A Birth Story: Lewis Part II

We ended on Wednesday with me having a contraction monitor placed without an epidural...here's the second half.

My plan was to try to labor and deliver without pain medication, but being confined to the bed and with how intense everything had gotten, I told my nurse that I'd like to try the IV drugs. So at 8:00(ish) I was given a dose of fentanyl and was told that it took about 15 min to kick in. It. Did. Nothing.

Kyle asked me if I wanted him to start our diffuser with lavender. My response was, "None of that hippie stuff. I want the epidural." He thought that was hilarious, so a message was sent to the anesthetist and he was on his way up. I'm all for essential oils and I love them. At that point, I was just too focused on my pain.

Dave, the anesthetist, came and finished placing my epidural around 9:45 pm and it was magic. When he came back 30 min later to make sure it worked, I told him that he was magic. I was able to get some sleep after that. But, at 12:40 am (Tuesday), baby's heart rate dropped and I woke up to a nurse putting an oxygen mask on me and they turned the pitocin off. It was freaky to wake up and not know what was happening. The nurses had to monitor baby's heart rate for a while. They turned the pitocin back on at 1:30am and I got back to sleep.

At 4:54am, the same thing happened. Pitocin went off and the oxygen mask went on. I slept more.

Around 9 am, I realized that my epidural started wearing off. I asked for more juice from my epidural and Tuesday's anesthetist, Jamie, showed up. He gave me a little boost and said things would get moving quickly. I was at 6cm by this point.

I was still feeling a lot of pain during contractions. The nurses and Kyle kept rolling me from side to side to get the epidural to my right side.

Around 11, Jamie came back to check on my pain levels and the dr checked again. I was at an 8!! And then time seemed to stand still.

Around 1:30pm or 2, the boost Jamie had given me had worn off. My body felt like it was on fire. I remember looking down at my belly and thinking that baby had appeared to have moved down. 

Remember this for later...

Dr checked me and I was almost at a 10. So we did some practice pushes to see if she could stretch me. No luck. She said she'd be back at 4.

By 2:45/3pm I had some intense back labor and even Kyle's counter pressure didn't help. I told my nurse that I felt like I needed to push because otherwise my body would on its own.

The dr was back at 3/3:05 and she wanted to have me push anyway. After three contractions, baby's heart rate continued to drop. She said that while I was pushing well, we didn't have the time to keep pushing. So our best option was an emergency c-section. 

By 3:30/:40, I was on the operating table and they were starting. Baby Lewis was born at 3:53pm after lots of pulling and tugging. He was having some issues breathing and they put him on an oxygen mask and started treating him for an infection. So he stayed in the NICU for a week.

It was traumatic, but he's here and he's totally worth it!

Newborn pics by Erin Johnson Photography

Happy Friday!

 

A Birth Story: Lewis Part I

I suppose Lewis' birth story is better late than never. He's officially seven weeks old and I don't want to forget it. So...here it is...at least part of it.

On August 28, we had our 40 week appointment with my dr and we had an ultrasound to make sure everything was okay with baby. The best score you can get is an 8...well, we scored 8. So there was no way baby was coming that day. We went to see my dr and she did a membrane sweep and asked if I wanted to schedule an induction. I adamantly said, "YES!". So it was scheduled for Monday morning, space permitting. On Thursday I was at 3cm dilated.

I was officially 8 days late on Monday, August 1. After very little sleep Sunday night, we woke up at 5:45 am and called the hospital to see if they had room for our induction. They told us to come in at 7. They had room and we showered, had breakfast, and went in to the hospital. Unfortunately my dr was out of town for the day, so we had the dr on call.

Our good friend, was our nurse for the day and she got all of our admission stuff finished and started pitocin by 8:15am. Things were moving pretty slowly, so Kyle's sister stopped by to spend some time with us around 9:30/10am. Not much was happening. I was still at 3 cm and not in much pain yet. I finally was starting to feel the contractions around 10:30am. I had to start focusing through the contractions around 11 and the resident on call tried to break my water around 11:30. Unfortunately, he didn't succeed after 3 tries. So we needed to wait until the on call dr came back around noon.

Kyle's sister left around noon when the on call dr came in to check on progress. I was still at a 3 and she broke my water right away. Her comment to that was, "That's the difference between breaking 100 waters and 10,000 waters." My fluid was clear, so everything was okay with baby. We were hoping that things would pick up from there. We were too optimistic, apparently.

Throughout the afternoon my contractions continued to grow in intensity. At some point I was 4 cm and stayed there for hours. I spent some time on the birthing ball and about an hour in a warm bath. While in the bath, I was able to relax and take a short nap.

At the end of my bath, our nurse came in to tell us that the heart rate monitor wasn't tracking baby's heart rate very well. So they needed to start using a scalp monitor. Unfortunately, that meant I was confined to the bed or very close to it.

Around 8:00pm, the resident came back to let us know that they didn't think that my contractions were helping my body progress they way they should've. As a result, I needed to be hooked up to an internal contraction monitor. The resident took three tries to get it in place and it was worse pain than any of my contractions up to that point. My husband thought I was going to pass out. And afterward the resident says, "You did great for not having an epidural." Thanks for that, dude.

And you'll have to wait until Friday to hear the rest of Lewis' story.

Happy Wednesday!