Friday, September 19, 2008

Baby Silas is here!!

This time last week I definitely did not think I was going anywhere anytime soon. Walking around for two weeks at 3cm made me think the whole process was going to be that slow. However, Friday (12th) I felt really crampy with lots of pressure, went in and my doctor told me that I was 4cm, 100% and bulging and I was in early labor, things should start going in 12-24 hours. Yeah, right.

I guess you can really only be super dilated for so long because I woke up at 3am Saturday morning (the 13th) to my water breaking!! Went to the bathroom to make sure but by the time I got there I could definitely tell. It wasn't clear though, more yellowish green and obviously meconium so I knew everything wasn't 100% right. DH rushed me (happily speeding) to the hospital and we got there by 4am. Contractions started pretty much right after my water broke and on the way to the hospital started being consistently 2 1/2 minutes apart and were horrible right off the bat. Got to L&D triage, they asked my what I was at previously and said they'd check me the see if I needed to be admitted. I just about told them that if they sent me home I would kill someone. Luckily, I had made it to 5cm so they admitted me, and I think the amount of pain I was in assured them that this was not a false alarm again. They got me to L&D birthing suite by 5 and I was at 7cm. I couldn't really talk at that point, except when they asked about the epidural. At that point the words "Would you like an epidural?" never sounded so sweet. Got the epidural at around 5:30 and continued to progress very quickly. Once they got me hooked up to the monitors we figured out what was wrong, my husband was watching it and said "I can tell they're bad because when you have a contraction his heart rate goes down". When I contracted and I would lay on my right side or back his heart rate would slow way down even to the point of stopping sometimes. To monitor him better than the stomach thing, they put a heartrate probe on his head and gave me oxygen. New nurses kept coming in would see his heartrate and make me switch sides (a bit hard when you're numb from the chest down), it would go down more than it was and I'd switch back. At around 7:15 I guess my contractions started getting worse or more frequent because my main nurse came in with big eyes and said "you're feeling like you need to push, right?" and couldn't tell at all, but thought I'd better say yes. They called pretty much everyone in the hospital in my room (I swear there were 20 people in there) and got all ready to go. Because his heart rate was still going out of whack they did have to intervene a bit and use the vacuum. Pushing wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be (yeah, epidural) and 26 minutes, at 7:48 (little less than 5 hours after my water broke) our beautiful baby Silas was born!! He is 20" long, 7lbs 13oz. They took him over to get cleaned up right away and all I could see was that full head of dark hair. When I finally got him, he nursed with no problems, as DH pointed out, "look at those survival skills". The doctor said his cordblood indicated he was a bit stressed, so it was a good thing they used the vacuum and got him out quickly. Luckily, after all that, he is in perfect health, just slightly jaundiced but nothing that anyone seemed to worry about. I've been putting him in the sun everyday and he just barely looks yellow now.

We all went home about 36 hours after being admitted and are all doing great. Today I'm starting to feel a bit more human, I think my body is figuring out how to cope with the fact that I'm really never going to be able to sleep like I did before. The last two nights Si has been getting up like clockwork every three hours, so I'm able to get a couple hours of uninterrupted sleep at a time. I also had my first good postpartum breakdown last night and just cried for an hour. Not at all because I was sad, just overcome with emotion, lack of sleep and crashing hormones. All is well now though and although this is the hardest thing I've ever done, nothing has been more worth it. lovelovelove

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