38 Week Birth Story

July 31, 2009 was suppose to be just like any other day.

The night before Ben and I enjoyed a spur of the moment date at our favorite Thursday evening farmers market. We walked around, ate some gyros and did some shopping while enjoying the beautiful weather. Little did we know this would be our last night as a family of two.

I was 38 weeks and 1 day pregnant on July 31, 2009. I had just been to the doctor the morning before and had zero progress. I decided to work from home on the 31st. I started my morning off with a little housework, decided to type out my full maternity leave plan for work, made brownies to drop off to Ben at work, and then around 4:00 pm I decided to take a nap. I slept for about a half hour and woke up feeling better than I had in weeks. I got up out of bed and was getting ready to leave for the grocery store when all of the sudden my water broke. I know everybody can have different experiences with their water breaking, but mine was like in the movies, it broke and EVERYTHING was soaked in a matter of seconds!!!

After having a minor freak out, that the baby was coming now, I called Ben, my OB, and my mom. Ben rushed home from work, we put our last minute essentials in our bags and headed to the hospital. Once arriving they immediately admitted me since there was no doubt I was in labor since my water broke. My labor nurse got us all set up in our room and proceed to check to see if I was dilated. I dealt with a extremely posterior cervix during my pregnancy, meaning that it was super hard for the doctors to reach and sometimes almost impossible to feel. After much discomfort for me and a lot of trying on the nurses part, she was unable to feel my cervix (she said that had never happened to her before) so she called the OB on call so she could come in and try. While we waited for the OB, I had an ultrasound preformed to make sure the baby was head down, the nurse was unable to tell by feeling and wanted to confirm. The ultrasound confirmed that the baby was head down and looking good. Shortly after the ultrasound the OB arrived and also had an extremely difficult time finding my cervix, after a lot of screaming and crying on my part (this was literally the worst part of giving birth for me) she was able to find it and tell us I was 3 cm. dilated. Thankfully the OB said because of the extreme location of my cervix I was not to be checked again until after I had my epidural.

By now it was around 7:00 pm. I was feeling really great, even though the monitor said I was having regular contractions I was only feeling slight cramping. My OB wanted me to labor a bit on my own and then start me on Pitocin at 10:00 pm so I would hopefully have a baby by noon the next day. Ben and I spent the next several hours leisurely walking the hallways and talking with my parents. I was able to take a nice long hot shower before they stared my IV at 10:00 pm. My parents said their good-byes and my nurse came in to get my IV line in so we could start the Pitocin. After a bit of a struggle with the the insertion of the IV, the Pitocin was started and an epidural was ordered, as we needed to see how far dilated I was.

My contractions were getting closer together, but I still could not feel them. I chatted with Ben and my labor nurse while we waited for the anesthesiologist to come. Shortly after midnight the Anesthesiologist made his way into my room and started the epidural procedure. Everything went smoothly until a few minutes after the epidural was started and my blood pressure plummeted. I was put on oxygen and the epidural was stopped. We had to make sure the medicine was not making my blood pressure drop. I also explained to the nurse and the anesthesiologist that I tend to pass out, especially if my blood sugar gets low (seriously it is odd for a year to go by without me passing out at least once, and usually at the most inconvenient of times) and I had not eaten anything in over 12 hours. So we slowly started to administer the epidural again with no problems.

I was having a hard time telling if the epidural was working as I still was not feeling any contractions when we started it. The nurse assured me it was working because I was having strong contractions every 1-2 minutes. My nurse checked to see if I had made any progress, and I was now dilated to 5 cm. Since labor seemed to be going at a pretty normal pace Ben and I decided to get some sleep as it was now already 2 am and we did not expect to have a baby before morning.

I tried to get comfortable but was having the labor shakes so bad it was hard for me to get any sleep. At 2:25 my nurse came in to check me and I told her I was feeling a ton of pressure. She checked me and I was at 10 cm. Yep, I went from 5 cm to 10 cm in 25 minutes. I think we fooled everybody, because nobody thought I would deliver that night. After quickly getting the room set up and the OB called, I started pushing. I pushed for about 20 minutes, when I had to stop because the baby was coming too fast and the OB was not there yet. After waiting about 15 minutes, my OB showed up. 15 short minutes later at 3:26 a.m. Drake was born. He weighed in at 7 lbs 6 0z and was 19 1/2 inches long.

I did have an episiotomy, and while they were sewing me up, and Drake was over with Ben getting weighed and measured, my labor nurse told me that when Drake was born he had a true knot in his umbilical cord.This occurs in approximately 1% of pregnancies and can cause various complications throughout the pregnancy (miscarriage, stillbirth, and complications during delivery) They had no idea how long Drake had the knot in his cord, but he did have a very long umbilical cord and that can be a factor in developing the knot.

You want to know something crazy? I knew a true knot was bad after they told me that he had it, but I never had the courage to research it until I wrote this post…9 months later. When I found out all the information above, I was shaken to the core with what could have been. We are so thankful and lucky we had the outcome we did and Drake suffered no complications from the knot. I thank God everyday for this amazing blessing!

We stayed in hospital for 2 more nights, enjoying the company of great friends, the excitement and joy of our family meeting our son for the first time and the helpfulness of the hospital staff. I enjoyed every second of our experience and will truly cherish it forever.

August 1, 2009 was a day we will never forget.
Katie
sassysillyspunkymomma.com

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