Sunday night I didn’t sleep very well and when I woke up Monday morning I felt like I was having mild cramps. No big deal, so I went to work. I decided to start timing them and low-and-behold, they were steadily 30 seconds long and 8 minutes apart. I figured maybe I should go home from work and try to move up my appointment.
Garen and I went to the doctor at 11am and I was still contracting steadily. I had dilated to 2cm, still at 75% effaced. He told us to go walk the mall to move things along, but to head to Labor and Delivery if my contractions got stronger/faster/closer or if they continued as is for the rest of the day. Around 3pm things were still the same, except the contractions were lasting 60 seconds. So off to L/D we went. They monitored me for 4 hours in this awful shared room area, where we could hear other people and they could here us. When we came in, some poor woman was screaming “Save me Jesus!” and Garen looked at me with this pale, strickened look. He said, “Yours aren’t that bad, we could go back home still!” Around 7:30 pm, when my doctor checked me, I was contracting 80-90 seconds every 4.5 minutes, I was still at 2cm, but was now 90% effaced, so they went ahead and admitted me.
They moved us to our own room and out in an IV. Around 8:30, my doctor came in to break my water. He told me that should speed things up a bit with my cervix, but it would also make my contractions a bit more intense. That was the understatement of the year. My next contraction was absolutely (and unexpectedly) awful. I went from moderately painful contractions that I could breathe through, to curling up in the fetal position and screaming and yelling profanities. Garen refers to this period as the “exorcism”. After 3 contractions, I looked at the nurse and yelled “EPIDERAL”! She took off running, I think she was actually shocked at how much my pain had changed. It took about 30-40 minutes of pure hell before they showed up to do the epi. They made Garen leave the room (apparently a lot of “support persons” pass out when the epi is given). It took about 2 contractions to administer, and 2 more contractions to be completely, and blessedly numb! I apologized to and the nurses and they went to page Garen. He didn’t come back so the nurse went to look for him and said he wasn’t in the waiting room. I figured he’d gone outside to call someone. Well about 30 minutes later I paged a nurse to go and find him again. He was in the waiting room this time panicked that something had gone wrong with the epi because it had been an hour! He had been in the hallway, not the waiting room, and the nurses had missed him!
Around 10 they came in and started the pitocin to speed things up. Garen and I were told we were going to have a long night, so we went to sleep. A little after 11 pm, 2 nurses came running in the room and turned me on my left side and started me on oxygen. Apparently Lucas’s heart rate had dropped to 70! They had it back up in a matter of moments, but turned off the pitocin and told me I’d be on oxygen for the rest of labor. It really scared us. They also put an internal monitor on him to more steadily watch his heartbeat. They checked me again and I was fully effaced and I’d finally gotten to 3cm! Once again, we were told it would be a long night, but after this scare we couldn’t sleep. A little after midnight, another nurse came in to empty my bladder. She checked me again and said I was at 8cm! So much for it being a long night! From there things moved very fast and Garen and I didn’t have much time to think.
At 1:15am another nurse came in, checked me, and said it was time to start pushing! The nurse was awesome telling me what to do and when to do it. She asked Garen if he wanted to look, and he said no. She asked if he was sure, so he went to look. He shouldn’t have looked. He had to go sit down, and since I had taken my oxygen off to push, he picked it up and used it. The nurse told him to go sit down and put his head between his legs! Then she paged the doctor because Lucas’s heart rate would drop when I pushed. My doctor arrived and said we needed to use the vacuum to help get him out because of his heart rate. It only took a few more pushes, and Lucas Mercer entered the world at 1:48am, on Tuesday, March 25. He was 8 lbs and 12.5 ounces, 20.5” long, and absolutely perfect! They let me hold him right away, for about 10 minutes before they took him to the nursery. Garen got to go with him for the first part. When he came back he said they were going to bring him back in an hour.
After an hour they still hadn’t brought him back! I called the nursery and they said he was breathing too fast and they would bring him back when his breathing reached 60 breathes per minute. It took 2 ½ hours total (and 3 phone calls!) By that time, Lucas was tired and didn’t want to breastfeed!! It took 30 minutes to get him to latch on to 1 side, and we couldn’t get him to do the other side. Things are much better now. Lucas could clean a fish tank! It is pretty painful though and my milk still hasn’t come in. Yesterday we had to start supplementing with ½ an ounce of formula after each feeding because his weight had dropped to 8 lbs and 1 oz.
Our pediatrician found a heart murmur and after a few tests, they told us Lucas has 2 VSDs, which are small holes in the lower chamber of the heart. Otherwise he is completely healthy. They are hopeful that the holes will close on their own. Apparently this is very common (1 in 1000 babies) and not a big deal. But hearing that anything is wrong with your baby is really hard. We go for a follow up with a pediatric cardiologist at Vanderbilt in a month.
We came home yesterday. Lucas is the light of our lives and we are so happy! When things settle down a bit, I’ll post more pictures and this blog can change from a pregnancy blog, to a baby blog!
