Hunter's Birthday!!!

We headed to the hospital at 7am on Tuesday, May 29, for our scheduled induction. They broke my waters just before 9am and started me on pitocin. I was still 1cm and 50% effaced when I got in. The contractions started pretty quickly, and grew in intensity. They were never more than 3 minutes apart. By 11:00, I was still only 1cm, but 80% effaced, so they were doing something, although slowly. The next two hours, I probably had a total of 50-60 contractions – they were right on top of each other and became more and more intense each time. It became obvious that I would not be going natural after all – I thought I would have more time between contractions to gather myself, but they were literally back to back and peaked within 10 seconds from when they started, and lasted at least 40 seconds each, some longer. At 1:30, I was 4cm and asked for the epidural. They got it to me quickly (thank the Lord) and got it fixed later in the day when I started feeling everything on my left side and nothing on my right – that happened again late in labor and they didn’t fix it because they wanted me to feel that urge to push.

Sometime around 9:00pm, the nurse asked me to push through one contraction to see if the last lip of my cervix would get out of the way and stay out of the way, and it did, so she prepared to begin pushing full force. I think we started pushing regularly around 9:30. They called the doctor (I was about +2 station at that point). When the doctor got there, he had slid back a bit. Oh, and my temperature had started rising just after we started pushing – went from 99.7 to 100.6 all the way up to 102 by the time doc got there. Hunter’s heart rate was also bobbing around 180, so he was a bit stressed out by this whole ordeal.

We pushed a couple of different ways and finally, the doctor stopped and said we had three options. I thought she was going to say C-section and was fully prepared to fight her since I’d really only been pushing an hour or so. Instead, that was her least favorite alternative. Hunter’s head was caught on my pubic bone and she couldn’t get him around it, so she suggested forceps or vacuum. We talked about the risks and she suggested forceps if we had someone very experienced with forceps deliveries – Brent asked how experienced she was and she said very and that made up his mind. What made up mine was when I asked how much time this would save us – she said it would probably take us one more contraction, maybe 2. It took 2 plus one extra push and a 3rd degree tear to get him out. During all this trauma, the little guy let out his first meconium, so when I saw him and told him to cry, the doctor said they didn’t want him to – they wanted to try to suction the meconium out. Well, he listened to mommy like a good boy and cried for me – it was the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard. And the look on Daddy’s face still makes me teary-eyed thinking about it. He was so amazed and awed by this precious being that had just come out of me.
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So, Hunter James arrived at 10:38 pm on Tuesday, May 29, all 21 inches of him, weighing in at 7lbs 8oz. He is doing great, and I’m healing up nicely too. He has done very well with breastfeeding - my milk finally came in the Friday night after he was born, so he’s having lots more diapers now and is spitting up occasionally, but I’ll take it as long as the little guy’s happy, which he is. He’s a great baby and cute as a bug!