The Birth of Tate

Monday morning, February 10th, we went in to the hospital at 7 a.m. to be induced.  I was nervous, but strangely for me I didn’t have an upset stomach at all.  I did feel anxious, though. 

We walked in to the room that our little bundle would be delivered in, #2023, and the nurse handed me a gown and told me to change into it while she set up a few things.  When I came out of the bathroom I got into bed and started feeling hot.  Super hot.  I told Andy I wasn’t feeling too well.  At this point the nurse had done nothing to me but hand me the gown.  Then I started getting short of breath and asked Andy for a trash can.  The nurse handed him a bucket and told me to roll over onto my side.  I started dry heaving and almost fainted.  When I came back from the edge, sweating and flushed, I felt a ton better.  Andy said I was white as a ghost.  All of that freak out because I was panicked about the nurse putting in the IV and because of the unknown of the Pitocin.  Sheesh.

After that I got hot a couple more times but was able to stay with it. The cool wash cloth and fan on high helped. Because of my near fainting episode my veins wouldn’t come to the surface so the nurse, Sandi, grabbed a warm towel and wrapped my arm in it.  After she let that sit for a few minutes she was able to find my veins.  I closed my eyes and squeezed Andy’s hand and in the IV went, the easiest IV I’ve ever had put in.  Okay, that step was done.  Now the Pitocin.

They started my drip of Pitocin at about 8:30.  At that point I was dilated to 2 c.m.  My dr. came in and chatted with me. She told me once she was sure I was progressing with the Pitocin I could get an epidural.  I was still super worried about how hard and fast the contractions would come.  Sandi told me their goal was to get my contractions to be 2 minutes apart consistently and to see how I would progress with that.  About every 30 minutes she came in and increased the Pitocin flow for the next 1 1/2 hrs.  My contractions were consistent but definitely not painful yet. 

At noon my dr. came in and checked me.  I was at a strong 3 and she stripped my membranes – ouch!  She said she was happy with my progress, which I thought was next to none, so I could have my epidural at any time.  I kept thinking I’d be a weenie if I got an epidural at only 3 c.m. but she said she had one at 1 c.m. and Sandi told me since I was paying for it I might as well get the use out of it.  I decided to wait a bit since the pain wasn’t bad at all. 

At 1:00 I told Andy I was ready for the epidural.  In that hour’s time I was cramping from the membrane stripping and my contractions were strong enough that I couldn’t talk through them.  Being tied down to the bed made it harder to deal with the pain.  Sandi gave me a shot of Fentanyl to help take the edge off the pain while we waited for the anesthesiologist to get there at 1:15.  Holy smokes, so so glad I’ve never done drugs before! I do NOT like that loopy feeling.  But it did make me and Andy giggle watching me get all loopy.  Weird feeling.  At about 1:45 the A came in and got started with my epidural.  The vertebrae he usually goes between weren’t cooperating so I had to be stuck 2 times, luckily the second spot worked.  We were all done at 2:15 with that.  He did an amazing job, it was my best epidural yet!  At this point I was almost dilated to 4 c.m.  I tried to rest and get some sleep but between the Fentanyl, some drug they gave me while putting in the epidural and the epidural medicine I was too looped up to fall completely asleep.  But I did rest a little.

At 4:15 the second nurse of the day came in and checked my cervix.  I was dilated to a solid 6 c.m.  At 4:45 my dr. came in to check on me and I was at an 8, and when she checked me again 15 minutes later, at 5:00, I was fully dilated.  I went so fast in that last 45 minutes that they were scrambling to get everything brought in that was needed for the delivery.  My water still hadn’t broken but my dr. wanted to wait to break it until they had the room all set up so the baby wouldn’t just slide on out (yea right, little did we know how big he was!).

At 5:30 everything was set up and my dr. broke my water. Time to start pushing!

Erin