Birth Story of Baby Daniel

Okay, here it goes... the day of delivery!

Monday, May 7th.

8:30am- Membrane strip 3cm dilation 80% effacement
go home, bounce on ball, walk around, get some food
11:00am- Membrane strip 4cm dilation 80% effacement
Dr tells me to check in to Labor and Delivery

Because I was tested positive for Group B Strep they wanted to have about 2 doses of penicillin in my system before the baby came.  This meant they had to do an induction.

At about 11:45am we got checked in to the hospital.  They started me on a low dose of pitocin and a diluted dose of penicillin.  They had to change the pitocin level because the contractions that came were a little too hard and too close already.  I was doing okay, bouncing on the ball, watching tv with David, but all within the confines of the tubes in my arm.
Mmmm... lime flavored ice chips
And some more...

4:00pm- Second dose of penicillin.  It BURNED so bad!  I have to admit that I cried.  More lime flavored ice chips.  At this point I was about 4+cm dilation and 90% effaced but my cervix was still a little high.

5:00pm- Dr arrives at the hospital, does a check, and decides to break my water.  YOWZA the contractions started hurting like crazy!
I tried to breathe through it but I literally could not catch my breath because I was crying so hard from the pain.
I had originally planned on trying to do a med-free delivery but as you can read this is already turning out to not go according to plan.
At this point I was struggling to breathe and my mom kept telling me that I don't have to try to be superwoman and go without the epidural.  When the nurses walked out and I was still struggling to catch my breath I decided to get the epidural because I didn't think I could go much further without it.

5:30pm- Anesthesiologist arrives with the epidural cart and walks me through every step he has to go through to administer it.  That man was amazing.  So smart and kind.  I really appreciated him telling me exactly what he was doing and why he was doing it.  He had to give me a little extra dosage because it wasn't working as fast as he had planned and I was still feeling the contractions hard enough to be uncomfortable.  He figured it was because of my height.  Eventually I was numb enough to get some shut eye.

6:00pm- 5cm, 90% effacement

8:00pm- 7cm, 90% effacement, station 2

10:15pm- 10cm, 100% effaced, ready to push!

I start pushing with the nurse holding one leg and David holding the other (I can't feel my legs so they have to help).  David was seriously the most amazing coach I could have.  He said all the right things through the contractions to push.

11:20pm- My Dr gets pulled out of the room because the woman next door is crowning and needs him to catch the baby ASAP.

11:30pm- Dr is back and says there is no more room to stretch, they will have to do an episiotomy (also something I wanted to avoid).  Cut number 1, push push push... its still too tight to get the baby out.  He has to cut me again.  Cut number 2, push push push.  Dr says the next round of contractions should get the baby out.

I'm watching the clock at this point because May 8th is in about 20 minutes and that is our anniversary. I do not want this baby to come on our anniversary, he needs his own day and we need ours.

David tells me that this is the last round of pushing and we'll have our son here so I give it my all and it worked!

11:47pm- Baby is considered born!  They clear out his passageways, David cuts the cord (go David!), nurses start talking in gibberish about his color and crying.  They give him to me for maybe 20 seconds then take him away too quickly.  They do the weight and length measurements (9lbs 6oz, 23 inches) really quick before they tell me they have to take him to the nursery to do some oxygen treatment because he's not crying the way he should and his color isn't getting pink fast enough.

Look at that hair!  What a surprise!

At least a half an hour passes (sense of time has totally gone out the window at this point) with David and the baby gone from the testing I start getting really anxious.  The nurse is still in with me pressing on my uterus to get blood out, pressing on my bladder to get more urine out, taking my blood pressure and temperature.

After what seems like forever, David and Daniel return.  They give Daniel to me to try to nurse him.  Because of a few different factors he isn't able to latch so my mom tells the nurse to get a nipple shield. She brings one in and he starts eating like a champ.  We also notice more at this point that Daniel has a sub dural hematoma.  The Dr assures me that it should be gone in about 2 weeks.

At this point we're set enough to be able to go to post partom.

The room is TINY, the bed isn't long enough, and David goes home to sleep.  Not a great start to my recovery.  At about 4am the nurses come in to take me to the bathroom.  I didn't know my bladder could hold so much!

I maybe slept a half hour because of all the poking, the short bed, and the sore parts from delivery.

Luckily the next day the daytime nurses were awesome and found me an extension for my bed.  I didn't know relief could be so sweet!

Recovery has been so difficult up to this point between the stitches healing, soreness from pushing, constipation (made worse by the percocet), etc.

Waking up at night isn't as bad as I thought, but I have my moments when I get frustrated.  Luckily Daniel is starting to figure out how to latch without the shield because those things are so annoying!

Anyway, things are getting better and we're loving this long little guy we have.  Here are a cluster of photos for your enjoyment:

Time to go home!

Look at those long legs

He is out after a walk outside

Tummy time with Daddy