Richard Everette Has Arrived!!!

His Birth Story

On Monday my Dr scheduled me to be induced on Friday at 8am, because on Friday I would be a full 41 weeks pregnant. I was to call Labor and Deivery to find out if they had a room available for me. So starting at 7 am like I was told to I started calling, and as luck would have it every single bed was full and would be full for the most of the day. I finally got the call to report at 5 pm. So Jason and I packed up and went in. Before hooking me up to the IV the midwife checked me.. I was still at only 2cm, the cervix has yet again moved back behind the baby's head, and the baby has yet again gone back "up". The Midwife even said "this is going to take a while." Around 7:30 she came back in.... There is a woman who it is no longer safe for her to be at home, and they need to get her in. Because they hadn't gotten the chance to even start my induction they had to make the decision as to who needed their help more. Obviously the other woman wins that choice hands down, and I completely understand. For some reason just about every single pregnant woman except 3 (including me) who have gone to Labor and Delivery friday gave birth. So all five rooms have been utilized all day. The Midwife said that, usually they don't induce on weekends but because it is evident that this baby needs to come out I get first priority tomorrow morning. If we didn’t get a call in the middle of the night to come back in, we were to call at 5 am.
Needless to say that’s what we did, I called once and then Jason took over calling because my induction was scheduled and I needed to get my baby out. When I called they told me that they promised to call, and then at 10, Jason started getting very frustrated and called, he even gave them a little attitude saying how this was scheduled…. Time went by a little bit and we made cheeseburgers for lunch. (one of the last things we had in the freezer to make) and then I laid down to take a nap. Then around 12:40 Jason’s cell phone rang. Why his cell we have no clue but the call came. I heard the people on the other end ask Jason how long did he think it would take us, and he told them about 30 minutes. When he hung up alls he said to me was “move” and I bounced off the couch so fast that Jason had to stop and look twice. And I called my mom to let her know , that our little man would be on his way eventually.
Second time around we walked in and they took me back to the same room as before. Got me all hooked up and re-filled out some paperwork that because it was back dated . Then they wasted no time what so ever and gave me the medicine that would allow for my cervix to soften and dilate. And thus the waiting began Saturday July 30 at approximately 1:30 in the afternoon.
I went through the rest of Saturday randomly getting “checked” and experiencing almost constant pain, yet I still felt that I wasn’t in enough pain that I needed an epidural yet, so they gave me a different type of med that relaxed my entire body so that I barely felt any pain. It did however make me high as a kite. I got laughed at a lot but it didn’t bother me much. I slept a lot to make time go faster, or I played with my ipod. The only things I was allowed to eat were popsicles, ice chips and a major abundance of water! I was put on Pitocin, to help “move things along” however before we knew it, it was Sunday morning and the Saturday crew was on their way home.
The Doctor from Saturday kept trying to push me using a balloon of sorts that would go up into my slightly dilated cervix and then more manually force me to dilate. I refused because I had never heard of it before and because I did not want to experience feeling anything being shoved up me while I was in so much pain. However when Dr.Hoffman, (a female dr) “took over” she explained to me that she would make sure I was given my epidural and some pain medicine before they did it so I wouldn’t feel anything. She explained that they couldn’t go ahead and give me a C-Section because with this being my first pregnancy they had to get a history and try to let my body dilate. At that point I was only 3 cm dilated and begging for them to just get it over with and get the baby out of me because of the pain. So in came the epidural, as well as some sort of pain medicine that went into my IV and they had previously shut off the Pitocin. The next thing I knew Dr. Hoffman was putting her hand on my head and saying “Ok Sweetie we need to get this thing started.”
This was after about an hour and a half of having the Pitocin turned off, and Dr. Hoffman checked to see where things were and announced to the nurse “She doesn’t even need it!! She’s 6 cm Dilated. Let’s get the Pitocin restarted, break her water and work to try and get this baby out!”
Time went on, and I started to feel like I needed to attempt to push around 7:30 pm, Day crew had switched over with the night crew by that point as well. I wasn’t allowed to push for at least an hour because there was a “lip” of the cervix that was over the baby’s head. The Dr. said that if I started pushing we would be running the risk of tearing the cervix before the baby even had a chance to make it through my pelvis. When night crew switched I ended up having two male Nurses taking care of me. And around 8 pm we were given the go ahead and with the help of the one lead male nurses, and Jason I started pushing.
First off let me say Jason was AWESOME!!! He was a great coach reminding me to constantly keep breathing like I was supposed to, and constantly trying to help me with any other pain that I was dealing with. (I had developed a huge knot in between my shoulders) And while I did end up getting moody and grouchie with him, he still took it with a grain of salt and told me to knock it off when I started getting bad. When it came time to put my epidural in he came over to the bed and put his forehead on mine and had me focus on him and my breathing. And when it came time to push and we discovered what worked for me when it came to pushing, He helped me hold my legs up in the air and counted for me,
So like I said I was given the go ahead to attempt push the baby out. The male nurse would always tell me “push harder” and once I pushed so hard that I just let out this huge scream while I did it that made all three of us laugh and even resulted with the Dr. coming in to check on us :p Apparently everyone out and about the monitors stopped what they were doing and looked at each other when I screamed, and then looked at Dr. Hoffman, whose response was “uum I’m going to go check on that.” Only to find the me, Jason and the RN laughing. The RN even said “if she could keep pushing like that this baby would be out in no time.” Needless to say it made Dr. Hoffman chuckle and I promised not to scream like that again so as “I wouldn’t scare the other patients” :p So I continued to push… and push… and push… and push… I was fully dialated, but for some reason was no more closer to getting the baby out than I was when I first started. When I hit the three hour mark I was exhausted in a ton of pain and numb all at the same time. Dr. Hoffman came in and checked on me. The baby was unable to descend into my pelvis and it was looking like the baby’s head was swelling a lot, so they needed to get me into a c-section. I just looked at her with tears in my eyes exhausted and simply said “Please” And everyone sprang into action then. I was set up and made ready to go into the OR as quickly as possible (took roughly 30 minutes) My body was numbed again and I was given more pain meds to make it so I couldn’t feel anything and before I knew it I was strapped down in the OR and they were bringing Jason in to sit up by my head and hold my hand.
The first cut or whatever it was felt so weird that I can’t even describe it!! But once Dr. Hoffman got to the baby Jason and I could hear say “Oh yea this baby isn’t fitting through your pelvis at all! He is huge!” (pulls baby out of my belly and holds him up.. I heard Richard’s watery squeaky cry) “I’d say he’s at least 10 lbs. Go ahead and give her that medicine.” Things became blissfully dark.. and I was suddenly dreaming of “The Matrix” and everything was white and all the people who were working on me were there also dressed in white.. HAHAHA Then I woke up and they took me back to my room where Richard was being assessed and Jason was doing the good Hubby thing and taking pictures like I asked him to. The entire C-Section process took maybe 45 minutes.. Richard was Lester Naval Hospitals first baby of August being born at 12:25 am. And the biggest of the weekend being 8 lbs 13 oz, 21.9 inches long.
I can’t get over how cute he is. I kept waking up those first two days feeling like I was dreaming that what I was experiencing wasn’t real. But now that I’ve already started to deal with the first of what I know will be many “New Mommy Doubts”, I know that everything I went through was for a reason. Now the only thing I can do is be the best mommy I can be to this precious baby boy that God has blessed me with.

(pictures to follow in next entry)