Birthin Baby

What you've been waiting for, right? The details. Well here you go. For those amongst you who are squeamish or whatever, skip this one.

Friday Morning dawned with a phone call from the hospital saying that they were all full and we'd need to call back at 8 to see if we could come in. The rest of the day pretty much followed this pattern. Finally, after a day of wating, we went out to dinner with Mom and Kelly. And then they called us in. We finshed dinner and got to the hospital around 10 PM.

They evaluated me and decided some cervix ripening was in order. So they gave me some meds and we settled in for the night. “Get some sleep,” they told me. This was a bit hard to do with the blood pressure cuff that automatically did a boa-constrictor on my arm every 15 minutes. They did another dose of the meds around 3 AM as well.

They must've worked because at 7 AM I had my first real labor contraction … with a “pop” – broken water. Kelly arrived on the scene shortly after this to witness the birth of her niece and spell my primary labor coach and add some sisterly love to the process.

For the next 5 hours, I labored on without meds, having fairly irregular contractions that were increasing in intensity somewhat. By noon, based on the availability of the anesthesiologist and the intensity of my pain, I opted for an epidural. Excellent choice, I must say.We kept on laboring and making some progress, but not enough. So they started a pitocin drip around 3 PM. This produced some heavier contractions, but didn't seem to do much progression-wise. So they kept upping the dosage over the next few hours. Finally I started getting long, regular contractions and making progress. It was probably 8 PM before this happened.

Actually, the contractions got so bad that I was feeling them through my epidural, but progress was being made. Meanwhile, I had other progress in the form of a rising temperature and suspected infection from my waters being broken for over 12 hours. Also, little one would be good and active in one spot, but if I rolled to my other side, she'd stop getting her accelerations.

Then, the contractions that were still being felt through my epidural got so bad that I thought I was going to throw up and I started shaking voilently. I think it all freaked us out a little. They turned up my epidural and the shakes stopped and I could finally start pushing since we'd reached 10 cm. It was sometime around this time that they said my temp was over 102.

I pushed for over an hour, but at the end of the hour, we weren't much further than we'd been at the beginning of it. To make things a bit more dire, little one wasn't reacting very well and my temp wasn't going down. So right about 4 AM, off to the ER we went. I was a bit upset, but also a bit glad to see the end in site.

She was born at 4:20 AM and, as planne, auntie Kelly got to accompany her to the nursery. What we hadn't planned was that she ended up in the level 2 nursery. She had low oxygen levels and they were concerned that she had the same infection I had.

After they stitched me up, Matt and I made our way to recover and then he went to switch places with Kelly. She and he came back and I was told that she likely wou ld not be rooming in with us and would have to spend the next two days in the NICU. I was pretty upset, but so out of it from the drugs and the tiredness that I couldn't even articulate my feelings in my head or outloud, so I just went with it. I hadn't even really seen her yet, but they said that I could at least stop by the NICU and see her before I went to the room.

Kelly stayed with me for the duration of recovery and then they wheeled me to the NICU to see her. Just as we got there, they had made the decision to let her come to the room with us. Her initial blood screens had come back looking good and the oxygen hood they had her under had done its magic and she had good color. They credit Matt with getting her out of there so fast, talking to her and holding her hand.

And finally, around 6 AM, the three of us landed in our new home away from home, extremely happy, tired and thankful.