Birth Story

Here is the rundown of what happened last week:

So, the one piece of advice I would have for expectant couples that are going to give birth at a hospital would be, if you go to the hospital for fetal testing any time around or after your due date, assume you're staying. Andrea & I went in to the hospital on Monday afternoon for some heart monitoring because she was past her due date at that point. The doctors noticed that the baby's heart rate sometimes decreased after a contraction, which apparently is a bad thing. Despite the fact that it didn't happen every time, they admitted us into the hospital at that time and said that the labor should be induced because the baby could be under stress. This kind of put us off our game from the start, because we really weren't ready to go into the hospital for the birth at that time. The bag was packed, but at home & not with us. And, we hadn't finished collecting all of the stuff we wanted to bring along. We assumed that Andrea would go into labor and we would have several hours at home to assemble everything before going to the hospital.

We were admitted Monday afternoon, and of course from then on, Andrea wasn't allowed to eat anything. Had we known, we would have had her eating a lot at home before going in. As it was, she only had a light lunch before going in.

We really didn't want to induce labor, but they talked us into getting started with a suppository that would help soften the cervix & hopefully help labor get started on its own. That worked to a certain extent and Andrea had somewhat stronger contractions through that night (so not much sleep). We were able to get the wireless unit going so that the heart rate could be monitored during labor (and Andrea could walk, etc), but we couldn't use it for long. About 11:50, they noticed another heart rate decrease & the place paniced for a few minutes. They hooked an electrode to the baby's head so they could get better heart rate readings, but that meant that we were stuck with the wired heart rate monitor for the rest of labor. About 12:30 her water broke & contractions got stronger after that, but were never very regular.

They started her on Pitocin at about 4:30am and that worked to strengthen contractions. She labored as best as she could, considering her limited ability to move and increasing tiredness from lack of sleep, until 3:00pm when she was 6cm dialated. The contractions through that period were not regular either. She'd get 2 in a row and then none for several minutes, so we didn't really know what stage we were in. Finding out that she was only at 6cm took the wind out of her sails and she agreed to get the epidural. That went really well (the doctors who did it were great) and she was able to sleep for a few hours.

Andrea started pushing somewhere around 11pm and kept it up until past 2:30am. Her contractions rarely got closer than 8 minutes apart, which lengthened things out a lot I think. After this much pushing, the baby was still a long way from the finish line and Andrea had nothing left, so we had the c-section. We were both really out of it by that time after going so long without much sleep, but the team of doctors did a great job with it, from what I could tell.

Anyway, that's basically it. As I mentioned, the baby was born Wednesday morning at 3:20am. She's healthy now, so that's the most important thing.