Birth Story

I decided that I probably should try and write things out to describe what exactly happened before mothers amnesia commences. SO... below is how things went.

I worked on Thursday night into Friday morning. It was normal - nothiing unusual had happened. I was feeling relatively "okay" in terms of fatigue. I had had to go to the bathroom a few times during the night but no big deal. Then at about 4 a.m. I went to go to the bathroom and thought that I had had some leakage of urine. Again no bg deal. By 5 a.m. that leakage was pink and I was a bit nervous. So I calmly asked my fellow coworkers if they by chance knew how to tell if someone's water had broken. Everyone immediately looked at my nether region as if to see a big giant wet puddle - which was not there. They then went into panic mode which for a bunch of ICU nurses is kind of comical if you think about it.

Eventually we tried to get labor and delivery to send us some special test strip to figure out if it truly was amniotic fluid or if I had just had a sudden loss of bladder control. They wouldn't go for that so I ended up speaking with the on call physician - who advised us to come in and be checked. At that point I was still doing pretty good. An occasional contraction, but again - was it really a contraction or my over reactive imagination? I finished up what I was doing, gave report on my patient and then tried to call D. D was at home sleeping... SOUNDLY... I left a message and headed home to pick him up and then drive to the hospital.

I chose to not deliver at the hospital at which I work... if I had been checked there they would have delivered me there since we now know my water had actually broken. So it was a good thing I did make the choices I made. However it also meant I got to the hospital about 2 hours after the fact.

I eventually got a hold of D and he thought I was kidding. We hadn't had a bag packed yet as that was going to be done this weekend so he scrambled to get that done while I drove home. By the time I got home I was sure it was indeed my water that had broken and I was having contractions about every 10 minutes apart. We eventually got on the road to the hospital - still calm once we found the camera. Apologized to the dogs and attempted to get a hold of my mom to hopefully be able to take care of the puppies.

Enroute to the hospital the contractions were getting a bit more forceful and closer together - we were at 5-8 minutes apart when we hit the doors of the hospital. My coworkers relieved that I had D and I was no longer driving myself anywhere. I was thankful to have D as well as driving would have been a challenge for me at that point.

We checked in - answered multiple questions got the "you poor dear" look multiple times when discussing what number pregnancy this was for me and eventually they checked and I was 2 cm dilated. Samuel was indeed still breech and trying to make his presence known.

My doctor showed up and said "guess we don't need to even have that conversation about the version anymore since that is no longer an option." 10:00 a.m. was the slated time for me to get to the OR. It was 8:30 when they had checked me the first time and at 9:15 when they checked again I was already 4 cm dilated so 10 a.m. could not come soon enough.

It seemed like forever before they drew blood, started the IV etc, and at the time I could only focus on little things. I became a person who watched the clock. 10 a.m. was the promised land time. Eventually the anesthesiologist got in there and we were able to finally head to the OR. At that time I was having contractions every 1-2 minutes and they were definitely hurting. It was all back labor so the only positions that felt comfortable did not allow anyone to watch Samuel on the monitor. They gave up on that and we were able to get my spinal in and about 30 minutes later Samuel was born.

His apgars were 8 and 9 so excellent. He had the neonatal nurse practitioner present at his birth due to his early arrival. When in recovery we found out that his blood sugar was low and his temperature was low so we spent quite a bit of time in recovery and then Friday and Saturday he had his blood sugar checked every 3 hours prior to meals. Poor guys little heels have definitely taken a beating.

We're still having breastfeeding issues, but things are better than they were. A large part of the problem is that he is undercooked. He's going to take longer to figure this out than a term baby. We just have to be patient and things will all settle in.

We're very in love with the little man and are so happy that he's now here. Even if his arrival was not how I planned - I'm just happy he's here. He's healthy and he's doing fine. So are D and myself.

The dogs are fine - though we apparently need to produce a "how to take care of your grand dogs" video for our parents. 2 grandmothers and a grandfather and they are calling frequently to make sure of how they're supposed to do things. We should be out of the hospital tomorrow and life as we know it will definitely change. We're both looking forward to our own bed though. That's for certain.