Monday, May 2, 2011

How Dane Came Into the World

After blogging on Thursday my contractions continued to get worse. I walked around the house getting things ready: packing my hospital bag, getting an overnight bag for Dutch to stay with Bah and Honey, and making sure Bo could go too. I called my sisters and mom (but could only get a hold of Heidi). I just wanted to keep moving so I could encourage the contractions.

At about 6:30 Chris still wasn't home from work and hadn't answered any of my texts. I was having contractions about 7 minutes apart and figured we might want to go to the hospital soon. I was still in the first stage of labor, so there wasn't any rush - yet. Chris was in surgery so I called the hospital and got patched through to the Operating Room. I told the woman who answered that I'd like to talk to Dr. Warner's PA Chris Davis. "Have you tried paging him?" she asked. "I'm his wife and I'm in labor. Could you just get him for me?" She laughed and said of course. Luckily the surgery was finished so Chris was able to leave right then.

When Chris got home he didn't believe that I was in labor! He said I wasn't being mean enough.

Anyway, we dropped Dutch and Bo off at Greg and Kellie's house and drove up to Alta View Hospital. They watched me for an hour and I had progressed so they let me stay instead of sending me home. (Side note: I was really not very happy with my delivery nurse. Just know that going in.)

My contractions didn't get too much worse, so Dr. Walker (who is AWESOME!) decided to "break my bag of waters." She came in and did that at about 10:45. And can I just say that the plastic hook they used to break my water was TERRIFYING! THAT THING IS HUGE!

Almost immediately my contractions jumped from being manageable to being completely horrific. I had to lay on my side so they could monitor the baby's heartbeat, which had dropped when my water broke. The pain was so horrible (and I couldn't really move to a more comfortable position) that I called and asked for some pain meds. FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER the dumb nurse came in to give them to me. At this point I knew the baby was coming and that I needed to push. I told her to check me immediately, but she decided to give me the pain meds first. Not good.

The baby was crowning and ready to come out. So basically the pain meds would do nothing to help me and the baby would get the full effect. Not very fair. At 11:37, after the most pain I've ever felt in my life, the baby was here. 6 lbs 6 oz and 18 1/2 inches long. Thanks to the drugs he was VERY lethargic and almost had to be intubated. Because of that it took them a while to bring him to me. I was able to call my mom and all of my sisters to tell him he was born before I'd even held him! Don't worry too much, he turned out to be fine and dandy.

At this point he still didn't have a name. Stay tuned tomorrow when I'll tell you all about how he FINALLY got a name!

2 comments:

K.E.N said...

Hooray!!! Congrats my boss/friend.

Shelley said...

I had a sucky delivery nurse too. Every time I had a contraction during the pushing phase she would disappear. Fortunately my doctor was a ROCKSTAR and basically took over for the nurse. He stayed for all three hours of pushing. She kept trying to get him to give me an episotomy and then when he wouldn't because it wasn't going to be helpful as that wasn't the issue she tried to get me to go for a C Section. She just didn't want to be there and she was evil, evil, evil. She wanted to take out my epidural tube (the epidural hadn't been working for several hours) the doctor told her not to and she actually said, "whose going to stop me?". He told her she wasn't qualified and he would stop her. It was insane. I can't recall her name but I nicknamed her Olga the Evil. I wonder if incompetent Olga the Evil found her way to your hospital...but I'm glad to hear little Dane is none the worse for the wear. Great name by the way!