Jack's Birth Story

As you know, we were scheduled to be induced on Monday since we were several days past the due date. On Sunday I was having some contractions, but nothing too painful or consistent. We were just settling in to call it a night (actually Jason was already asleep on the couch) when my water broke at 9:30pm. We packed up our stuff, called Jason's sister to come pick up Maggie, and we were off to the hospital.

When we got checked in, I was still a little over 1 cm dilated, much to my dismay. The contractions started almost as soon as we got there and very quickly got painful and closer and closer together. At 12:45am, I was about 2 cm dilated, and by 1:30am, I had vomited a couple times and I thought I might die, so I got my epidural, during which I vomited again. They checked me shortly after that and I was 3 cm dilated and 100% effaced.

We were just settling down to get some rest - I was actually pretty tired - when the nurse rushed in the room followed by another nurse saying Jack's heart rate had dropped. They frantically called for the Resident and eventually the "3rd Year," which I assume is a doctor more experienced than a Resident. They put the monitors inside instead of on my belly so they could more closely monitor the baby, and they were making me roll from one side to the other about every 30 seconds. They also gave me a shot of Terbutaline to stop my contractions. Apparently they were too strong and too close together and little Jack wasn't handling it well. That was VERY scary, but as Jason pointed out, we were in the right place and if it really got bad, they'd knock me out and take him out immediately.

After that drama was over, I of course couldn't sleep, choosing instead to stare intently at the baby's heart rate monitor and freak out any time it dipped even slightly. By 3:45 am, I was 5 cm dilated, but I was numb from my shoulders to my knees (higher than an epidural should be). They reduced the epidural so I could feel my arms again, so I started feeling more pressure. Still nothing like before, so I was not complaining.

At 4:30, they decided to inject some kind of fluid into my cervix to reduce the pressure around the baby - they said each contraction was causing his heart rate to drop, so they were afraid the umbilical cord was being compressed. That seemed to help, so they decided to start the Pitocin. They increased my doses of Pitocin very slightly every hour or so to make sure Jack could handle it, and I got up to 6 cm.

Then at 7:30 am we had another scare - same thing as before - and they stopped the Pitocin completely. After awhile, they slowly started the Pitocin up again, but after several hours, I was still at 6 cm. At 11:30 am they said I was having a c-section. When your water breaks, you only have 24 hours before the baby has to come out because of risk of infection, so they didn't want to wait since I was making such slow progress. I cried when they told me because I really wanted to experience pushing and a vaginal delivery, but I got over it quickly because obviously the most important thing is a healthy baby!

They came in almost immediately to get me prepped for surgery, and the anesthesiologist gave me a LOT of numbing stuff through my epidural. Unfortunately she hadn't read my chart first to see that my epidural was in too high, so I almost immediately couldn't feel my arms and I could barely breathe. They put an oxygen mask on me and put a spring in their step to get me to surgery ASAP (or should I say STAT?). I was really scared - every breath and every time I tried to talk took a lot of effort, and they said if I really couldn't breathe, they'd put a tracheotomy in - eek!

We got to surgery and I was in and out of consciousness the whole time - I could barely keep my eyes open. At one point I needed to swallow and couldn't so they had to suction my throat. The whole thing was so scary.

The baby emerged at 12:45 pm and my doctor announced "It's a Jack!" Yay!!!!

I kind of half watched, half dozed while they got him all cleaned up and weighed and checked out. His APGAR scores were really high, like 8 and 9 I think.

There are a few things from the haze that I do remember:
-Every time I looked over, Jason was cuddling little Jack so close to him with a huge smile on his face.
-As my doctor was sewing me up he said "Annie, you might want to pick a smaller husband next time," to which Jason replied "but then he wouldn't be so handsome." My doctor's response: "Maybe a more modest one too."
-The song Holiday Road was playing when Jack was born. This is ironic because we called him Fletch the whole pregnancy after the Chevy Chase movie, and Holiday Road is from National Lampoon's Vacation, also a Chevy Chase movie. Crazy.

After I was all put back together, I threw up, and they immediately took out my epidural (normally with a c-section, they leave it in for 2 days). That turned out to be a blessing because they gave me morphine instead, which they took me off of Tuesday morning, so I was up and about, showered and in my own clothes by Tuesday afternoon.

So that's the story of how our little Jack came into this world. A little scary at times, but he is a perfectly healthy little guy and I'd do it all over in a heartbeat.