Final Entry
Okay, so I was HORRIBLE about keeping up my blogging at the end of my pregnancy, so this blog is to catch up & to sum up what happened on D-Day!
The last few months of the pregnancy were LONG! We had lots of appts and sonograms tracking my low lying placenta and eventually tracking progress towards delivery. My placenta didn’t move enough for a planned vaginal delivery until mid-July…talk about waiting until the last minute! Anyway, when the sonogram showed that it had moved enough and that Mason was healthy, the waiting game was on. We had due dates tossed around anywhere from mid-July to mid-August, so we really didn’t know what was going to happen!
I had contractions for weeks and lost my mucus plug several weeks before Mason ended up coming. At my doctor’s appts, I was not making any progress, which was pretty discouraging…
Finally, on August 12, I had my weekly checkup& I am not ashamed to say that I was reduced to tears when the dr told me I had still not made progress! He said he wanted to wait another week or so to induce, and I was not happy! I tried not to lose it, but he could tell that I was upset, and Randal was upset too…he finally told the dr he just couldn’t see me like that very much longer! We finally settled on inducing 2 days later, as it was the only day that fit into the dr’s schedule…we finally had a light at the end of the tunnel! J
I went to work on Wednesday to make sure everything was in order and we spent that evening at home just finishing packing and preparing for our exciting day! I couldn’t have anything to eat after midnight that night, so we ate dinner at home and I baked some cookies to keep my mind occupied J
The next morning, on August 14, we arrived at the hospital at 7:00 am for our induction. They had me hooked up to the IV of pitocin by 8, and we were on our way! We loved our nurses - we had a nurse that was shadowing another and she spent the whole day in just our room (7 to 7). We were in good spirits all morning and made ourselves at home in our room. The nurses liked the cookies, so we gave them away all morning while I snacked on ice chips! Asa and Cody came to visit before things got bad and we kept everyone else up to date on the phone (not that there was much to update on at this point).
The Schafers’ friend Ruthie that works at Wesley came up to see us right before lunch time to check on us and asked me if I was having contractions. I said no and, when I did, the nurses laughed at me and told me that I was. Apparently they just weren’t bad enough, but they said that I had been having them for a while. I had those for a few hours before I really started to feel them and get uncomfortable.
Kelli came up on her lunch break and brought Randal some food. Our moms came up after they worked a half day at work and sat in our room with us for a while until the contractions started getting stronger.
I was not making hardly any progress, so around 1:30 or so, they broke my water to try and speed things up a little bit. Unfortunately, it still took a lot of time to work! I started getting more uncomfortable early in the afternoon and by around 3 everyone left the room as my contractions were starting to ramp up. I did okay with them until about 5, when I still hadn’t made any progress, but my contractions were getting stronger and stronger. I decided that I couldn’t handle not making any progress and asked for an epidural.
The epidural was a monster of its own!!! They had to insert it 3 times to get it right and during mine, they had an emergency in a room down the hall that we had to listen to and it was pretty scary! The epidural took effect pretty quickly and within a half an hour I was happy and making jokes again! That lasted a couple of hours, we changed nurses at 7 and then around 8 I started to feel my contractions again and realized that my epidural was wearing off on the right side of my body…about that same time Mason’s heart rate started to drop during my contractions and they had to put an oxygen mask on me which helped. They tried to catch my epidural back up but I was transitioning too quickly at that point, as I had FINALLY been making good progress! They backed the epidural off a little so that I wasn’t just feeling it on one side, so for the next few hours I was feeling pretty much everything which was a complete bummer!!!
They had to put internal monitors on Mason and I some time between 9 and 10 b/c his heart rate was disappearing from the external monitors during contractions. This finally helped and we were able to keep tabs on him the rest of the way. Just before 10 my contractions ramped up big time and they checked me and I was dilated to 9 1/2… almost there! Around that time, I started to feel like I needed to push, but they told me that I couldn’t until I was at 10…they kept checking and I just couldn’t get there, but it was SO HARD not to push!!!
Finally, right around 11, they told me that the dr was on the way and that we could start pushing!!! I was SO relieved! The nurse took me through a few pushes while the dr got in and got set up and then we continued. After a while, they noticed that I was starting to tear and cut me in order to prevent further damage. I was really light headed and felt completely out of it as I had been on oxygen for several hours and hadn’t eaten in over 24 hours! I finally made them take the oxygen mask off and was able to get my bearings together a little bit! I pushed for a little while longer and then they had to use the forceps to help Mason out. At 11:33pm, we finally had our baby! I was watching the clock in the room the whole time I was pushing, thinking that he better come out that day! J
After they had checked him out and made sure he was alright, we got to meet Mason J After that, while they were cleaning him up, they fixed me up. While they were working on me, the clamp on the umbilical cord must have slipped and the drs all got sprayed by blood – it went all over, but we knew it was okay when they all started laughing J Anyway, they got everything cleaned up and our family was allowed to come in. They all held him and checked on us and then went home as it had been a long day!
They finished cleaning Mason up and then helped me get cleaned up, etc and then they moved us to our recovery room around 3:30. By the time we got up there and got to sleep, we had been there for almost 24 hours. I didn’t get real food until breakfast that morning at 7 and food has never tasted so good! J We stayed at the hospital all day Friday and then got to come home Saturday afternoon.
Well that’s our story – now it’s just a mad dash to keep up with how fast the little guy changes and grows every day. |
On my way into the parking lot, a guy in a Honda Civic rear ended me, sending my car spinning into Sonic - thankfully there were no cars parked in the last few stalls at the time, bc I would have taken them out! Mason seems okay and has been plenty active since w/ no bleeding or fluid loss or anything, so I think we got out of it w/ just a little whiplash, but it was pretty scary! 