August 1, 2009

If you missed it, Part 1 of this story is located here

Shortly after midnight the Anesthesiologist made his way into my room and started the epidural procedure. Everything went smoothly until a few minutes after the epidural was started and my blood pressure plummeted. I was put on oxygen and the epidural was stopped. We had to make sure the medicine was not making my blood pressure drop. I also explained to the nurse and the anesthesiologist that I tend to pass out, especially if my blood sugar gets low (seriously it is odd for a year to go by without me passing out at least once, and usually at the most inconvenient of times) and I had not eaten anything in over 12 hours. So we slowly started to administer the epidural again with no problems.

I was having a hard time telling if the epidural was working as I still was not feeling any contractions when we started it.  The nurse assured me it was working because I was having strong contractions every 1-2 minutes. My nurse checked to see if I had made any progress, and I was now dilated to 5 cm. Since labor seemed to be going at a pretty normal pace Ben and I decided to get some sleep as it was now already 2 am and we did not expect to have a baby before morning.

I tried to get comfortable but was having the labor shakes so bad it was hard for me to get any sleep. At 2:25 my nurse came in to check me and I told her I was feeling a ton of pressure. She checked me and I was at 10 cm. Yep, I went from 5 cm to 10 cm in 25 minutes. I think we fooled everybody, because nobody thought I would deliver that night. After quickly getting the room set up and the OB called, I started pushing. I pushed for about 20 minutes, when I had to stop because the baby was coming too fast and the OB was not there yet. After waiting about 15 minutes, my OB showed up. 15 short minutes later at 3:26 a.m.  Drake was born. He weighed in at 7 lbs 6 0z and was 19 1/2 inches long.

I did  have an episiotomy, and while they were sewing me up, and Drake was over with Ben getting weighed and measured,  my labor nurse told me that when Drake was born he had a true knot in his umbilical cord.This occurs in approximately 1% of pregnancies and can cause various complications throughout the pregnancy  (miscarriage, stillbirth, and complications during delivery) They had no idea how long Drake had the knot in his cord, but he did have a very long  umbilical cord and that can be a factor in developing the knot.

You want to know something crazy? I knew a true knot was bad after they told me that he had it, but I never had the courage to research it until I wrote this post...9 months later.  When I found out all the information above, I was shaken to the core with what could have been. We are so thankful and lucky we had the outcome we did and Drake suffered no complications from the knot. I thank God everyday for this amazing blessing!

We stayed in hospital for 2 more nights, enjoying the company of great friends, the excitement and joy of our family meeting our son for the first time and the helpfulness of the hospital staff. I enjoyed every second of our experience and will truly cherish it forever.

 August 1, 2009 was a day we will never forget.
A day we were forever changed by the little boy who stole our hearts.