There and Back Again... : Surprise!

Instead of writing about 37 weeks, or 38 weeks, or even 39 and 40 weeks, I think I will write about the birth of Lukas. I'm not really going to censor anything, so if you don't want the dirty details, spare yourself the read. ;)

Tuesday, July 9th, was a very unusual day for Simon and I. The day started off pretty normal, went to work, wobbled around, the usual. However, for a few days I had been having a much heavier discharge than normal. I decided, after much frustration with it, that I should call my OB and find out what to do. For most of the evening I really thought they were just going to tell me that because of being almost full term, the pressure of the baby on my bladder was making me pee. When I chatted with the receptionist at the OB office, she suggested I go to the hospital and get checked out just in case.

So, I finished work, took the train home, ate dinner with my husband, packed a quick "just in case" hospital bag while my husband had a shower and then off we headed to the hospital where they would, surly, tell me I was having bladder issues and to stop peeing myself.

Things went much differently! I was admitted and hooked up to monitors to do a non-stress test. The nurses were doing some tests to make sure that I wasn't leaking amniotic fluid. My husband and I were reading while waiting for them to tell us to go home. Then, all of a sudden alarms started to sound and my little boys heart rate plummeted from 133/bpm to 60/bpm in seconds. In minutes there were 4 nurses and a doctor in my room asking me questions and hooking me up to an IV, putting bracelets on me, and asking me to change position. No? Try this position. No? Try this one. Finally his heart rate picked up again and things calmed down a little. The doctor did a cervical check I overheard them talking about "what to do with me" in the hall. I started to get very overwhelmed.

Eventually one of the nurses came in and told me that they were waiting for a room in Labour & Delivery to open up because I was going to be having a baby that night (!).

We got to L&D and I was hooked up with more monitors and watched closely to make sure baby was doing ok. He was very demanding! Only liked it if I was on my left side. The contractions started to kick in a little harder (up until this point I wasn't feeling any contractions, the nurses would ask "how about now." To which I responded "I'm having a contraction?".) I made it to 2 - 3 cm dilated on my own, but wasn't making much progress after that. The contractions were getting pretty strong and I knew that i wanted an epidural anyway, so my nurse found the anesthesiologist and he got me hooked up to a nice epidural drip. Amazing. I looooved the epidural. Then they decided to hook me up to something to help move things along but baby didn't like that and his heart rate started to dip again. The doctors were saying that he was too little to handle the stronger contractions and I would likely need a c-section. The c-section team was on stand-by while my delivering doctor decided to do one more cervical check just to make sure baby was doing ok and what decision to make, and in the process ruptured the rest of my water (I guess they thought it was already fully ruptured?). After this happened, I went from 3cm dilated to 10cm in 40 minutes. It was time to start pushing.

It took about two hours to push, and near the end his heart rate, again, started to dip, so she wanted to get him out fast, which led to a lovely episiotomy. In planning my birth, I told myself that whatever got my baby out safely was the kind of delivery I wanted. Whatever they had to do was fine with me. I. Had come to terms with vacuums and c-sections and inductions, and, I thought, episiotomies. However, when she told me she was going to do it, I had a major meltdown. No no no, I don't want you to cut me. I'm still dealing with trauma from that.

However, I persevered and within minutes I had a beautiful little boy in my arms. He came out (with the cord wrapped around his neck twice), screaming! Yay for screaming babies! I would have liked a little more skin to skin, but he was premature and needed to be taken to the NICU right away.

July 10, 2013, at 11:26am, we welcomed our 5lb 2.8oz little boy, Lukas Reilly, into the world and he is perfect!