Delivery

Tuesday morning I woke up at around three thirty in the morning, like every other morning to go the bathroom. After I got back in bed I had my first real contrition, I was not a fan. After that they came regularly about five minutes apart, on my third contraction my water broke. I decided that it was time to go to the hospital. We got to the hospital around four thirty. We checked in, they checked my progress and I was three cm dilated and 50% effaced. They checked the fluid and sure enough my water had broken so I got to stay. The nurse said I couldn’t have an epidural until I started showing progress. I decided to try and encourage this progress by walking around. An hour later I was four cm and the epidural was ordered. By seven thirty the epidural was in and I was happy. I slept on and off for the next four hours. I was only awaken by nurse coming to check on us and when the baby’s heart rate dropped. It dropped twice and they ended up putting in a scalp electrode so that they could monitor the heart rate more accurately. By eleven thirty I was dilated to a nine and almost completely effaced. Around twelve thirty I started pushing. And I pushed and pushed and pushed and not much was happening. My parents got there at around one forty five. At around two they decided to start me on pitocin to help me progress. I pushed more, nothing. By around three thirty the doctor came to check on me, he told me that I was not progressing, and that I had three options. One, he could perform a C-section, two I could try for a little longer, three he could help the baby come out with either the use of a vacuum or the forceps. He recommended using the forceps so that’s what we did. After everything was set up, it took five pushed to get him out. Justin did very well, his job was to tell everyone if it was a boy or a girl. Because I had been pushing for so long and the fact that his heart rate had been dropping and they had to use forceps the NICU nurses had to be there. Dr. Packem is fairly new to the area and is one of the only doctors who is trained in forcep deliveries, so some of the nurses wanted to watch which was fine by me, I wanted to watch too but I was a little busy. Brock was born at 4:07pm, he had the cord wrapped around his neck which is why his heart rate kept dropping and he wouldn’t come out on his own. He was a little blue at first but he pinked right up. His apgar was an 8, so the NICU nurses didn’t have to stay long. We stayed for a day at the hospital. He was 7 pounds 5 oz, and 20 in long.
It was hard for me being in the hospital as a patient. I sometimes have dreams of call lights going off all night, and that night they were really going off all night. Luckily I got the VIP room because I work at the hospital. The nurses I worked with on peds came down and decorated the room and stopped by to say hi. The nurse who was on that night is a girl who I went to school with at BYU-I. She was in my group on my humanities tour when we spent a month in Europe. She was great and made me a hand mold and footprints. Over all it went fine, it was a little scary at times but I was glad that I didn’t have to have a c-section and that my parents were able to be there for the birth. He is a good baby, he is eating well and sleeps great, plus he is pretty dang cute. He has long arms, legs, fingers and toes. I am not sure who he looks like, we will just have to wait and see.