Thankfully Maddie slept in this morning until 7:50am so we had a little bit of extra time to sleep! Joseph and I walked Maddie to school together since it would be our last time together as a family of 3 and I wouldn't be seeing Maddie for at least a day. When we got to school, she did not want us to leave! She clung onto Joseph until she got distracted.
We headed back home to do some last minute packing and cleaning, then headed for the hospital! First we stopped by the Portillo's drive through for some lunch as it would be my last meal until baby's arrival! We parked and walked to the hospital and arrived just around 11:30am. They sent us directly upstairs to the Labor and Delivery floor (rather than go to triage first).
I got changed into my hospital gown and hooked up to the IV by 12:45pm. I had a bag of fluids, pitocin (started at 2 units) and sugar through the IV.
Around 3:45pm, the attending doctor measured me and I was at 3 cm dilated. My doctor wanted to break my water to get things going and OUCH was it uncomfortable! She said I handled it great and that most women could not do that without an epidural, which made me wonder why didn't they offer it to me first or tell me how uncomfortable it was going to be?!?
I mostly laid in bed and watched shows on the ipad. I was able to nap here and there between visits with the nurses. I wanted to walk around but was really uncomfortable with the IV in my arm, plus I wanted to be lazy and just lay around and rest as I knew I'd need the rest!
At around 7:00pm, the new attending doctor came in to break my water AGAIN. Apparently the first doctor only put a small tear in the water bag, and this new doctor really wanted to break it as I was only at about 4 cm. This time it was about 100 times more uncomfortable as it was a tall male doctor, and the first doctor was a petite Asian woman.
I finally started to feel some contractions but they were not regular and not nearly as bad as I felt them with Maddie once my water bag really broke. I was able to nap a little bit again. After feeling a few more contractions, with some worse than others, Joseph finally convinced me to get my epidural. "Why be in pain?" he said. I finally agreed and asked for my epidural earlier than I thought I would get it, only because it was getting late and I wanted to get some more rest as it was already 9:45pm and I wasn't sure if he'd arrive on 9/11 or 9/12!
The epidural team came in around 10:00pm and Joseph had to leave for about 30 minutes while they completed the epidural and got me settled. This time the epidural really hurt! I felt the initial numbing spinal shot go it and it was a really sharp pinch. Then I felt the epidural catheter go up and felt pinches go up on both sides of my spine.
Finally it was done and I was able to sleep. I had to lay on my side and they turned me every hour. My blood pressure was low (it's normal for it to drop but it was lower than they would have liked) so they gave me a bit of medicine. I had to wear a blood pressure cuff and it checked my blood pressure every 15 minutes so it wasn't the best rest as I kept getting interrupted, but I was able to quickly fall back asleep.
My doctor checked me at 12:00am on 9/12 and I was still at 4 cm! I was checked again, probably around 1:00am and I was at 8cm! She said to "get some rest" as it was getting close to having to push! I was checked again later, probably 2:00am and I was at 9cm. The nurse said my contractions looked great! She said the next time she came in it would probably be time to push!
My spinal was wearing off so I could start to feel pressure but no pain (the epidural meds were working which blocks the pain). It was different with Maddie since I had gotten the epidural later, the spinal medicine was there the whole time so I didn't feel anything! As we got closer and closer to push time, I could not feel the pain of the contractions in my tummy, but I could feel him getting lower and then would come "back up."
The doctor came back in around 3:00am and checked me and said he was "half way out!" and that she was afraid I would have him on the table and they wouldn't have been there! They quickly set up and brought the delivery aid items over. After only about 10-15 minutes of pushing (I think I only pushed through 4-5 contractions) his head came out! I still wasn't able to see him, but when his head came out, the doctor said the umbilical cord was wrapped tightly around his neck so she cut it rather than Joseph (but they still let Joseph cut it later). I saw his head and he his head towards me like Maddie did and gave a huge cry, and I gave another push and the rest of his body came out. I could immediately tell he was bigger than Maddie was when she was born (almost 1 pound larger!)
They immediately put him on my chest and then took him to the baby table to get cleaned up and measured. He stored 9/9 on the Apgar scale! The nurse gave him back to me and we tried nursing and he latched immediately!
Welcome to the world, James Nathaniel Wagner!
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| Joseph cutting James's umbilical cord |
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