Owen's Birth Story

At my 40 week prenatal checkup I was measuring at 2 cm with 60% effacing.  I felt like I had still been pretty active the entire last week before my induction and was surprised to find out on Tuesday morning that nothing had changed at all in the last week!  I'm glad we had the induction scheduled or who knows how long he'd still be in me!

Here's the story (and I'm glad we were texting updates to people as the day went on... should make this post easier to write...)

We arrived at Ridgeview at 7:00am on Tuesday, May 8th.  First hurdle was simply putting an IV in my arm.  Our labor nurse tried twice, the anesthesiologist had four attempts and finally a nurse anethesist got a really tiny needle and had success.  Then the nurse checked my cervix and determined that nothing had changed since my last appointment which altered the doctor's original plan of breaking my water and starting the pitocin at the same time.  Pitocin was started around 8:30 and we were a little disappointed that by 11:00 I had still made zero progress.  Contractions were only every 3-4 minutes at that point so they kept upping the pitocin drip until contractions were every 2 minutes and then things started moving.  By 1:00 I was about 4-5 cm and I think John and I both had tears in our eyes when they confirmed that we would indeed be having the baby today! 

The nurse called for the doctor to come break my water and also ordered the epidural.  I'm glad she called for the epidural when she did because it sure took awhile for him to get over to our room.  But once it was done it was only two contractions and everything felt better!  I was having the bad back labor again so it was a welcomed relief.  By 5:00 or so I was dilated to 8 or 9.  Things kept progressing and I was ready to start pushing by 6:10. 

The pushing this time around only lasted 2 hours and 10 minutes but had its own set of hurdles.  It didn't take too long for the pressure on my bottom to get really strong so it felt like I had to poop the whole time.  My legs were up in some stirrups that seemed really high for me and just added to the pain.  I was pushing so hard that I actually had to stop and throw up twice.  I just had a few sips of water but couldn't even keep that down.  Our doctor kept stopping in and out to see how the pushing was progressing.  I'm glad she was able to stay and deliver Owen even though she wasn't the on-call doctor that evening.  One thing that she discovered was that originally Owen was face up in the birthing canal and they were worried of how he was going to come out.  They were also concerned because when I was pushing Owen's heartbeat kept dipping down low and took a while to come back up.  Both of these problems were solved with having me push laying on my left side.  Owen seemed less stressed and by having me make that turn he actually turned himself around to face down!

Everything seemed to stabilize and our doctor went back to the clinic to do paperwork and the nurse was told to call when I was getting close.  My original labor nurse's shift had ended and we got a new nurse to help me with the pushing.  She annoyed me just a little because while I was trying to push during the contractions she kept telling me I was doing it wrong and it would throw me off.  I remember the nurse making a comment around 8:10 that "yeah, you'll probably be pushing at least another half hour."  That was all I had to hear and I was determined to get him out sooner than that.  My next contraction I pushed really hard and Owen's head made a drastic move and slid right past the pubic bone and I could feel his head ready to pop right out.  I had to stop pushing immediately and the nurse called the doctor to come ASAP.  That was the longest 2 1/2 minutes ever!

When the doctor finally showed up we began pushing again and next discovered that the umbilical cord was wrapped pretty tightly around Owen's neck.  John originally wanted to cut the cord but in this instance that wasn't an option.  The doctor almost cut her own finger in the process.  When Owen finally made it out he was completely white and was not crying.  His apgar score was only a 1 and we were a little worried over his condition.  They had about four nurses working on him and finally we heard his first cry!  It turns out that Megan actually heard his first cry too.  They were going to get an update on my progress when Megan heard me say something, stopped at the door and then heard the baby!

I had to then deliver the placenta and get stitched up since I tore a little delivering Owen.  Our doctor took one look at him and asked me how many more big babies I want to come out of there!  All the nurses were surprised at how big he was and commented that "he just kept coming and coming".  Next it was time for me to feed him and then at about 9:45 or so all of our family that had been waiting for hours and hours were finally able to come meet their new brother/nephew/cousin/grandson.

 

We were moved into our postpartum room around 11pm and I was regaining feeling back into my legs after the epidural and could take some baby steps on our own.  We actually ended up in the same recovery room that we were in with Megan!  Welcome to our lives, little big guy!