Sunday, February 27, 2011
The day you were born….
My goal for 2011 is to get caught up on my blog and the birth of our son Maximus Manners. I hope to keep pictures updated for our family’s memories as well as allowing the family to see current pictures of Max during our summers in Alaska.
Backing up to the day he was born....
My due date was 12/24/10. I went to the Doctor on 12/23/10 to be told that I was 2-3 cm. dilated, so we could expect some action within the next few days. As much as we were keeping positive about a Christmas birth, I was relieved to have the holidays pass without any birthday. On 12/26/10, I woke up in the middle of the night with a few signs that today may be the day. My belly was very heavy with lots of pressure. I ended up taking it easy on the couch the entire day, watching WHALE WARS Marathon. At about 9pm I was getting ready for bed, and had a bit of leaking fluids. To ease my mind, I decided to call the advice line at the hospital. When speaking with the nurse, she advised me that we should probably head up to the hospital to have a Dr. take a look at me. I spent a few minutes trying to explain to the nurse that we had a 1.5 hour drive, and needed to be sure that we weren't going to be sent home. At that time she put me on hold. When the phone was picked up again, it was Dr. Stewart (my Doctor) saying "Quite arguing and get your butt in here". This was Dr. Stewart's last night on call at the hospital before she went on vacation. She was hoping that she would be able to deliver Max before she had to go home in the morning.
At this time, I went and got Dave. Told him the situation. He frantically started running around like a chicken with his head cutoff. He called his parents to come pick up Hazel. I sat on the couch and patiently waited. Dave then proceeded to load all of the dog's stuff in our truck (when we weren't taking the dog anywhere) and he couldn't find his keys anywhere. I sat and waited for him to find his keys for at least 30 minutes. After he finally located them we were off to Clackamas Kaiser.
We checked into the hospital at about 11pm on 12/26/10. Nurse hooked me up to the heart monitor and confirmed that I was in labor and that my water has ruptured. She proceeded to break my water and checked me into my delivery room. They then started me on a slow drip of Pitocin. At this time I still haven't felt any contractions, even though the monitor was showing I was contracting. Dave and I then sat and continued to watch more Whale Wars Marathon. I'm not sure of the exact time, but I think it was around 2:30am, the contractions were progressing quite rapidly and very close together. At that time, I requested the epidural.
When the anesthesiologist arrived about 1/2 hour later to give me the epidural, I was in full labor. Contractions were extremely close together, but still hadn't progressed much as far as dilation. The nurse actually chose to turn down the Pitocin, because my contractions were coming hard and close together. I had to try and hold extremely still while the Dr. inserted the epidural. After that was completed, it was pure bliss. Why doesn’t everyone get an epidural? Why do woman think there is a need to go thru torture?
That night Dave and I tried to get some sleep, but weren’t very productive. It’s so hard to sleep when nurses are coming into the room to take your temperature and blood pressure just about every hour. The next day, the nurse said that the baby’s head just wasn’t progressing downward as they had hoped. She said once I was fully dilated, we would attempt to push and see if that moved baby’s head downward. At around 3pm that time arrived. I still did not feel the need to push, but we gave it a shot anyway. My epidural was wearing off in the form of a “window” in my pelvis around this time too. Unfortunately the nurse did not want to give me more medicine in my epidural cause she said it would render my need to push. Thus reducing my productivity. This was quite painful. But…. I continued to push for another 3.5 hours.
After 3.5 hours passed, the Dr. came into the room and explained to me that nothing was progressing. For some reason the baby’s head was not passing thru my pelvis and was actually starting to slightly swell. She recommended a C-section. She gave us the final choice, but it came highly recommended because I had definitely put in the effort with no success. After we made the decision, the nurse explained that they had 20 minutes to get me on the operating table (hospital policy).
They prepped me and wheeled me to the operating room. Dave remained in the recovery room, waiting for them to prepare for surgery. After Dave joined me behind the blue paper wall, Max joined us about 20 minutes later at 7:46pm on 12/27/10. The staff could not believe what a BIG baby he was. He weighed in at 9 lb. 7 oz. No wonder he didn’t fit thru my pelvis. We named him Maximus Lawrence Manners. He was so beautiful he instantly brought tears to both of our eyes. We were truly blessed with the most beautiful baby and the most wonderful experience of my life!!
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