Long Time Coming…

It’s hard to believe my little man is 4 weeks old already… or will be, on Tuesday. I must admit, he’s certainly keeping me (well, us!) busy — to the point that I haven’t updated my blog here, or my journal, with his birth story. For those of you who’d rather skip this (though I will be sparing you most of the gory details), please feel free. I think I’m writing this mostly for myself, anyway.

So…

Sean’s due date was January 22nd, but my doctor has a policy for first-time moms of not letting them go too far past their due date. So, we scheduled an induction for January 25th, with a check-in at the hospital the night before. Well, the due date came and went (and I did my last Nia class before he’d be born), and suddenly it was Monday night, and Doyce and I had left Grandma Kay at home, and were driving to the hospital with bags of stuff — two laptops, my suitcase, my giant body pillow, camera bag, etc… We checked in at the emergency room, and were met by a nurse who took us up to the maternity floor, and settled us into Labor & Delivery Room 11. I got changed, hopped up into the convertible bed, and she got an IV started with antibiotics and fluids, hooked me up to a couple of different monitors (one for contractions, and one for Sean’s heartbeat) and then did some stuff under the hood to get things moving along. By the time that was all done, it was 10-something, I think, and we may have watched an episode of Buffy, but in any case, Doyce and I tried to get some sleep for the big day that lay ahead.

Of course, it’s hard to sleep well hooked up to all that stuff, on an uncomfortably hard bed, with a nurse coming in every so often to check on you. So we didn’t. By 5am, we gave up on sleeping, watched another episode or two of Buffy, and were wide awake by the time my doctor arrived around 7am to start me on Pitocin. With that going, Doyce headed home to feed and medicate the dogs (did I mention we found out Dizzy has diabetes the week before I gave birth? She needs shots of insulin twice a day at regular 12-hour intervals) and bring my mom back to the hospital with him. I planned to watch another episode of Buffy, but Sean had other thoughts — shortly after Doyce left, several nurses came rushing in to check on us. Apparently, Sean’s heartrate had dropped significantly for a rather long period (six minutes or so), and they had to stop the Pitocin, put me on something else, and strap an oxygen mask to my face.

Which is how Doyce found me when he got back — Sean’s heartrate stabilized and back to normal, though I was still a little freaked out. My doctor floated the idea of a C-Section once again (she’d mentioned it at my regular appointment the week before, because of my relatively small size — heightwise, I guess), but said we’d go back on the Pitocin, see what happened, but that if this happened again, we were due for surgery.

Still, several more hours and a couple of more episodes of Buffy passed. I was (slowly) dilating, the contractions were getting more painful, and the nurse kept coming in to see if I wanted an epidural yet. Now, I had no objection to pain medication, though I admit in my head I thought I’d be able to move around a bit more (which is to say, at all) during this part of labor. I kept saying I was fine until I realized I wasn’t, and yes please, could I have the epidural now? Moments later, the anesthesia team was prepping me, and getting a chair for Doyce to sit in next to the bed (Dads can’t stand up during the procedure — too many have fainted and fallen). To be honest, this was the most painful part of things for me. The contractions were, as I said, bad enough to require me to ask for pain relief, and the position I had to be in for the epidural was super uncomfortable, especially during a contraction. But, we did it, and things got easier for there on out.

Shortly after this time (noonish, maybe?), the doctor came by to check on me again, and checked my dilation. If things kept going at this rate, we were told we had hours to go. Doyce sent off a bulletin to all interested parties, and ran down to the cafeteria to get some lunch. Which is just about when Sean’s heartrate dropped again, and suddenly there was a flurry of people in my room telling me they needed to do a C-Section. I sent Doyce a text: “Can you hurry back up? They’re prepping a c-section.” That was at 1:38pm. Things suddenly moved very quickly. Doyce came up, packed up all our stuff, threw on scrubs over his jeans & t-shirt, and met me in the OR, where the anesthesia team was changing the meds from the epidural pain block to something stronger to block even more sensation.

It was a nerve wracking few moments where I was worried that things were going really bad for my little man, but then, at 2:10, my doctor pulled him out, and I got to see my perfect little bearcub for the first time. Yes, there were tears.

Doyce went with him to the nursery for all the official weighing and measuring, while I was sewn back up and moved to the recovery room.

After about an hour in there, Doyce came and joined me, and they brought Sean to me to try nursing, which didn’t work. Shortly thereafter, we got wheeled to the room where I’d spend the next few days, where we finally got to see Grandma again (Sean had already met her), and do all sorts of other super-exciting post-surgery things I will not go into.

Long story short? It was both harder and easier than I thought it would be. After 9 months of a pretty uneventful pregnancy (baring hormone level issues in the first few months and my fender bender in the last), it was certainly the most exciting part of things, in a Confucian way. And now? I have a super adorable little man to cuddle and love, and he’s just perfect. We came home after three nights in the hospital, and after a few days of some serious discomfort from the incision, and a pretty bad breakout of hives from an allergic reaction to something, we got to spend a lot of time with my mom, and with Doyce’s folks and Grandma, who came to visit as well.

This was my first week mostly alone with him, and despite a few nervous moments (and yes, some tears), I’m feeling like I can do this. Through it all, (and I’m going to be sappy here) Doyce has been an absolute star, and as I said on a friend’s blog the other day, if you’re at all nervous about being a parent, I highly recommend going through it with someone who’s done it before!