Well Landon Ross Jenkins finally made his grand enterance into the world on July 31st, 2006, after 13 hours of Labor.
We went in at 6 oclock that morning for me to be induced. It was a slow going proccess at first. They gave me pitocon at 7 am to start the labor, I was already 2 centimeters dilated. The contractions would get going good and so they would turn down the pitocon, only for the contractions to slow down, so at about 12 they decided to leave the pitocon going strong and that finally got the labor really going. At around 2:30 I was in incredible pain and asked for the epidural (Im no hero, I wanted the drugs.)
They called the anethesiologist who took forever to get there, so they gave me some fluids to try and help with the pain, I dont think it did anything for me. The on call nurse, Captain Petosky (Petey) was wonderful. She did not usually help the women in labor, she usually just ran the floor and directed people on what to do, but she said on occasion someone walks through the door who she feels compelled to work with and we just happened to grasp her attention. I am so greatful that she was there she really coached me through the pain, because the anethesiologist took almost 2 hours to get there to give me the epidural. Before the labor the epidural is what scared me the most, but by the time he got there to give it to me I was in so much pain I wanted to kiss the man who gave me the drugs. I did not really even feel anything, except the incredible contractions that were right on top of each other so it made it hard for him to get the needle (tube) all the way into my back so he only got it half way in, but it worked and thats all I cared about.
They came in and broke my water right after that and checked me. I was at about a 6 so they said that it would probably be about another 4 hours, an hour for each centimeter I had left to go. This was at about 6, so they said they would check back in a few hours to see if I should start pushing. Nurse Petey got off at 7, so when she came back into tell me goodbye I told her I was really feeling a lot of pressure and she said that it was just from the epidural and that was the contractions, but that she would send in the new nurse to check on me. About 10-15 minutes later I feeling a lot of pressure and it was really hurting so when the new nurse, Lt. Foster came in I told her I really felt like I had to use the restroom, and she told me that I could not possibly be that far yet, but I kept telling her I really need to push, so she looked down there and saw Landons head and said “Oh my gosh! Yeah you need to push.” So I started pushing, and my mom kept telling me she could she his hair and that there was lots of it, and that he was almost out. Well almost was not good enough for me, I want him to be out! After about 30 minutes of pushing, the delivery doctor came in, Major Quayle. She was wonderful, I had to push two set of 3 ten second pushes and he was out.
I tore about a 2 and a half and she spent a long time sewing me up. She was very thorough. They set Landon on my lap, and he just looked up at me, not making a sound, just staring at me. Noah was able to cut the umbilical cord and cried the whole time. He said he was just so excited when he saw Landons balls because it meant that he really did have a son. When they took Landon to clean him up he started crying, he wanted his mommy back. He scored a 9-9 on his Apgar score and was very healthy. He weighed 8pnds 9.6 ounces and was born at 8:09 PM. Noah got to give him his first bath and then they measured him. He was a whopping 22 inches and everyone there said they had never worked on delivering a baby that long. It was a very wonderful delivery experience and all the people involved made it a true joy.
We got the name Landon from a book. My favorite book and movie as a teenager was A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks and one of the first movies Noah and I saw together when we were dating was A Walk to Remember. I remember us both saying then that if we got married we wanted to name our first baby boy Landon. So of course when we found out we were having a boy his name was automatically going to be named Landon. Ross is Noah’s middle name (after Betsy Ross, the lady who sewed the first American Flag). Noah didn’t want to have a Junior but he did want to use his middle name in one of our kids names. We weren’t sold on Landon’s middle name being Ross at first. We had the middle name of Carter for him but it just didn’t feel right, eventually we changed his middle name to Ross after Noah. I am obsessed with the television show FRIENDS and people have asked us if its after Ross from that, but its not. Landon Ross came together as our little guys name fairly early, which worked out great since Noah and I were apart for my whole pregnancy (he was at boot camp and basic training for the military).
