In our week 38 doctor's appointment we started to talk options. I was still only 1 cm dilated and with my age the doctor felt strongly about me not going past my due date. As I had hit COMPLETELY MISERABLE with all my pregnancy symptoms I was quite happy to talk induction. We decided that if baby had not come by the due date of Feb. 17th, we would induce on Feb. 18th. And that was that. However, I did not get to post my week 39 photo
because I was planning on writing this post on Tuesday, February 12th. I was busy being cranky on Sunday and Monday ;-). Not only was I busy being cranky, I was also busy finalizing a bunch of details. Originally my plan was to work all the way up to the baby being born. However, I was convinced by my boss and peers to take some time off during week 39 to finish getting ready so I decided I would work through Wednesday the 13th and have a four day weekend before being induced. We even planned a semi-romantic Valentine's Dinner.
Instead, I woke up at 1:45 AM Tuesday morning with a lot of back pain that felt different. I had wondered if I would "know" when it was time to go. I definitely knew! Aaron woke up about 15 minutes later and I informed him we would not be going to work - we would be going to the hospital instead. He was wonderful, immediately got up and started taking care of things to speed things along. At 2:15 I encouraged him to get into the shower. After his shower, I took mine - not knowing when I might get another plus being girly enough to want to shave. By 3:00 we were in the car and heading off to the hospital leaving a dog and a cat at home to welcome the cleaning service.
Why yes, I did spoil myself and hire a cleaning service to come in and clean. I have definitely not been doing my normal share of the chores and did not expect Aaron to pick up all the slack - he was already doing all the cooking and shopping and dog walking! So I decided to have someone else come in and clean the house in preparation of bringing a baby home. And they will continue to come once a month for the foreseeable future. I'm not stupid.
Contractions were coming every 3 1/2 minutes as we drove to the hospital so when we got there around 3:30 (having pregreistered which was wonderful) it was a very easy checkin and up to a room in Labor and Delivery. Aaron texted his cousin that "it was time" and sent off messages to several other people as well including his mother and both our bosses. By 5:30 I was about 4 cms dilated and had my epidural as well as my water break just as they finished that. Then it was time to wait. Cousin Leanne who was doing our photography arrived and the three of us hung out and chatted about anything at all while I quickly progressed to about 9 cms. At one point we thought we'd have this whole thing wrapped up by noon! Then I stalled. Aaron's aunt and mom both got there and we continued to hang out. They started putting me into interesting positions attempting to get that last centimeter dilated. By 14:45 I was dying to start pushing however I wasn't quite there yet. About 15:00 they decided that I was 9.5 cm able to stretch to 10 and could start pushing however my doctor and nurse were in another delivery so I had a substitute push nurse. For 2 hours we tried. Dr. Mills came back through and recognized that we'd made zero progress. Baby was acting like a yo-yo, head would crown enough to see that "yes, we have hair" and then rebound back up to the starting position. At that point, she asked about Plan B. I was quite comfortable with a C-Section at that point only because I was exhausted and knew I couldn't do this anymore.
Everyone shifted gears, Aaron suited up, and they took me off to another room. While I was supposed to be awake for the procedure, I was in so much pain by then that I could feel everything they were doing and it hurt. They upped my meds and the last thing I remember is Aaron coming in to hold my hand. The plan was for him to announce to me if we had a boy or a girl and at 17:23 our son entered the world - 21 inches, 9 lbs 10 oz. No wonder I wasn't able to deliver vaginally! He announced that we had a boy and they invited him over to see the baby. However I had a death grip on his hand and it wasn't until he asked for help and they pried my fingers one at a time away from him that he was able to go watch them do all that "new birth" stuff to our baby.
I don't remember a thing until waking up in a recovery room. They told me I had a boy and I said something along the lines of "oh, that's nice" before drifting off again. Good thing Leanne took a bunch of photos so I can see what happened. The rest of the day is pretty much a blur and I don't have any clear recollections of anything until the next morning when I got to hold "G--, Boy T--" as we didn't have a name yet. In fact our son went without a name for the first 36 hours of his life while we went back and forth on what to call him. We had three boy (and three girl) names picked out and were fairly confident it would be two of them in some order - we just didn't know what that would be. Surprisingly enough, the name we were convinced was his middle name ended up being his first name which confused several family members at the beginning however everyone seems to be as happy with his name now as they are in love with our little tadpole.
Week 40
Ahhh, what a sweet photo of you two. Made me smile. Congratulations again AND you get a gold star after that delivery. Wow....
Posted by: Nicole Cook | February 21, 2013 at 08:34 AM
Love the post....and new Baby!
Posted by: aunt joey | February 21, 2013 at 10:02 AM
More information!!!!!! More pictures!!!!!
How are you doing?
Posted by: Elizabeth | February 25, 2013 at 10:42 AM