Hadley Gene Castillo: The Birth Story

As of two weeks before my due date, Alex was still on the boat out at sea. We'd been pushing as much as possible to get permission to have him flown off early to come home. They'd planned on sending him home on the 25th, but we were still worried about that. That Sunday night (the 20th) they were going back and forth about getting him on the COD off the boat the next day. They took him off the flight that night around 9 PM (cue very angry Alex) so I sent him to bed since he was just mad. He woke up the next morning to awesome news: he was on the flight and had to be ready in 45 minutes! So they flew him off to Guam, where he spent the night and then flew back to Tokyo on Tuesday morning! YAY!


On Friday September 25, 2015 I had my  39 week appointment and a whole lot of nothing was moving. Except my blood pressure. Womp womp. Though it had been normal the whole pregnancy, it spiked that day. I wasn't having any of the typical symptoms of pre-eclampsia, so my nurse was okay to let me keep going on my own. That evening, Alex and I walked through the rain to get some spicy curry from an Indian restaurant nearby. We were about done with dinner and had an out of nowhere super strong contraction and POP! So we walked home, got ready, and headed to the hospital! My contractions were pretty strong and regular on the way there but completely stalled when we arrived.
Long story short: I ended up developing preeclampsia and, though they let me try to progress on my own for about an hour, due to the concern over my blood pressure and the fact that my water had already broken, I had to be given pitocin to speed things along, which they kept upping every 30 minutes or so. I toughed it out for a few hours as long as I could, but about 1AM I realized that I was so exhausted that when it came time to have her, I wouldn't have the energy or strength to get her out. Thank goodness for that epidural though! We both were able to get about an hour and a half of rest, when they came in and woke me up and said "okay! It's time to have this baby!" (I'll spare you my response haha) they had to delay (there were 4 other women there with me that night, and all of them ended up needing emergency c-sections and they were super short staffed.) So they amped up the pitocin to get my contractions really strong (which thankfully! I could still feel the contractions, but they weren't excruciating anymore, so they let me dictate pushing, which is something I really wanted to do.) Alex's motivation for me towards the end was: "If you get her out in x number of minutes, you'll have under 12 hours of labor!" Don't ask me why, but that really worked for me and at 554 AM  on Saturday, September 26, 2015 she was born!

19 2/3 inches, 6 pounds 10 ounces, blueish eyes, and TONS of brown hair!

First family photo!

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We spent about 2.5 days after her birth in the hospital (bored out of our minds!) We were ready to go home that Saturday, but as first time parents they make you stay for at least 48 hours after birth, but discharge took forever and they had to do a few extra bilirubin tests on Hadley. Then we got to come home! 

We're doing excellent and my healing process has been pretty quick and easy (thank goodness for that!) 

That's enough posting for one day, more pictures to come!!