Thermalgal’s Temperate Mumblings

Henry’s Birth Story

December 16, 2007 on 12:39 am | In Uncategorized | 7 Comments

I’ll start the story just after the work holiday party. It went from 1pm to 4pm so I took the rest of the afternoon off. Since Babies R Us was just down the street, I went and got the matching ottoman for the glider with the next 15% off coupon. Then I headed home and promptly took a nap. Now that might not sound all that strange. But the one thing I haven’t had during this pregnancy is the fatigue that is usually associated with it. So, you can probably count on one hand the number of times I crashed after coming home from work.

The rest is going to have some TMI, so for those you don’t want to read the rest, don’t continue. Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

So, my water broke Tuesday night at 10:30 pm, went to hospital and rested over night with not much happening. I was about 3cm dialted and fully effaced when I checked in. Just before 9am they started the pitocin. I thought they would highly encourage me to get an epidural because of the pitocin, but the nurse was very supportive of trying it natural still. Scott started to get annoyed because by noon (after three hours of pitocin), no one had checked how dilated I was since I got there 13 hours earlier! My ob was suppose to show up some time after noon and I tried to hang on, but about 12:30 I reached my pain threshold and got the epidural. The ob arrived just as the epidural was finishing up. Then she checked me and I was complete and ready to go. Turns out I had reached transition. The doctor and nurse both agreed that I had done it (labored naturally).

Since I just got the epidural I had the option of laboring down, so I did that to rest up after the almost 4 hours of pitocin induced contractions I just survived. So, I labored down until about 2:45 when we started pushing. After an hour, he was almost here. And it stayed that way for another half hour before the kiwi (vacuum assist) came out. It took lots of stretching and cutting (episiotomy) and 7 contractions with the kiwi before he was born. Total pushing time was 2 hours. I’m glad I got the epidural, I’m not sure I would have been able to handle the pushing with the extremely intense contractions.

He wasn’t breathing when he was born (nurse said he was shocked from the birth), so the button got pushed and everyone came running. They bagged him for a couple of breaths and he recovered from the shock. About then is when the NICU doctor came running in (he was upstairs). They worked over him and stuff for about half an hour before I finally got to see him. His 1 minute Apgar score was 4 and his 5 minute was 9. They did one some time between there and that was 8 (not sure exactly when it was done). After half an hour of being in my arms, they took him up to the nursery to get cleaned and checked out. I had been asking Scott if he wanted to cut the cord or catch him. He hadn’t quite made up his mind. Didn’t really matter since they ended up catching, cutting, and running and there was no time for that or even putting him immediately on me after birth.

Then it was time for the doctors to freak out over me. When I got to the hospital my blood pressure was something like 150/110. And it continued to stay just over the 140/90 number that they like. Not a biggie, they took vials and vials of blood and everything was fine. But during labor my heart rate got really high (it was higher than Henry’s!). Most of the time it was in the 160 range, but I think it got as high as 180 at one time. My doctor didn’t believe they were taking the right pulse (they put me on the finger thing because the nurse didn’t want to confuse my heart beat with Henry’s). But yup, it was 166. So, they ordered an EKG which showed, yup, I had a high heart rate. I ended up staying down in Labor and Delivery for a while because they couldn’t find someone to read the EKG since it was shift change. And then I had to wait until the reporting (shift handover) was finished so the people upstairs in Postpartum could take me. I made it finally to my room about ten minutes before Henry (and he was in the nursery for two hours and probably just waiting for me). They continued to watch my pulse and it wasn’t until Friday morning that it finally went under 100 (where they wanted it). I had lots of nurses telling me to make an appointment with the cardiologist when I got home. So, I’ll do that on Monday once I find one to call.