baby development. I was shoved out the door of the office in to the waiting room with all of these materials, and probably a very overwhelmed look on my face. (Note: at my 39 week appointment, I was sitting in the waiting room when I witnessed a lady and her husband in the same manner. Shoved out office door, hands full of baby materials, look of shock… I had to smile to myself and appreciate how long it took for me to get to 39 weeks).

Next appointment was set for the second week of November to have an ultrasound and confirm the baby’s due date.

I went home and let it all soak in. Next thing to do was tell our families. We agreed not to tell our coworkers or other friends, until I was a little further along, but we definitely had to tell our families.

The next day, Thursday October 26th, my mom and Jennifer were coming over for a little early birthday dinner celebration for me. My birthday was Saturday the 29th but they were going to be out of town, so they wanted to stop by with presents. I made some jambalaya and as we sat and ate dinner, Matt waited patiently for me to get up the nerve to tell them our news. I think he even pinched my leg under the table a few times! I was so nervous – I don’t know why! So we finished dinner, and I opened my gifts. Then as I thanked them for my presents, I told them I have a present for them…I am pregnant! I never saw my mom move so fast. She jumped up from the table and ran around to hug us. I think Jennifer was frozen with shock, but my mom was moving back and forth between Matt and I giving us hugs and saying how happy she was. Jenn and Mom were crying, I was crying, Matt probably thought “oh geez!” but we’re girls and we can’t help it. Mom and Jenn left, and the phone rang. It was Matt’s Grandma Scotty from Oklahoma, calling to wish me a happy Birthday. Well, since we had her on the phone, Matt decided to tell her the news and boy was she excited! Her first Great Grandchild! That phone call ended, and since we couldn’t let news spread around Bartlesville, Oklahoma without officially telling Rick and Vicki (Matt’s parents) they were the next to get a phone call. Of course, they were very excited too. That Saturday, Matt and I met my dad and his wife at a restaurant (again – for my birthday) and broke the news to them.

We made a point to take “progress pics” throughout the pregnancy. I wanted to be able to remember my pre-baby body before it wasn’t here anymore!

I left work early on Thursday November 16th to meet Matt at home before we went to Dr. Bartley’s office for our ultrasound. This is where we met Fava, our friendly foreign ultrasound tech who eventually would take all of our ultrasounds. We went in not knowing, and came out with a due date of July 4th! I was 7 weeks and 1 day along.

Time went by slow at first. Thanksgiving came and went. We worked on projects around the new house – finishing the basement, painting the master bedroom and bathroom. Then we went to Arkansas for Mark’s wedding, and I thought to myself – this baby is getting to go a lot of places even before it’s born! Matt’s parents visited for Christmas and we knew that this was going to be the last pre-kid Christmas but we couldn’t stop talking about how cool it was going to be to start playing Santa Claus, and sneaking around on Christmas Eve!

Matt took a huge leap of faith and quit his job the second week of December. We felt like it was time to start our own business full time, and God had been weighing this on our hearts for a while now. January 2nd would be the first day for Matt to run Toid LLC full time and that’s a big leap of faith when you know you only have 6 months before your first baby comes!

Finally after the new year, we couldn’t wait anymore and we started to tell more people. Church friends and coworkers all wished us best of luck, and from 14 weeks on, whenever anyone saw us, they were asking about the baby.

Another ultrasound at 22 weeks showed us a happy, healthy baby and we didn’t find out the sex! We had always talked about waiting, but Matt started to think differently the closer we got to the ultrasound. Fortunately I convinced him that we had waited this long, and we could wait a little longer. Matt video taped the ultrasound, and later, would frequently watch the tape, analyzing the baby’s movements to see if he could tell what it was. Lucky for me – he’s a computer nerd, and not a medical tech, because I don’t think he even knew what was baby-parts and what was mommy-parts during most of the video. Ha! He’s pretty funny though.

Matt’s birthday, Easter… the days were starting to go by faster now. The snow finally melted and spring was in the air! I started going for long walks with Sooner after work in the evenings, and it was hard not to count each and every day until July 4th! We started landscaping our back yard and making lists of projects we wanted finished before baby came. Task #1: get air conditioning. That was a no-brainer with a big preggie at home.

We painted the baby’s room, and started wandering around Target and Babies R US on evenings when we didn’t feel like sitting at home. We talked about baby names, and although we had a boy name picked out, we were finding it more difficult to agree on a girls name.

It was getting harder to wait, and so we decided to take one more peak at “Baby” (that’s what we called it, which was better than “it”.) We scheduled a 3-D ultrasound at 30 weeks. It wasn’t cheap, but we were just dying to see how much Baby had grown since 22 weeks, and we wanted to see that cute little face. We went in for our appointment and the ultrasound tech promised not to scan anything below the waist, since we still wanted to be surprised. One funny thing the tech told us was “your baby is pissed!” She kept telling us that Baby had a frown, and looked mad that we were pushing all around on my stomach to try to take pictures of it. This is funny now, because Claire often sleeps with a frown on her face. Baby moved all around, and put on a good show during the scan (maybe because they told me to drink a Dr. Pepper before I came to get Baby moving) and we took lots of pictures and video of a cute little face and wiggling arms and legs. Baby had big cheeks, and big lips, and liked to put it’s foot up by the mouth.

My baby showers were scheduled – one on June 1st before Baby came, and one to be determined after Baby came so we could get more boy or girl things afterwards. The shower was a blast thanks to fantastic party planning by our good friends the Tracy’s and we realized how blessed we were to have so many generous friends and family! When Matt was unloading the car of presents, he commented that I must have robbed a Babies R Us. We didn’t know if Baby’s room was big enough.

As the final weeks approached, we visited the doctor every Monday morning. Matt always came too, which was good because usually the office was overbooked and a quick check turned in to an hours wait. Sometimes the appointments went so late, we would just go out for lunch (to Chili’s!) afterwards and it felt like the whole day was shot. Fortunately, all of our appointments revealed a healthy happy baby and I was doing just fine except for some swelling in my hands and feet. Of course, it was also June so we didn’t think it was too bad.

June 22nd was to be my last day of work, and I couldn’t have been more excited. It felt like that day would never arrive, and when it did it seemed surreal. I loved the girls I worked with, and it was going to be hard not to see them and talk with them everyday. I was anticipating Baby coming on or around my due date (July 4th) so I was making one last list of things to do on my week off, before Baby came. The week of June 25th I cleaned the house, bought lots of food, mowed and trimmed the yard, planted flowers in my pots, planted my vegetable garden, walked Sooner everyday…and went to the doctor everyday. She wanted to see if we could get things moving since she said she was worried about my swelling, and she also knew we would have a big baby. Matt and I weren’t too worried, but we were both anxious to have our baby in our arms!

Weds. June 27th I was 2cm and about 30% effaced, but no contractions. Doctor said she would call and check in with me later to see if anything was happening. Doctor seemed pretty impatient about having this baby, but I was just fine being pregnant a few more days. I was blessed to have an easy pregnancy – no morning sickness, no heartburn, I could sleep fine, and exercise as much as I wanted. I loved being pregnant, and didn’t want it to end too quick.

Well, we didn’t have to wait long. We went to bed on Weds. and I woke up about 1 am (now Thursday morning) with contractions! I slipped out of bed, but didn’t wake Matt because I couldn’t believe this was happening! I decided to fold the laundry in the dryer, take a shower, and try to go back to sleep to see if these were for real. I did all of that but couldn’t fall back to sleep so Matt woke up and we decided we should head to the hospital. I was also a little concerned because I hadn’t felt the baby moving a lot, but I wasn’t really sure since I knew Baby was running out of room in there. We just didn’t want to take any chances, so we got ready to go.

We arrived at the hospital about 5 am and checked in through the ER. They wouldn’t let me walk upstairs, so I was wheeled in a chair to the Maternity Ward. We entered a room and I was told to pee in a cup and change in to a gown. Our nurse came to ask a million questions, and decide if we should be officially admitted for real labor. She asked if there was any chance my water had broken, and I told her yes – I thought maybe some fluid had been leaking but I wasn’t sure. She did a test, and declared it had in fact broken. Well, Matt and I thought this was it. I was 4 cm and 90 % effaced at station -2. The nurse said my water broke, my contractions were 2 and a half minutes a part (but not hurting too bad) and we were going to have a baby!!! They called my doctor and we got hooked up to the monitors. Then…we waited.

Well, shift change happened at 7 am and new nurse came in to say hi. She checked me again and said there was no progress so she would have to call the doctor. Doctor told her to start me on pitocin, but I was a bad patient and refused the drugs. What was the hurry anyway? I don’t think the nurse liked me very much, and I told her it was okay if she had the doctor call my room, I would talk to her about the pitocin. I told her I didn’t want pitocin, that I would rather walk the halls and let things progress on their own.

So all day Thursday – we walked. We watched tv during the times I was hooked to the monitors (about every 1 hour for 20 minutes) and then we walked the rest of the time. Finally late afternoon rolled around, and Doctor came to the hospital to check me. No change. I said – you know, I don’t think my water really broke. I may have never done this before, but I had done a lot of reading, and I just wasn’t having the symptoms I should have with broken water. So after about 4 other nurses and doctors checked, we decided NO – my water had not broken. We had been in the hospital all day and for nothing.

Our choices were to stay and have my water broken (I was already 4 cm but my contractions had spaced to 10 minutes apart) or we could go home. I said go home, but Matt wanted to stay to have this baby. He was growing just a little impatient. In the end, I won. We went home.

Friday morning Doctor wanted to see us in her office again, and we went for another check. Still 4 cm but a little more effaced, and baby was dropping. She said she would eat her hat if we didn’t have the baby that night. She was sure we would be calling in a few hours to tell her to meet us at the hospital. So Matt and I went to Chili’s for our “last meal” and then went home to watch movies and wait. Well, nothing happened. We walked Sooner around the park 5 times, and then went to bed.

7am on Saturday morning we awoke to Doctor calling us on the house phone. She was surprised she never heard from us last night (we were sleeping… duh!) and she was anxious to hear if I had been having contractions. I hadn’t so she said – get up and go walking and she would call back in an hour. As we started lap 3 around the park, Doctor called our cell phone and said we should take showers, bring all of our stuff, and come to the hospital where she was delivering 2 other babies that day, and she would like to check me to see how I was doing. I told Matt – she’ll never let us leave once we get to the hospital. She’s going to break my water and get this baby out.

I was right. We arrived at the hospital on Saturday June 30th at 10:15 (we told her 9:00a and she even called to see where we were… but we had to shower!) As soon as I was in a gown, on the bed, spread eagle, sure enough she said – still no progress but let’s break your water. Sure enough, water broken at 10:45a and now there was really no going back.

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Matt here, I will write the rest of the story because for Colleen the story is such a blur…plus she is holding the baby right now!

So, they broke her water and we knew we were committed. The first thing I did as a father to be was…leave to go get food while I knew I still had time! It took me two trips to bring everything in from the car which I moved around to the normal entrance of the hospital. This time we remembered bringing a Friends DVD and started watching many episodes. I also took time to order a dinner from the cafeteria at the hospital which turned out to not be very good.

A few hours passed and our nice nurse kept informing us that not much is changing and that our doctor would like to start Colleen on pitocin. Well, we didn’t want to do that so we continued to wait and walk. Unfortunately, by 6pm, nothing was really progressing and after one last call to the doctor, we had an ultimatum: If we didn’t progress in the next 40 minutes, Colleen would start on a “whiff” of pitocin. Well, Colleen got up and was doing squats, pacing the halls, doing lunges, running up and down flights of stairs, sometimes stepping two or three steps at a time! In the end, when the time came, Colleen was still only 6-7cm and 90% effaced. Time for the painful drug pitocin.

The reason Colleen didn’t want to start pitocin was because Colleen would now be forced to stay in bed and be hooked up to a monitor and she was trying to have a natural birth, with as little intervention as possible. Pitocin causes the contractions to be harder and more painful than normal to force things to come out.

Within a couple hours Colleen’s pain had significantly increased but she was handling it like a champ! She still wasn’t on any pain medication and this is where all the childbirth classes came in handy. Soon Jennifer and Colleen’s mom showed up at the hospital and joined us in the room. It was now 10pm.

I was trying to watch “There’s Something About Mary” on TV, but with the contractions happening so frequently and the nurse kept coming in to check on us, it was hard to watch. Eventually things started to quiet down and Colleen wanted it to be just us in the room. Colleen’s mom and Jennifer went to the waiting room while Colleen dealt with the most painful and long contractions yet. It was getting now about time to start pushing and the nurse got the doctor on the phone.

Colleen started pushing about 2:30am and was moving so fast the nurse almost didn’t have time to get the doctor back on the phone to let her know that she REALLY needs to start heading to the hospital because we were going to have a baby soon! The doctor arrived just in time and was ready to catch the baby just as it came out! At 3:06am Claire was born and at first we didn’t know if it was a boy or girl so I had to look and announce it to the room. Colleen was surprised because she thought we were having a boy. (I knew we were having a girl.)

Immediately they placed Claire on Colleen’s stomach and we enjoyed seeing her for the first time and I was allowed to cut the cord. Claire was so strong and was already lifting her head from Colleen’s chest which is amazing for a newborn! After some initial bonding they took her over to the warming table to run some mandatory tests and get her vitals. Everything checked out perfectly and soon we were reuinited with Claire! I went to go get Colleen’s mom and Jennifer out of the waiting room and I have never seen somebody wake up from sleeping so fast. Colleen’s mom jumped out out of the chair and was walking towards the room before I could even tell her what was going on!

Claire weighed 8lbs and 12oz and was 21inches long. We couldn’t be happier.