I went into the Dr. for my weekly testing appointment. They did a Non-stress test and an ultrasound. Everything looked really good except that my amniotic fluid had dropped from 15 to 5 in a week. 2 is concerning, so they sent me home and I scheduled a follow up for Wednesday.
Tuesday: 9-9-08
Today was his official due date. I went into work in the morning and stayed until about 1pm. I decided to go home because I just wasn't feeling right. I thought that I would go home and lay down and see if the "contractions" went away. They didn't. I called Joe and told him that we were probably going to have a baby within the next day so he should finish stuff up at work because he wouldn't be there the next day.
Joe came home around 4:30. My contractions were ranging between 5 and 8 minutes apart. Around 6:30, I called triage because my contractions were between 2 and 5 minutes apart. The nurse told me to drink some water and lay down for an hour and to call back if they continued. We started watching a movie and the contractions continued.
9pm we were at the hospital and I was still only dialated between 1 and 2. They sent us walking in the halls for an hour. We went back and I was still only between 1 and 2 but I was "paper thin." The Dr. met with us and decided that I could stay and he would "augment" my labor with Pitocin. The funny thing is, is that Dr's don't usually communicate well with nurses and they do their own thing. The triage nurse came in after the Dr. left and told me that I could stay but they wouldn't "augment" my labor any time soon because they didn't have the staff. Oh well, I was staying.
Wednesday:9-10-08
We checked into our room around midnight. We walked the halls for another half hour and then I couldn't stand it anymore so we went back to our room. At 2:30am they started my epidural because my blood pressure was 189/80 due to the pain. I don't know how women labor without an epidural but more power to them, I couldn't do it. At 3:30am they started pitocin. At 4:30am they broke my water with the internal fetal monitor. At 7:00am I was dialated to a 7 and by 8am I was dialated to a 10! The nurse had me "labor down" for another 2 hours because he was still pretty high and she didn't want me to push more than I had to.
At 10:15am I started pushing. Joe held my legs and the grandmas were the paparazzi. I pushed a few times and then the nurse became concerned because he lost his interal monitor and his heart rate was dropping. She called the Dr. in and they told me that they might need to use the vacuum. I had told them when I go there that I would rather have a c-section than use a vacuum or forceps. However, at this point he was inches from coming out so a c-section wasn't an option. I made up my mind though that I was going to push him out and with 4 more pushes, Elliott Joseph was born at 10:35am. He weighed 8lbs, 9ozs and was 21 inches long.
It was an amazing experience with all it's ups and downs.
