It's a long one...so, stick with me!
Sam's birth story begins on Wednesday, May 11th. I had my 40-week OB appointment at 3:30 PM. Kurt met me at the doctor's office, and we went in and had our sonogram. According to the sonogram, he was measuring right at 40-weeks, which was surprising, since he had been measuring almost 2 weeks ahead for most of the pregnancy. After my sonogram, we went in for my appointment. As usual, my blood pressure was high when the medical assistant first took it. They had me relax and lay on my side, and when the doctor came in, she took it again. Again, it was high. She did my exam and I was dilated to "maybe 1 cm" but nothing else was happening. She then took my blood pressure again, and it was still high. At that point, I knew things weren't good. My blood pressure always went down when they took it again. My doctor came and and sat down. She told us she wanted us to go to the hospital to be monitored. She was going to call the on-call doctor and let him know what was going on with my blood pressure. According to my doctor, I was starting to show more signs of pre-eclampsia.
Kurt and I were supposed to have dinner with his grandparents that evening, so Kurt stopped at their house to drop off the cake I had picked up for his grandmother's birthday. I headed home to get the rest of our things together. My friend, Jenni, came over and picked up Macey for us. Within an hour, we were on our way to the hospital.
We arrived at the hospital a little after 6:00 PM. After a little wait, I was take to Labor and Delivery triage, where they did blood work, monitored my blood pressure and monitored the contractions that I was having. I had no idea I was even having contractions! As a first time mom, I didn't know what they were supposed to feel like, so I thought what I had been feeling for the past two weeks was just him moving.
After being in triage for about an hour, the nurse contacted the on-call doctor from my practice and they determined that I should be admitted to start an induction. I was taken up to the High Risk Perinatal Unit (due to my blood pressure and gestational diabetes issues), where they started me on Cytotec every 4 hours. I was on Cytotec throughout the night and into the next day. After every round of Cytotec, either the doctor or nurse would check me, and again, I had made no progress after each and every dose. I was still dilated to 1 cm with no other progress.
That evening, around 6:00 PM, my doctor determined that Cytotec was doing nothing for me, and sent us down to Labor and Delivery to begin a drip of Pitocin. Throughout the entire day, I had been having fairly severe contractions, but they weren't doing anything to dilate my cervix. At this point, about 24 hours later from when we first came to the hospital, I was praying that the Pitocin would do the trick. We started the drip at about 8:00 PM. For the second night in a row, I couldn't sleep because of the pain of the contractions. I was having miserable back labor and my blood pressure was going up whenever I was not laying on my side.
The next morning, at about 8:30 AM, my doctor came in to check me again. Nearly 38 hours later, I was still dilated to 1 cm, with no effacement and the baby had still not dropped. It was at this point that she determined that they needed to get the baby out of me as soon as possible. They had an opening for a c-section at 9:15 AM. Within 15 minutes of talking to the doctor, I was preparing for surgery. I was in the operating room and being prepped by 9:15, and the surgery started a little before 9:30 AM. I received a spinal, which numbed me from my chest down. At one point, I got a terrible headache from an anti-nausea medication they put in my IV. The anesthesiologist assured me that it would go away within 3-4 minutes, and it really did! He was great by the way! I learned that anesthesiologists are a c-section patient's best friend!
At 9:52 AM, our baby boy made his appearance into the world! Kurt was able to hold him almost immediately because he checked out so well. After I was all stitched up and ready to be wheeled out of the operating room, they sat me up and brought my baby boy over to me. He was in my arms as I was wheeled out of the OR.
It was a miserable 40 hours, but well worth it when we met our little guy! He's just perfect! I've always been a believer that everything happens for a reason, and I know that was the case with our little guy. He had the cord wrapped around his neck twice, which my doctor believes may have been part of the reason why he didn't drop. She said if we had continued with a vaginal delivery there was a very high likelihood that I would have needed an emergency c-section anyway because of this. God was definitely watching out for us on Friday, May 13th!
