My baby H--
Two weeks ago your daddy and I sat in a hospital room awed, amazed and exhausted. But you were finally here!! The last fourteen days have gone by so quickly, and after realizing this, I decided that I should record the events of your birthday, before the details are muddied in my memory.
You were late, bordering on very late. The doctor was concerned that your amniotic fluid level was dangerously low and had informed us at our last office visit that she would like to induce at or before the 42 week mark. This was not a happy statement for your daddy and me.
We had been praying for months that you would come into this world without any intervention--no drugs, no methods to make you come more quickly, in God's time, relying on the strength we draw from Him. We continued this prayer through the days leading up to our scheduled induction.
We were to report to labor and delivery at SouthCrest Hospital at 5:30 AM, Tuesday, April 3rd. My parents were already in Tulsa, as they had come to visit over the weekend and had just stayed. Everybody went to bed early on the 2nd, in preparation for an early morning. If only we had known...
At 11:30 PM, after a couple of hours of sleep, I woke up having contractions. They really didn't hurt, but were not to be mistaken for Braxton-Hicks. I was so excited because I just knew that the contractions meant we would not have to have the induction. I laid in bed, watching the clock, for a half an hour. They were coming every four minutes. I woke up your dad and told him. We didn't know if we should head for the hospital or wait. So, I went and woke up my mom and asked her opinion. She suggested that we hang on for another 30 to 45 minutes to see what happened. We did. They continued to come every four minutes.
So, at 1:00 AM, Daddy and I got up and packed up the few things that still needed to go in bags. We loaded the car and headed for the hospital. My parents stayed behind to take care of the puppies and get a little more rest themselves. We continued to time the contractions all the way to the hospital and they were still four minutes apart.
At the hospital, we went straight to labor and delivery. They put us in a room and had me change to a hospital gown. Next, they did all the normal things like take my blood pressure and pulse. Then they hooked me up to a monitor that could hear your heartbeat and detect uterine activity. At this point we saw that the lovely contraction pattern I had been having had fallen apart. They were coming very irregularly--6 minutes, 10 minutes, then 5, then 8. I got scared.
When the nurse returned from calling Dr. Christy, my OB, my fears were confirmed. Dr. Christy had told her that my only two choices were to start the pitocin right away or go home and come back at my scheduled time of 5:30. At this point it was already 2:30. The nurse was very sweet and, knowing how much we wanted to have a natural birth, she offered to stall as long as she could before starting the pitocin, in hopes that the contraction pattern would return. We decided that we would take her up on her offer; we didn't see any point in driving home just to turn around and go back a couple of hours later.
Unfortunately, the contractions never did regroup and at 4:30 AM the nurse started me on the lowest level of pitocin. At 9:00, Dr. Christy arrived and examined me. I was still at 1 cm and very posterior--it felt like she was reaching for my tonsils. Based on this exam, she decided to break my water to try and get things moving along more quickly. They did--momentarily. By 9:30 or 9:45 I was dialated to 5 cm.
However, when she broke my water, there was meconium in the fluid. Because of the dangers associated with this getting into your lungs or causing other stress to you, they put in an internal monitor and pumped clean fluid into me. The internal monitor drastically reduced my ability to move, which was a huge blow to our labor plan to walk, slow dance, or rock on hands and knees during contractions. The fluid that was pumped into me was supposed to come back out, but a lot stayed in. The opinion of the nurse was that your head was too big and was blocking the opening; she also mentioned that if your head was really that big, there was a good possibility you would not be able come vaginally, and I would have to have a C-section.
The contractions I was having during the rest of the morning really were not all that bad. I was able to have conversations in between and it did not take much mental energy or focus to get though them. Sometime around noon our nurse became concerned because the readout of my uterine activity was looking more like the sharp peaks of an EKG than the smooth up and down of contractions. She called Dr. Christy, who drove down to the hospital to take a look. They decided that the internal monitor might have had problems, and removed it. When they went to replace it, the new one bent. Third time is a charm, right? However, the readout didn't look much better with the new monitor, even though nothing felt like it had changed to me through this whole ordeal. Their response was to increase the pitocin level in an attempt to "force" my body into a normal pattern.
For the next couple of hours I had hard contractions for about a minute at a time. There was about a minute of respite between them, but my uterus was never fully relaxing--it was always somewhat contracted. To cope, I had gone into myself, only barely aware of what was going on in the room around me. I know that both my mom and daddy's mom, plus Erika and Bobbi kept coming and going to check on me and your daddy, but I have no concept of how long or how often they were there.
Sometime around 3:00 or 3:30, I had a lucid moment when the nurse came in to check on me. I was aware enough to ask her what the plan was at that point. Her response was that all we could really do was wait for Dr. Christy to finish her office hours for the day and come to examine me. Since I was still at 5 cm and very posterior, Dr. Christy would have to determine whether to let me continue to labor or to do a C-section. Somehow, I had the congnitive ability to determine that, in the best case scenario, Dr. Christy would finish seeing patients at the office at 5:00 and then would still have to fight through rush hour traffic to get to the hospital. I was also "with it" enough to realize that it was highly unlikely that she would be there any time before 6:00. I asked the nurse what my options for pain management were, because I knew that I would not be able to continue doing the exact same thing for the next 2-and-a-half to 3 hours. I was at my breaking point. She said that I could have Stadol (a narcotic) in my IV--which I was very opposed to--or I could have a epidural, even though I had not signed up for it ahead of time. I opted to have the epidural; somewhere in the back of my mind I remember coming to the realization that it was my last chance at a vaginal birth. I'm still not sure why, but my decision to have the epidural made your daddy cry--he actually had to leave the room for a while. Erika stayed with me.
By the time the anesthesiologist got to my room, explained the procedure, and administered the drugs, it was almost 5:00 PM. Within fifteen minutes I had progressed from 5 cm to 7 cm, and was much more anterior. A little after 6:00, Dr. Christy arrived and examined me; she determined that I was fully complete. She and the nurse continued to discuss whether I would be able to deliver you vaginally, or if you would require a C-section. Dr. Christy asked me to push, just to see how things looked. My determination kicked in--I did not want to have surgery; I did not want major recovery time to take away my precious time with you. That was that.
I pushed hard enough that you started to come out. Dr. Christy and the nurse scrambled to get all the appropriate people in the room and to get scrubbed up. Four sets of three 10-count pushes later you were here. 6:48 PM. And, you were a boy! Honestly, this caught me off guard for just a moment, because we were speculating that you were a girl. But it didn't matter. You were healthy and I didn't have to be cut on.
As the after-birth things were taken care of, we discovered that my epidural had somehow "taken" better on the left side than on the right. I needed a little lidocain to endure the stitch-up process. Then they cleaned me up. I looked like I had just come from a war zone. Who knew birth was so messy?
Your daddy went to the waiting room to tell everybody. They tell me that his face was priceless, but nobody was ready with their camera when he came through the door.
In the weeks leading up to that day, we had been telling you how many people were waiting for you; how many people already loved you and wanted to meet you. That day so many of them were there all day to support Daddy and me--my parents, daddy's parents, Erika (and Liam), and Bobbi. We had several visitors the next couple of days as well. Baby H, you don't know yet how blessed we are. I hope someday you'll have some concept of this.
Even as I sit here and tear up, I'm both ecstatic and disappointed. I am so thrilled to be your mommy!!! To get to love you, teach you, and watch you grow up is my pleasure. Especially since we waited so long for you--longer than the 42 weeks of pregnancy, but that's a different story. Honestly, I'm still mourning for the labor and delivery that I wanted to have. But I know that YOU are the most important thing, and you are healthy and perfect and I would do it all over again to have you.
I love you so much, I can't stand it. I love you more than you can ever know. I think I love you more than I know right now.
--Mommy
Two weeks ago your daddy and I sat in a hospital room awed, amazed and exhausted. But you were finally here!! The last fourteen days have gone by so quickly, and after realizing this, I decided that I should record the events of your birthday, before the details are muddied in my memory.
You were late, bordering on very late. The doctor was concerned that your amniotic fluid level was dangerously low and had informed us at our last office visit that she would like to induce at or before the 42 week mark. This was not a happy statement for your daddy and me.
We had been praying for months that you would come into this world without any intervention--no drugs, no methods to make you come more quickly, in God's time, relying on the strength we draw from Him. We continued this prayer through the days leading up to our scheduled induction.
We were to report to labor and delivery at SouthCrest Hospital at 5:30 AM, Tuesday, April 3rd. My parents were already in Tulsa, as they had come to visit over the weekend and had just stayed. Everybody went to bed early on the 2nd, in preparation for an early morning. If only we had known...
At 11:30 PM, after a couple of hours of sleep, I woke up having contractions. They really didn't hurt, but were not to be mistaken for Braxton-Hicks. I was so excited because I just knew that the contractions meant we would not have to have the induction. I laid in bed, watching the clock, for a half an hour. They were coming every four minutes. I woke up your dad and told him. We didn't know if we should head for the hospital or wait. So, I went and woke up my mom and asked her opinion. She suggested that we hang on for another 30 to 45 minutes to see what happened. We did. They continued to come every four minutes.
So, at 1:00 AM, Daddy and I got up and packed up the few things that still needed to go in bags. We loaded the car and headed for the hospital. My parents stayed behind to take care of the puppies and get a little more rest themselves. We continued to time the contractions all the way to the hospital and they were still four minutes apart.
At the hospital, we went straight to labor and delivery. They put us in a room and had me change to a hospital gown. Next, they did all the normal things like take my blood pressure and pulse. Then they hooked me up to a monitor that could hear your heartbeat and detect uterine activity. At this point we saw that the lovely contraction pattern I had been having had fallen apart. They were coming very irregularly--6 minutes, 10 minutes, then 5, then 8. I got scared.
When the nurse returned from calling Dr. Christy, my OB, my fears were confirmed. Dr. Christy had told her that my only two choices were to start the pitocin right away or go home and come back at my scheduled time of 5:30. At this point it was already 2:30. The nurse was very sweet and, knowing how much we wanted to have a natural birth, she offered to stall as long as she could before starting the pitocin, in hopes that the contraction pattern would return. We decided that we would take her up on her offer; we didn't see any point in driving home just to turn around and go back a couple of hours later.
Unfortunately, the contractions never did regroup and at 4:30 AM the nurse started me on the lowest level of pitocin. At 9:00, Dr. Christy arrived and examined me. I was still at 1 cm and very posterior--it felt like she was reaching for my tonsils. Based on this exam, she decided to break my water to try and get things moving along more quickly. They did--momentarily. By 9:30 or 9:45 I was dialated to 5 cm.
However, when she broke my water, there was meconium in the fluid. Because of the dangers associated with this getting into your lungs or causing other stress to you, they put in an internal monitor and pumped clean fluid into me. The internal monitor drastically reduced my ability to move, which was a huge blow to our labor plan to walk, slow dance, or rock on hands and knees during contractions. The fluid that was pumped into me was supposed to come back out, but a lot stayed in. The opinion of the nurse was that your head was too big and was blocking the opening; she also mentioned that if your head was really that big, there was a good possibility you would not be able come vaginally, and I would have to have a C-section.
The contractions I was having during the rest of the morning really were not all that bad. I was able to have conversations in between and it did not take much mental energy or focus to get though them. Sometime around noon our nurse became concerned because the readout of my uterine activity was looking more like the sharp peaks of an EKG than the smooth up and down of contractions. She called Dr. Christy, who drove down to the hospital to take a look. They decided that the internal monitor might have had problems, and removed it. When they went to replace it, the new one bent. Third time is a charm, right? However, the readout didn't look much better with the new monitor, even though nothing felt like it had changed to me through this whole ordeal. Their response was to increase the pitocin level in an attempt to "force" my body into a normal pattern.
For the next couple of hours I had hard contractions for about a minute at a time. There was about a minute of respite between them, but my uterus was never fully relaxing--it was always somewhat contracted. To cope, I had gone into myself, only barely aware of what was going on in the room around me. I know that both my mom and daddy's mom, plus Erika and Bobbi kept coming and going to check on me and your daddy, but I have no concept of how long or how often they were there.
Sometime around 3:00 or 3:30, I had a lucid moment when the nurse came in to check on me. I was aware enough to ask her what the plan was at that point. Her response was that all we could really do was wait for Dr. Christy to finish her office hours for the day and come to examine me. Since I was still at 5 cm and very posterior, Dr. Christy would have to determine whether to let me continue to labor or to do a C-section. Somehow, I had the congnitive ability to determine that, in the best case scenario, Dr. Christy would finish seeing patients at the office at 5:00 and then would still have to fight through rush hour traffic to get to the hospital. I was also "with it" enough to realize that it was highly unlikely that she would be there any time before 6:00. I asked the nurse what my options for pain management were, because I knew that I would not be able to continue doing the exact same thing for the next 2-and-a-half to 3 hours. I was at my breaking point. She said that I could have Stadol (a narcotic) in my IV--which I was very opposed to--or I could have a epidural, even though I had not signed up for it ahead of time. I opted to have the epidural; somewhere in the back of my mind I remember coming to the realization that it was my last chance at a vaginal birth. I'm still not sure why, but my decision to have the epidural made your daddy cry--he actually had to leave the room for a while. Erika stayed with me.
By the time the anesthesiologist got to my room, explained the procedure, and administered the drugs, it was almost 5:00 PM. Within fifteen minutes I had progressed from 5 cm to 7 cm, and was much more anterior. A little after 6:00, Dr. Christy arrived and examined me; she determined that I was fully complete. She and the nurse continued to discuss whether I would be able to deliver you vaginally, or if you would require a C-section. Dr. Christy asked me to push, just to see how things looked. My determination kicked in--I did not want to have surgery; I did not want major recovery time to take away my precious time with you. That was that.
I pushed hard enough that you started to come out. Dr. Christy and the nurse scrambled to get all the appropriate people in the room and to get scrubbed up. Four sets of three 10-count pushes later you were here. 6:48 PM. And, you were a boy! Honestly, this caught me off guard for just a moment, because we were speculating that you were a girl. But it didn't matter. You were healthy and I didn't have to be cut on.
As the after-birth things were taken care of, we discovered that my epidural had somehow "taken" better on the left side than on the right. I needed a little lidocain to endure the stitch-up process. Then they cleaned me up. I looked like I had just come from a war zone. Who knew birth was so messy?
Your daddy went to the waiting room to tell everybody. They tell me that his face was priceless, but nobody was ready with their camera when he came through the door.
In the weeks leading up to that day, we had been telling you how many people were waiting for you; how many people already loved you and wanted to meet you. That day so many of them were there all day to support Daddy and me--my parents, daddy's parents, Erika (and Liam), and Bobbi. We had several visitors the next couple of days as well. Baby H, you don't know yet how blessed we are. I hope someday you'll have some concept of this.
Even as I sit here and tear up, I'm both ecstatic and disappointed. I am so thrilled to be your mommy!!! To get to love you, teach you, and watch you grow up is my pleasure. Especially since we waited so long for you--longer than the 42 weeks of pregnancy, but that's a different story. Honestly, I'm still mourning for the labor and delivery that I wanted to have. But I know that YOU are the most important thing, and you are healthy and perfect and I would do it all over again to have you.
I love you so much, I can't stand it. I love you more than you can ever know. I think I love you more than I know right now.
--Mommy
