Chad and I arrived at Deaconess Medical Center at 7am on Saturday, December 26th. We were checked into our room and at 7:30 our nurse (Zibby) came in to get me set up with a bag of fluids through the IV and the monitors for the contraction and baby’s heart rate. Not much later she started the Petocin, starting low and increasing slowly. It was pretty boring and slow going for a while and Chad and I regretted not bringing any cards. At one point I looked over and Chad was sitting there tapping his foot to the sound of Leah’s heartbeat. During this time we finalized the middle name and its spelling. My contractions started happening more frequently but they weren’t painful. At most they were a little uncomfortable, like the ones I’d already been having for the last month.
I think it was somewhere around 11:00 Dr Hechtman came in and broke my water. It wasn’t nearly as painful as I expected. Right after that we expected things to speed up so we went ahead and got the epidural in even though I still wasn’t in pain. An internal monitor (more accurate) was now in place for the contractions and Chad was telling me how big and long they were getting…I couldn’t feel a thing. Maybe some chills from time to time but that’s it. My legs were so numb and I couldn’t even move my right leg on my own. The epidural made me feel lazy. I couldn’t sleep, but I just laid there. I kind of wished I could feel SOMETHING.
After a little while we started noticing decelerations in Leah’s heartrate. Every time I had a contraction we would have a deceleration, sometimes down to about 70. This concerned Zibby but she didn’t panic. She said she wanted someone from the Nic U down to help for the delivery just in case. I don’t know what time it was (probably around 2:30) I started to feel the “pressure”. Actually it started to hurt a little, but only on me left side. I felt like she was prying on a bone. So Dr Hechtman came in and the pushing began. After I guess half an hour of “push push push!” and “harder harder harder!” Leah finaly came out. She was perfectly healthy, but came out sunnyside up to the surprise of the doctor. She had her cord wrapped around her neck which explained the blood pressure drops with the contractions. She was born at 3:14pm and was 7lbs, 12oz, 13 ¾ in head (ouch!) and 21” long. He has a head of hair, but it’s lighter than Autumn’s was. She had a little cone head from pushing up against my pelvic bone. That must have been the feeling on my left side. All the checks came out well and we’re both healthy. Recovery for me is going much better than it did with Autumn and we’re happy to be home!
Chad and Autumn:
