Joshua's Birth Story

On Thursday the 30th, I had my ob appointment with a dr in the group with my regular ob. (We rotate near the end to met other drs in case ours is not on call when we go into labor.) She did the usual questions about pain/pressure/contractions, which I had been having off and on. Sometimes four an hour, but usually subsiding after an hour, so I never went in. She gives me directions that if it even happens once, go ahead and come in. I say ok, and leave the appointment with my 2-year-old ds to go run some errands before my dh meets me for a 'date night' for his birthday which was on the 26th of December.

I drop ds off at DH's parents' house, and we go out to eat. In the middle of dinner, I start contracting like crazy. I start counting, and after an hour, I have had ten. So, like any sane person does, I finish dinner (grilled shrimp and twice baked potatoes), thinking that I was only 34 weeks and at the most, they would give me a shot-if the contrax didn't stop on their own- and then go home. So I send dh home-he has to work tomorrow-and arrange for ds to spend the night at the in laws. I tell them I will come pick Jakob up in the morning, since it is already late.

Well, I get to l and d and the contrax are coming every 3-4 minutes and lasting a minute each. They check me and I have gone from 0 to 1 dilation. So I get admitted overnight. I think it's fine. They are just being cautious.

The morning nurse comes in and states that it looks like my contrax have ceased, but when she checks the monitor, it turns out that it just slid up, and not only are they still coming, I am now dilated between a 3 and a 4. So I just bought more time at the hospital.

She comes back with breakfast and I make a comment about the liquid that is coming out, could it be my water, or did I just pee myself. She checks and it comes back negative for water even though she swears it looks just like amniotic fluid. This same thing happens twice more. Then once after using the restroom, it drips down my leg and she grabs the paper to test and oulia. it turns blue. I have just been moved up to the 'in labor' status.

The doc starts pitocin after I had been at a 5 for over an hour. I continue to stay at a 5 for three hours, even with pitocin and stronger contractions. I finally move to a 6, and stall there for two hours or so. The doc comes in to 'finish' breaking my water-even though any exams are excruciatingly painful, I ask her to do this in hopes that it pushes me to a 10.

No such luck. After she breaks my water, the contractions that feel like I am wearing a belt of knives sticking into my side and turning simultaneously begin. They are coming every minute. I make it (with a lot of help from my nurse and my husband) through an hour and half of those contractions, then finally get the guts up to ask her to check me. Hopefuly I am past the 6, and that will be the encouragement I need to hold out longer.

Nope. I am still at a 6. I get an epidural. (It takes about 30 minutes for me to actually get it.)

Ahhhhhhhh. Heaven. Thirty minutes later, I am at a 10 and Joshua David Green is born. (It won't let me unbold that statement...not sure why.)

The scary part was right when it was time to push and my blood pressure bottomed out....the bottom number was 33. I lost a ton of blood so people were pretty worried. I think Josh's heart deceled, too, because I had to be rolled from one side to another and was given an oxygen mask. It took quite a while for my blood pressure to come back up. (I was in a lot of pain so I am kind of fuzzy on details, but when I got the epidural, I think THAT is when my blood pressure dropped. The anesthesiologist had to give me a shot or two, and that's when the oxygen was put on me. After I had Josh and he was taken away to the NICU, I tried just sitting up and fell over in the bed....I had to lay down for a while.)

He spent 4 and a half days in the NICU, and then he comes home to be with us.