Wednesday, February 15, 2012

BIRTH day...February 13, 2012

We're back! So thankful tonight to be home and sleeping in my very own bed! I wanted to go ahead and get things posted because chances are that if I wait to post, I won't remember anything! I'll try to get caught up before next week!

Monday was a BIG day around here! We were scheduled to go to the hospital for a 1pm induction. Yea! We had our bags packed, our house picked up, and we were ready to go!

One last belly shot! 40 weeks!

Last family-of-three picture!

Eddie and I left our house and had a picnic in our car before heading to the hospital. I had one last bowl of potato soup before delivery. :) (I've since had THREE bowls of potato soup...must not have just been a pregnancy thing!)

We got checked in and I got into a gown and in my bed. The first thing they needed to do was get my IV started. As I mentioned last week, I had to have some antibiotics before delivery to make sure that Will didn't get pneumonia. This wasn't a concern with James, but it was this time around. Unfortunately, I was dilated 3 centimeters two weeks ago and because last time I hit 5 centimeters and then almost immediately I was fully dilated, my doctor made the decision to induce before I went into labor on my own. Well...the first step in getting that process started was the IV...and the IV didn't go so well. My nurse tried three separate times to get it started and wasn't successful. She finally called in someone else to try it. That nurse took two times to get it in. Five separate IV sticks is NO fun. It took at least forty-five minutes just to get that part going. It was at least 2:30 by the time I started my IV fluids and antibiotics got started.

So...the next step was to start pitocin. There was some magical formula for how many bags of fluid I needed to have before I got another bag of antibiotics, etc. I think after one bag of antibiotics I was able to start pitocin, but I may not be remembering that correctly at all. Anyway, pitocin was started and through the entire first bag my nurse came in every 15-20 minutes or so to turn it up. My contractions (I had been having them on my own all day) definitely started getting stronger and stronger at this point.

Eddie worked during all of the waiting around. I told him that if the people he was talking to on the phone knew where he was, they would be mortified!


The second part of the day that set us back a bit was the fact that there were several emergency c-sections on Monday afternoon. This resulted in the nurse anesthetist and my doctor being tied up. They knew that when my water was broken my contractions would get worse and I would need an epidural but I wouldn't be able to get one because of the emergencies. So this held us up a little bit. I think my water was broken around 7pm.



They did continue pitocin, but they didn't continue to turn it up after my water was broken. As best I can remember, I was finally able to have an epidural around 9:30pm. (I could be completely wrong about this.) I was SO nervous this time around for my epidural. I'm not sure what it was, but I was really, really concerned about it. I could NOT relax. I think this is probably the reason that my back is still hurting today where the catheter went in for the epidural. Once that got started my blood pressure and heart rate remained okay but I started having a hard time breathing. The nurse finally realized it was anxiety because the side-effects from the epidural were SO different than they were last time. It made me feel loopy and I could not stop shaking all over. (Although, in hindsight the loopiness could be because it was gettin really late and I'd not gotten much sleep the night before!) The epidural took about 45 minutes so it was probably around 10:15 or so by this time.

I asked my nurse how we'd know it was time for him to be here after my epidural. She showed me on the monitor how his heartrate would start dipping a bit during a contraction and she mentioned that I'd start to feel some pressure. About that time I felt a LOT of pressure and mentioned it to her. She checked me immediately and laughed and said I was feeling pressure because I was about to have him. She told me NOT to push.

They got everything set up and Eddie called Mom (around 11pm). She was at home with James and we wanted him to be Will's first visitor after he was born. Eddie's mom, dad, and sister had been at the hospital since early evening so they were waiting as well. After everything got set up and the doctor came in I started pushing. I pushed a grand total of FIVE whole times before he was born. :) Wonderful delivery! He was born at 11:37pm - NOT the Valentine's baby that my nurse was certain that we'd have!



Big Brother made it to the hospital just in time to meet Baby Brother! He was not sure what to think since he'd been pulled out of bed and hauled to the hospital at midnight! The first thing he said was, "He's not in your tummy anymore!" He was very excited, but very, very quiet!




Then the other visitors were allowed a quick visit! I think everyone was gone from the hospital by 1AM. Very, very quick visit!








The hospital gives daddies a scrub shirt with all of the baby's information on it. Poor Baby Brother's little feet didn't show up, though.

Big Brother got to help push Will to the elevator when he went to the nursery. My nurse also let him push the lullaby button that they do when a new baby is born. James was overly excited and pushed it THREE times...at 1 AM. :)







After everyone left, Eddie picked up McDonald's for us for dinner. We spent the next few hours trying to sleep and waiting for my legs to wake up. One of them did NOT want to wake up from the epidural! We finally moved to the postpartum wing around 4AM.

More tomorrow from Valentine's Day!


7 comments:

Lauren said...

Yay! Love it and I love all of the pictures!

Bridgett said...

I'm so happy for you all!! :)

Jodi said...

So glad you had a smooth l&d! I am the same way with deliveries..once I get to 5, within 30 minutes i am pushing - 3 times this has happened. It's really a blessing. Your family is precious!

Jodi said...

So glad to hear of a smooth l&d! Your family is precious!

The Guest Family said...

So glad it went well!! Sounds like a terribly long day! Sounds like big brother did so good too!! I had to have antibiotics as well before sb and had the shakes pretty bad. They scared Dutch more than me though!! The first thing I thought when I saw your pic is how great you hair looked!! Seriously! Love y'all and cannot wait to meet will!

The Guest Family said...

So glad it went well!! Sounds like a terribly long day! Sounds like big brother did so good too!! I had to have antibiotics as well before sb and had the shakes pretty bad. They scared Dutch more than me though!! The first thing I thought when I saw your pic is how great you hair looked!! Seriously! Love y'all and cannot wait to meet will!

Jill said...

How am I just reading this!??? Congratulations!! He is just beautiful.