An Update and The Story

Well, at long last the wait is over! Our beautiful son, Gavin Robert, is here and we're very happy (but tired too!).

A number of people have called in the last couple days asking about the labor story and why there was a delay between the day we induced (Tuesday) and when he was actually born (Thursday). For the curious, here's the scoop!

[Warning! If you plan on having children someday you may want to stop reading now]

On Tuesday we had an 11:00 appointment for a non-stress test at our OB's office. Basically, I was hooked up to a couple of monitors to see how much the baby was moving within the 15-20 minutes I'd be on the monitors. Gavin had been a pretty active baby but I'd noticed, especially in the last couple of days that he wasn't moving so much, especially during the day and especially around lunchtime. Needless to say he didn't move hardly at all and when he did move, his heart rate didn't go up as it should have. So, the nurse doing the test called in my OB who summarized the situation by saying we should go right to the hospital and we would induce that very day. I, of course, was shocked and Mr. S verified that all was well and prepared to call our parents.

So we went to the hospital and started me on pitossin (not sure how to spell that exactly; bear with me). Later in the afternoon my OB as well as a resident twice attempted to break my water with no success. And, since the contractions weren't doing a whole lot yet, my OB decided to stop the pitossin for the day and use a different drug (Cervadill) to soften up my cervix over night but I'd be allowed to eat something with this new drug. Mr. S and I slept at the hospital that night and prepared to meet our son later the next day.

On Wednesday the pitossin was started again but a new and not-so-happy side effect had cropped up. My blood pressure shot up, putting me at risk for pre-eclampsia. To combat that potentially fatal disease, magnesium was added to my IV cocktail. Sounds like all would be well with that but taking magnesium results in "flu-like symptoms." The icky kind. So on into the afternoon my contractions are getting stronger, I'm feeling a bit feverish AND I begin to dry heave (remember, no food while on pitossin). About 5:00ish I request the epidural, which relaxed me enough to allow the contractions to make more progress. However I continue to throw up.

During the night my throwing up had reached a point where I was waking up every hour to get sick. The staff checked me and realized I had only dialated to 6 centimeters and no matter how much they upped the pitossin my body, and the baby, would go no further. Though I was scared at the thought of surgery, I was relieved that all would be ending very shortly with a C-section.

At about 7:30 Thursday morning I was taken to the OR and at 7:57 a.m. Gavin Robert was born. He weighed in at 8 lbs, 12 ounces and was a whopping 22 inches long. Not sure where he was hiding all that mass but clearly he was healthy and happy to have more room to stretch out.

We're doing fine now... working on some breastfeeding issues but otherwise everything is going normally for first-time parents with their new baby. Anyway, that's why if you got word on Tuesday that the baby was coming, why we didn't call again for another couple days. ;)

And yes, it was all worth it. :)