We just got home around 3 hours ago. Wonderful, but scary, too. Thankfully my wonderful mother is here and will be staying with us for a few days or a week to help out - thank Maude we all get along great and it's truly a joy to have her around.
So the abbreviated birth story is... they admitted me to the Birthplace Monday a little before noon. The plan was to have my doc break my water as soon as she was available, and see if that got things moving. It didn't. So the new plan was to get an epidural, then begin pushing low amounts of pitocin & gradually ramping up the dosage to move things along as needed ( I was still only dilated 2 cm and the contractions weren't getting closer together - though they were getting much, much more painful). But just as the pitocin began working it's charm, my epidural wore off. The anesthetist thought she might have been a little off-center the first time around and she was right. So we got a 2nd epidural (around 5 pm?) - and once they confirmed it was a really good block they started to ramp up the pitocin. The Fry's vitals were great up to that point, but sometime around 6pm I think his heartrate begain dipping right *after* the contractions which apparently is a "very bad sign". Then it REALLY dipped - from about 135 to 60 and all of a sudden the room got VERY crowded and I got an oxygen mask to "help the baby". I was half looped from the drugs (some kind of morphine derivative I think on top of the epidural) so the details are sketchy - but remember the crushing disappointment when I heard the worst from the doc - she thought I should get a C-section immediately, but offered to wait 15 minutes to see if things began to improve first. I'd been very calm and feeling decidedly zen (thanks in no part to the drugs) beforehand but this was devestating.
I felt like such a failure... we didn't care too much about having a "perfect" natural birth plan but the one thing we did feel strongly about was we did not want to do a C-section. A few years ago my best friend had tragically lost her first baby *at* delivery even after having an emergency C-section (placenta had detached from the uterus) . Of course the following 2 babies had to be delivered via C-section as well; and during the last one we nearly lost her due to massive bleeding. So needless to say I've always been very aware that even with full advantage of today's modern medicine bad things can still happen. As a result the one thing I was fearful of with this pregnancy was being wheeled unconscious into an operating room.
Anyway - I opted to give it another 15 minutes, but then the next 2 contractions I felt a really strange, almost losing conscious wave-like feeling that coincided with the dips in the babie's heartrate. So the fear kicked in and I changed my mind & said "never mind - let's do it now". Then they told me I would be completely aware - they'd just expand the epidural I already had and wouldn't put me under. And Curt could scrub in, of course. Which was a huge relief.
Surgery went perfectly fine - I was numb from the chest down and fully aware. The Fry arrived screaming as they pulled him out of his cozy little nest. He was alert and beautiful from the start. Color was peachy-pink, he had a head full of dark hair and no conehead. They couldn't find any tell-tale sign of what caused his distress. Cord wasn't around his neck, placenta was perfectly attached and there was nothing wrong with him. They think he was just too far post-term and his skull had already partially fused... so it couldn't squish as it needed to get into the birth canal. He's got a little triange-shaped bruise mark on his forehead that seems to support that theory.
More tomorow - I'm exhausted. Thanks for all your well-wishes. I feel so blessed to have such a booster section of support in my corner.
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