G's Birth Story: Part Two

Here is part two! I needed some help remembering all the details (the main reason it is now Sunday before it was finished.) It is possibly longer than the first half...sorry!

If you missed the first half, read it here: Part One.

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Well, I was wrong about my prayers for G to come on his own...

Needless to say, we spent the weekend trying to get G to come out. By Sunday I had given up hope and just accepted that he was not coming on his own, and we would have to do the induction on Monday morning. 

When Monday rolled around I called the hospital again to see if they had availability for me. I held my breath once again as the nurse on the other line told me to come on in! As I hung up the phone I started to feel a little nervous. This was it. We were going to have a baby hopefully that day. 

J
J* and his mom were excited, and tried to rush me eating my breakfast. I remember telling them to give me a minute; I needed to process this and breathe! Fifteen minutes later we were on our way out the door and headed to the hospital, a mere 20 minutes away. 

When we got to the hospital I changed into my beautiful hospital gown and waited. The nurses were just changing shifts and nothing was going to get started until I met my nurse for the day. We took a couple pictures of my huge 40 week belly.

Finally, my nurse came into the room and it happened to be the same nurse that gave me my lecture just a few days ago. Bummer. She was a very nice woman, but just a little too nice for me to want to spend an entire 8 hours with her in my room (which she did...). She got things started right away since she had some background with me already and I was hooked up with my IV and meds running by 8am. 

Now the waiting part began. 

When I got to the hospital I was already 2cm. No big surprise as I had known that for a couple of weeks at that point. As the morning went on, I slowly started having contractions as they bumped up my medication. Nothing bad, but just enough that I was starting to feel them. Around 10:30 am, another Dr. doing rounds came in to break my water (as requested by my Dr.) and I was told I was 3cm. I knew by breaking my water things might start to get more intense; I was ready for things to start happening though!

About an hour after my water had been broken I was starting to need some relief. I like to think this was due to both the meds making my contractions stronger than normal (I have read that this happens) and the breaking of my water, but who knows. I had them give me some meds via my IV, and felt much better. 

As the medication started to wear off, I was hoping to just make do with another dose before I ended up getting the epidural. I didn't feel as though the contractions were painful enough to go that route just yet, but I did need something to take the edge off. However, G had another plan. The medication had made his heart rate drop just a tad, not enough to really worry anyone too much, but enough that my Dr. suggested just getting the epidural if I had planned on doing so anyways. They explained that the medication they had given me sometimes had that effect on babies, but that the epidural would not effect G in the same way. 

So, the nurse called for an epidural and about 15 minutes later the anesthesiologist was in my room and ready to go. J* got to stay in the room while he did it (I was expecting him to have to leave) and held my hands the whole time. It really wasn't as bad as I had heard. The worst part was when they placed the tubing into my back, made me feel a little squeamish and I jumped just a little out of surprise. It started to work almost instantly, and in less than 10 minutes I was feeling good! I couldn't feel any of my contractions the whole rest of the time. 

And we waited some more. I passed the time by watching The Vow, which we had gotten from Redbox the evening before. And I tried to sleep, but I was too anxious to really fall asleep. In the meantime the nurses changed shifts again; this time I was left with a nurse I really enjoyed. 

At 7 pm I was checked again, and was at 7cm. This was taking forever, I had been hoping things would go a little faster and we would have had a baby by this time. However, I felt good that we were at least getting close. It couldn't be too much longer!

At 9:30 the nurse came back to check me again, this time I was almost 10cm. She thought by 10pm I would be ready to push. This was great news! Except that this nurse's shift was ending soon and I was really hoping she would be there with me. At 10 she had me try to push, and I was completely ineffective. My epidural was so strong that I couldn't feel a thing, and so we decided to turn it off and let the medication wear off enough for me to feel what was happening. 

During this time the nurses changed, and I had to wait until my next nurse was ready before I could do anything. My epidural ended up wearing off almost completely by the time my nurse was ready for me to start pushing again, and I pushed for a over an hour before my Dr. got there. 

About 20 minutes more of agonizing pushing and G finally arrived, at 1:36am! He was 9lbs 1oz, lots of dark hair! I remember thinking he was HUGE! The nurses handed him to me, but I could only hold him for a minute or so for fear of dropping him as my Dr. worked on getting everything sewn back together. I ended up having 3rd degree tearing and was losing a lot of blood (as a friend so nicely put it, I had a bowling ball plow through there!). I waited to hold him again until after the Dr. was finished, and then fell in love!

G was a little jaundice, so we stayed at the hospital an extra day so he could get a UV treatment. It actually worked out quite nicely. J* got another day off since we were still in the hospital and he was able to wait to return to class until the following Monday. It turns out God was listening to my prayers after all!