On Wednesday morning, July 20th, I was scheduled to be induced. Matt and I arrived at St. Luke's at about 7:45 that morning. I put on my hospital gown and got ready to answer a bunch of questions to get me all checked in.
After answering all the questions and signing a bunch of forms, the pitocin drip was finally started at about 9:30am.
My nurse, Anita, checked my cervix so we would know where we were starting out. I was 80% effaced and dilated 1cm. Not much happened in the next 2 hours. Matt and I just made a few phone calls to let our families know what was going on and we watched a couple episodes of Arrested Development to help the time pass. My parents showed up at around 10:30. At 11:30 Dr. Bale showed up to break my water. While he was in there he checked my cervix again and I was still at 1cm and 80% effaced. He assured me that breaking my water would help things pick up a bit. Anita increased the pitocin about every half hour. My blood pressure had been pretty high since I was checked into the hospital so Dr. Bale asked Anita to draw some blood to check for preeclampsia. Luckily that test came back negative. By 12:30 I was finally starting to really feel the contractions and by 2:30 the contractions were staring to become a bit more intense. At 3:45 Anita decided to check my cervix again. I was between 2 and 3cm at this point. Yes, after over 6 hours on the pitocin, I had only made it another centimeter and a half. Anita suggested I get the epidural at this point. I thought that I was supposed to be at least 4 centimeters along before getting the epidural and was worried about it slowing down my progress even more. Anita explained that it will really only slow it down about 45 mins to an hour total which in the long run won't be any big deal. She also told me that it will probably help with my blood pressure which remained high. So I decided to go ahead and get the epidural.
At 4:00 the anaesthesiologist arrived and put the epidural in place. It went very smoothly and didn't hurt at all! About 10 minutes later I noticed it taking effect. I, however, did still feel the contractions on the right side of my belly. Anita explained to me that it is called a "window" and that sometimes there is a small section that the epidural doesn't take. She called the anaesthesiologist to come back and fix the problem. When the anaesthesiologist returned she had me lay down flat on my side while she adjusted the tube. Apparently it was pointed toward my left side which is why I was still feeling contractions on my right side. She straightened it up and then left. After a couple minutes, I started to feel numbness going up into my chest. I couldn't feel my left breast at all and my left cheek was feeling very tingly. I panicked. It really scared me! I suddenly felt like I couldn't get any air. Anita put my bed upright (apparently it was because I was laying flat that the epidural went up my spine. Once she put my bed up, it went back down). I was gasping for air in a full on panic attack. Anita sent everyone out of the room and helped talk me down. She had me take deep breaths and assured me that my oxygen levels were fine (they were at 98%) and that I'm just having a panic attack. She took some deep breaths with me until I calmed down.
That right there was the worst part of the day. After that things really picked up. By 6:30 Anita checked my cervix again and I was at 5cm and the baby was at 0 station. She was having trouble seeing my contractions on the monitor. She told me that sometimes on us "skinny girls" (yep, she called me skinny - again, no one ever called me skinny until I was pregnant, so I found that pretty funny) it is hard to keep the monitor in place. Since she was having trouble monitoring my contractions on the external monitor she had a doctor come in to insert an internal monitor. He felt my cervix and said, where did you say she was? Anita said I was 5cm. The doctor looked at me and said, make that 7.5! That was only 20 minutes later!
Dr. Bale stopped by again around 8:00 and checked me. I was 100% effaced and 8.5cm at that point. The nursing staff changed at 7:00, so at this point I had a new nurse. Her name was Kristin. She was quite the energetic woman. At this point she told me that we are looking for a lot of pressure. She said because of the epidural I will not feel pain but a ton of pressure. As soon as I felt the pressure I was to let her know so she could confirm that I was at a 10 and ready to push.
Kristin stopped by the room at around 9:00 and asked if I was feeling the pressure yet. I wasn't, so she said she would come back in about a half hour. She came back at 9:30 and I still wasn't feeling any pressure. So she sent everyone out of the room and decided to check anyway. Upon putting her fingers in her face got extremely animated and she shouted, "Holy Shit! The baby is at +2!!! Don't move!" She hurried to bring in all of the stuff into the room for delivery. Then she pulled out the stirups and I started pushing. In between pushes she told me not to tell anyone who has given birth vaginally that I didn't feel the pressure. She told me they would hate me . . . haha! We pushed on every contraction for about a half hour and then they called Dr. Bale.
Let me take this moment to talk about how awesome Matt was at this point in time. He told me ahead of time that he plans on standing at my shoulder the entire time that I'm pushing and that he had no interest at all in watching the baby come out. He also said that he didn't want to cut the umbilical cord. Earlier that day, at the time when the nurse was inserting my IV, he freaked out. At that point I knew that he was not going to do well with the birth. He really shocked me. As soon as the head was crowning, he went down to the end of the bed and took a look. He grabbed my leg and helped the nurses help me push.
Okay, so back to when Dr. Bale came into the room - I pushed through 2 contractions and he decided to do a small episiotomy. This was the only part where Matt looked away for a bit. When Dr. Bale had him look back, his face just changed. I asked him what he saw. He said in shock and disbelief, "The head!" I asked, "Well what part of the head, how much of it?" In even more disbelief he said, "The WHOLE head!!!" Dr. Bale had me scoot up into a position where I could see everything. He told me to just give one more gentle push. I pushed and out he came. I watched him come out of me - for as long as I live that will be an image I will NEVER forget - EVER! As he was coming out, I saw the penis and shouted, "It's Alex!" Dr. Bale put him on my belly and Matt cut the umbilical cord. Then Dr. Bale went back to deliver the placent and stitch me up. The nurses started cleaning him up a bit while I talked to him and then they took him to the warmer.
I couldn't take my eyes off him! At one point in time Dr. Bale put a few of his instruments on my belly and said, "Those are mine, don't mess with them." (he's a bit of a jokster) I looked at him for a second and said, "Oh, you're still here?" HAHA! I was just taking in my little boy. Matt was such a proud dad video taping his son. He was so caught up in the moment, he forgot that he still had to go out in the hall and tell everyone that it is Alexander and not Meara. They were not pleased with him for that!
Oh man, I could really go on and on about how wonderful this whole experience has been, but I think I'd rather just stop this post here and cuddle with Alex. All I know is I am one lucky mama to have such a beautiful and healthy son. I'll update more later with some more pictures and stories from Alex's first few days of life.
