On Tuesday, April 26th we went to the doctor for my 40 week appointment. After weeks of begging, bribing and crying, Dr. Firth finally decided I was far enough along to be induced. (Hooray!) After calling the hospital we had a tentative appointment for Friday the 29th at 6:00 am. Chad took off from work early the night before so he could get a little sleep before the big day and we were up and ready to go bright and early Friday morning. After calling to make sure we were still good to come in, though, we were told that they were full (yes, our brand new women's center was completely full!) and there was one other miserably pregnant woman on the list in front of me. I was told to eat a light snack and call back at noon. (So glad I woke up at 5:30 am, right?) So we called my mom and told her to go back to bed for a while and then tried to kill time for another six hours. We went back to sleep for a while, I took a bubble bath, read a book, went shopping with my mom, got pastries for breakfast and still had four hours to go! Somehow we made it through the morning and at 11:30 got a call from the hospital that they had a room open and how soon could we get there? We jumped in the car and were there within 10 minutes (no way was I giving up my room to someone who could get there faster than me!) ready to go.
At about 12:15 pm one of the doctors came in to break my water and get things started. The contractions started within 15 minutes (luckily without the need of any medications) and we were ready to go. I had awesome nurses and doctors this time. I was a little nervous after my hospital experience when Rylee was born, but everyone was amazing. My nurse called the anesthesiologist to start the epidural after the first little grimace I made! (I was terrified about not having the epidural started early enough ... again ... and having to do the whole natural birth thing ... again.) The anesthesiologist was also fantastic, telling us horror stories about fishing trips he had been on while he stuck me with the huge needle. At least Chad was amused! Everyone was very good to keep on top of my pain and I felt great throughout my labor! (Having been on the other end of things I definitely appreciated this very, VERY much.) I even joked with the doctor throughout the pushing stage!
After a couple hours of contractions my nurse decided I wasn't moving quite as fast as she liked (she wanted to see the baby come before her shift ended!) so she started a little bit of Pitocin. That seemed to be the little jump start I needed and things went very quickly after that. When I got to 8cm they decided to page Dr. Firth. He called back and told them he was already in the parking lot, which turned out to be a very good thing because by the time he got upstairs to my room I was ready to push! He got there at about 5:45pm and asked if I could wait long enough for him to go check on another patient. He ran (literally) down the hall and back just in time and Jayden came with only about 20 minutes of pushing.
The only scary part of my whole labor came when I started pushing. He was such an active baby throughout my entire pregnancy and that was no different during labor. They had a hard time monitoring his heart rate during the early parts of labor. He was moving around so much that the monitor couldn't keep a steady reading, but everything seemed ok so no one was too worried. The closer I got to delivery, however, we were able to see that with each contraction his heart rate was dropping pretty low. When I started pushing his heart rate dropped very, very low with each contraction then sped back up really fast between each contraction. The doctor realized that the umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck and this was causing the heart rate problems. He explained that this happened sometimes and that once Jayden's head was out I would just have to stop pushing for a minute while he slipped the cord over the top of his head. Once his head was out, though, Dr. Firth saw that the cord was wrapped not just once, but twice around Jayden's neck. He tried to pull the cord up but it was wrapped too tightly, so he told me what was going on and that I just needed to get Jayden out as quickly as possible so they could get the cord unwrapped. (Luckily I have a wonderful doctor who knows me very well. I knew he was feeling some stress about it, but he was very good to play things down and try to keep me calm while still letting me know that we had to move fast.) With only a couple more pushes Jayden was out and they found the cord wrapped tightly once around his chest as well as twice around his neck. They quickly untangled him and took him straight back to the newborn station to try to get him breathing. Dr. Firth also had the foresight to have someone from the NICU there on standby, so they stepped in and helped get Jayden breathing.
So at last, Jayden Chad Larsen was born at 6:22pm on April 29, 2011 weighing 7 lbs 15 oz and 21 inches long. I was doing well enough this time that Chad got to go take some pictures:
It took Jayden a little while to get settled after the trauma of labor (he was in a little bit of shock for a while). We had to keep pinching him and poking him for the first couple hours to make him cry so that he would get enough oxygen moving through him. After a few minutes with the NICU nurses, though, I finally got to hold him for the first time.
Later that night we were moved upstairs to our recovery room and Jayden was finally holding a temperature warm enough that they could do his bath. They came right in to our room to do it (which they didn't do with Rylee) so I got to see his first bath! I was exhausted and still couldn't move my legs enough to sit up in bed by myself (got to love those epidurals!) but he seemed to like the water and then I got to cuddle him to get him warmed up again after.
After all that had happened it was too late at night for Rylee to come up for a visit, so we sent some pictures and just called to talk to her on the phone. She was having way too much fun at Grandma's house to care anyway! So the next morning Grandma and Rylee came to visit with flowers, treats and a balloon. Rylee was a little nervous at first seeing mommy in the hospital bed, but she climbed up to give me hugs and wanted to see Baby Jayden right away! She had lots of fun holding her new baby brother, but didn't seem to want to get too far away from me while they were there. She loved her new brother from the very beginning and has been such a great big sister!
Later that afternoon Grandma and Grandpa brought Rylee back up to visit for a minute, then Chad took Rylee home for some daddy time while Grandma and Grandpa went out for their anniversary dinner. Ry and daddy had pizza for dinner and watched some tv and Jayden and mommy survived their first few hours alone together! We got feeling a little lonely so Chad brought Ry back up to visit that evening and to tell mommy goodnight before going back to Grandma's house for the night.
Sunday morning Dr. Firth came in early to check on us and do Jayden's procedure before discharging us. Everyone was so impressed with what a calm disposition Jayden has. (They said he didn't even make a sound while they worked on him! He is a tough little guy.) We were ready to go by about 9:30 am and called Grandma to have them meet us at home. We packed Jayden up and took the traditional "going home" pictures before finally going home!
To try to help Rylee adjust to having a new little attention stealer at home we had a little party when we brought Jayden home. Grandma and Grandpa had a present for Rylee - a light-up bike helmet - to go along with the special surprise from Baby Jayden - a big girl bike! (In the weeks since Rylee has mastered the art of peddling and almost figured out the concept of steering!)
Now all that is left is to adjust to life as a family of four!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment