One month ago we got to meet our little man for the very first time. After waiting impatiently for 42 loooong weeks, and 43 looooong hours in the hospital, Charlie finally made his appearance at 11:03 AM on Sunday, January 29th. Here's his birth story.
It all started the previous Friday at 4 PM, when I checked into the hospital to be induced. My doctor ordered Cervidil which is a medicine that softens the cervix and preps it for dilation. That afternoon was pretty quiet. The nurse hooked me up to the fetal monitor and a saline IV drip so that I'd stay hydrated and placed the Cervidil... well... up there. I'm sure y'all can guess where it went.
Anyway. We didn't expect much excitement since the Cervidil would have to be left in for 12 hours before they would check to see how I was progressing. So it was mostly just Mitch and me hanging out in my hospital room for the night. His parents did drop by for a while and brought me a slice of chocolate cake from Ruth's Chris. Mitch's mom said "the more you eat, the better it gets." Well we all know that that's not usually the case with desserts, but she was
so right. It was the best chocolate cake I'd ever had. And I was beyond happy to be able to eat regular (non-hospital) food. The rest of the night was pretty quiet except for the occasional check-in by the nurses.
The next morning the nurse came back in at around 5:00 to remove the Cervidil and check my progress. Turns out it didn't do much to help push me into labor. My cervix had softened but I still wasn't dilating. A few hours later, my doctor came in to check me and confirmed what the nurses had already told us. That's when she started me on a Pitocin drip. Pitocin basically jump starts labor by causing contractions. I was extremely nervous about starting the Pitocin because I've heard it can cause
really strong contractions to start
really quickly. But it didn't. Starting on the Pitocin at around 9AM on Saturday only got me to 3cm by noon. That's when I knew that this wasn't going to happen quickly and that we probably wouldn't be meeting our little guy until the next day.
On Saturday afternoon Mitch's sister Brandi and her husband Nick came by to keep us company. The guys ran to the mall across the road from the hospital to pick up the travel edition of Scrabble. I'm just now realizing that this brings the whole pregnancy full circle, because I announced that we were pregnant on my blog with this picture.
Right before the guys came back from the mall, my doctor stopped by to check my progress again. She told me that I was still at 3 cm and since it had been about 4 hours since they last checked me and I wasn't dilating any further, that she suggested we go ahead and pop my amniotic sac. I knew immediately that once my water broke that we would be meeting our little man within the next 24 hours. I told her that I was fine with that and she and the nurse attempted to pop the sac but were unsuccessful. I'm not exactly sure why it didn't work. It could be because my cervix was so dang far up inside of me and I remember her mentioning the the sac was really tough. She said they would try again in an hour or so. By the time the Doctor and nurse walked out of the room, Mitch and Nick showed up with snacks (ice chips and Jolly Ranchers) and the travel Scrabble. So we set up the board on my bed and started playing.
Sexy outfit, huh?
It was about 3 PM and we were about an hour into our game when the Doctor came back into the room to try and pop the sac again. Nick and Brandi waited in the hall and Mitch stayed in the room while the doctor was finally able to pop it and insert a fetal and cervical monitor. The fetal monitor measured the baby's heart rate and the cervical monitor measured the intensity of my contractions. Once those were in place Brandi and Nick came back in the room and the Scrabble game resumed.
That's when I realized that I had to pee. Oh Lord. I had no idea what embarrassment was in my very near future. If you have a weak stomach, please skip this part. I knew that a bit of amniotic fluid would probably leak out when I stood up to go to the bathroom, so I tried to hold the absorbent bed pad beneath me as I got up out of bed. Mitch tried his best to help me, but as soon as my feet hit the floor the floodgates opened. It felt (and looked) like about a gallon of amniotic fluid gushed out onto the floor. I was in shock. It just kept coming out and seemed to have no end. No one else in the room realized the severity of what had happened and they just kept saying "Go, go, go!" I guess they didn't want me to just stand there and pee on myself, but I was paralyzed, laughing and mortified all at the same time. I couldn't move because it just kept pouring out of me. It was only when they walked around to my side of the bed that they saw the gigantic puddle I had made on the floor and the fluid still pouring down my pasty legs. It was insane.
Goodbye dignity. It was nice knowing you!
Once the gush let up a bit I made my way to the bathroom but brought a trail of fluid along with me. One of the nurses came into the room and I could hear her gasp. Ugh... there I was, mortified/laughing again. That poor nurse. She cleaned up the floor in the room and then came to check on me in the bathroom. I was just sitting there looking at the mess I had dragged into the bathroom with me. She walked in and said "WOW!" I just kept telling her "I can't get up, it's still coming out!" I didn't want to make another puddle. She told me that no matter what I did, I would still have some fluid leak out. Oy. Vey. Reluctantly, I got up off the potty, tucked another absorbent pad underneath me and waddled my way back to the bed apologizing to everyone in the room for what just happened. I knew they really wouldn't care about seeing the mess I had made, but I still felt embarrassed. I mean, it's not every day that your brother-in-law sees you standing in a giant puddle of amniotic fluid.
Now, if you know anything about childbirth, you probably know that once your amniotic sac has popped, labor starts to progress pretty quickly. I could really feel a difference within those next couple hours. We would all watch the number on the monitor go up, up, up as my contractions intensified and then drop down as the cramping let up. I could definitely feel the contractions now, but they were still tolerable. I would just pause from the game, take a few deep breaths, maybe grab a handrail on the hospital bed and get through the contraction. It was around 6 or 7PM when they really started to get strong and painful. I could tell that the baby was turned the wrong way (face up as opposed to face down) because I was having the dreaded 'back labor'. When the baby is turned face up, their neck can't fully bend forward like it would when the baby is face down and the neck bends backwards when it moves through the birth canal. Basically it felt like someone shoved a tree stump inside of me and told me to poop it out. Yea. Fun.
By 8:30PM my contractions were one minute on and one minute off. And it took me a good 30 seconds of my 'minute off' to feel normal again. It was exhausting and I knew I couldn't keep up with the pain for much longer. I was ready for the drugs. I probably shouldn't have waited that long. If I had a chance to do it over again I would have asked for the meds about an hour earlier. Thank goodness it didn't take long for the anesthesiologist to come in to give me the epidural. In the few week prior to going into the hospital to deliver, I would think about all of those horrible stories you hear about epidurals. People would tell me about the HUGE needle. Or how the doctor had missed the target and kept having to put the needle in over and over. I was worried. And I really shouldn't have. The only pain I felt was from the tiny bit of Lidocaine (the same stuff they use at the dentist) that was placed before the epidural medication was inserted. It was as bad as a stiff pinch on the back. The only other thing I felt was a tingle in my left knee when the doctor said "this will feel like you got hit in the funny bone, but it will feel like it's in your leg." Within 5 minutes, I went from being in massive amounts of 'tree stump' pain to feeling like I could walk right over to the mall for some last minute shopping.... except that I couldn't really move my legs more than a few inches at a time.
We wrapped up our travel Scrabble game and Nick and Brandi headed home for the night and Mitch and I tried to get some sleep.... which we did until about 3AM when three nurses came rushing into the room. I had no idea what was going on. They threw an oxygen mask on my face and rolled me over to my left side. I freaked out. They were flying all over the room pressing buttons on all the different machines and said something about the baby's heart rate dropping. I glanced over at the monitor and notice the normal rate of 145 had dropped down to 95. I began to panic. All I could think about was Charlie ending up in the NICU. After about an hour of observation, they said that everything should be fine, but I couldn't shake the feeling that something bad had happened.
By 9AM on Sunday my doctor had stopped in again to check my dilation. I was at 8cm! Woohoo! Finally some progress! She said she would come back around 1PM to see how much further I had dilated. We were so excited to finally be seeing some action and signs that my labor might soon be over. But our hopes were crushed when she stopped back in and discovered my cervix had stalled out at 8cm and had become hard 'like a rubber tire'. I knew that wasn't a good news and my 3PM deadline was quickly approaching. That's when she told us that a c-section would be necessary. By waiting longer than 24 hours after the amniotic sac is popped, I would be at higher risk for infection and if I tried to push through the labor, my toughening cervix might rupture. Not good. She said we could be in the operating room within the next 45 minutes. Mitch and I knew that this was our best and safest option for me and the baby, so we agreed to go ahead with the c-section.
The doctor left the room and the nurse came back in to give Mitch his scrubs. The reality of the situation finally started to settle in and it all started to become very real and I got a little nervous. I had never even been to the hospital before as a patient, much less gone through major surgery. The nurses wheeled me into the OR to prep me for surgery and the anesthesiologist started another set of meds to numb me from the chest down. I remembered friends telling me about their c-sections and how the doctors had pinched their stomachs really hard to see if the meds had taken effect. I was worried the pinch would hurt. Silly huh? They were about to slice me open and I was worried about a pinch. Instead of a pinch, the doctor scratched me with what felt like a little piece of sand paper. First he scratched my belly. I had no feeling. Then he moved down to my thighs. Still no feeling. Then he scratched my toes. I could feel EVERYTHING. I panicked again, but he told me that was fairly normal.
It took about 15 minutes of prep time to get me ready before they had Mitch come back into the room. By the time he came in, my teeth were nearly chattered out of my head. I knew the meds could have the affect, but I wasn't ready for the uncontrollable shivering. They laid heated blankets across my legs and arms to keep me warm, but the cold went straight to my bones. Once the doctor started with the surgery, I kept looking at Mitch to see his reactions to what was going on. I kept saying "Go look! Take pictures!" I wanted to know exactly what was going on and to have pictures of our baby right as he came into the world. The doctors told me the standard 'now you're going to feel lots of pressure" but I wasn't ready for the deferred pain that was in my right shoulder. It felt like my clavicle was about to snap in half. All of a sudden I heard someone yell "TIME" and I knew the baby was out. Someone across the room yelled back "11:03" and I heard his first short cry. It was pretty amazing. All of a sudden we were parents. A mom and dad. A family.
Did you see the neck on that boy?! Crazy.
They brought him over to table beneath the heat lamps and started cleaning him up. Then I heard someone ask Mitch if he wanted to cut the cord. Apparently by that time one of the nurses had taken the camera and was snapping pictures.
Our first family picture
Instant love.
He's got his momma's eyebrow muscles and daddy's forehead wrinkles :)
Proud Papa.
Mitch got to put on Charlie's first diaper.
Well folks, here's where I wrap things up. Charlie has been such a huge blessing and he's just so darn squishy and squeezably lovable. When he lays on my chest I can just feel him melt into me. I really can't wait to see this little guy grow and watch his personality come through. Thanks for all of your warm wishes and support. We couldn't be happier or more in love with our little guy.
