Mackenzie Rae Jackson

Mackenzie Rae Jackson was born on July 3rd at 7:29 pm. She weighed 8 pounds and was 20.5 inches long.

Labor lasted about 15 hours. I woke up with bad back pains around 4 am, jumped in the shower and then told Rob that he'd better call work and tell them he wasn't coming in. I got my bag and Mackenzie's bag ready, cleaned up the house a little bit so Zeus wouldn't get into anything and we left for the hospital. We got into labor and delivery and they hooked me up to the monitors. The contractions were about 5 minutes apart and I was about 3cm dilated. They told us to go walk around and get breakfast and come back in two hours or if my water broke come back right away. We went back around 9:30, they put me back on the monitors and the contractions were still only about 4 minutes apart, but getting stronger. They told us to go walk around some more and come back after we got the admission papers done and figured out which room I would be staying in. By the time we got done with that and got back to L&D I was really starting to get uncomfortable. They put me on the monitors again and then I went to get into the birthing tub. Sitting in the tub was pretty relaxing and it did help with some of the pain, but my back was hurting so bad that I felt better when I was up and moving around. I got out of the tub and went back to the delivery room where I paced and rocked until the contractions got too bad for me to stand through. I laid down and they put me back on the monitors. I could not get comfortable at all, I was ready for it to be over! I was about 6 cm dilated when I couldn't take it anymore and finally decided to get the epidural. I asked for the epidural around 2 and had to wait an hour for blood test results to come back. I was finally able to get the epidural around 3, I was so relieved! The epidural took away the pain, but it didn't take away the pressure, which was fine with me because my back didn't hurt anymore so I could concentrate more on breathing through the contractions. By 5 I was about 8 cm dilated and my water finally broke during a contraction and things started moving a lot faster after that. The midwife told me I could start pushing whenever I felt the urge. Sometime between 6 and 7 I was finally 10 cm dilated and ready to push with each contraction. However, I wasn't able to time my pushing with the contractions because of the epidural so they had to turn it off, which was fine with me because that's what I had wanted from the start, even though I was in a lot of pain and was crying for them to turn it back on at the time, I'm happy I was at least able to have something go my way through delivery. The back pain came back and I was so exhausted that I was having a difficult time pushing so I decided to turn around to face the head of the bed to take the pressure off of my back. I pushed for about an hour or so and Mackenzie Rae Jackson was finally born at 7:29 pm!

On Friday morning a pediatrician from Ramstein came in to tell me that Mackenzie's white blood cell count came back slightly elevated and they were going to send her over to the NICU at Landstuhl to do some more tests because they were not able to give her antibiotics at St. Johannis if she had needed them. I called Rob to tell him what was going on and he rushed back to the hospital as fast as he could. Around 3 the ambulance came to pick up Mackenzie and I. We got over to the NICU and they hooked Mackenzie up to all the monitors and did a bunch of blood tests. All of which came back normal except her billirubin levels were elevated which is nothing serious. They kept her for monitoring until 9 and sent us over to the pediatric unit so I could stay with her overnight. The next morning they did a couple more tests and when those all came back normal we were able to finally go home!

Here are some pictures of Mackenzie's first week!