After checking in we ended up with a room that faced the water. Eric was about beside himself with excitement. All our babies have been born at this hospital and this is the first time we have had this view. It proved to be a wonderful day for Eric to enjoy his view and was one of his favorite parts of the day.
Check-in was short and then we had to go through all of the medical history with the nurse while we waited for the orders to start my induction. This proved to be the longest part of the day. Usually I am in very active labor and quite distracted when we do that part so it was odd to take care of it before anything baby related started. Apparently the staff was not as anxious as I was to get a baby out!
Finally with all the paperwork done we started the antibiotics. Because I do not have long labors we wanted to be sure that we got all the meds in before we did anything crazy like break my water. So at 11:30 we started the antibiotics and at 1:30 they started my pitocin. I was really nervous about pitocin because I have heard so many horror stories about bumping it up to fast and horrible contractions that go too quickly. My labor and delivery nurse was wonderful though and she had a slow and steady approach to pitocin that was not aggressive and allowed my body to really experience a similar to natural labor.
At 3:30 my doctor came in, checked me (I was 5 cm) and broke my water and from then things moved and progressed quite quickly. Around 4:00 my pitocin was bumped up for the final time and my contractions tightened up naturally to about every 2-3 minutes apart. Around 4:20 I looked at Eric and told him there was no way I was doing this without an epidural. The nurse called the anesthesiologist and checked me (I was 7.5 cm). It was only another 15 minutes worth of contractions and the doctor was in. Around 5:00 we had an epidural and I was feeling good.
Once the epidural was in and I was feeling human again it was just a waiting game. Around 5:30 I told Eric that I felt a lot of pressure and that it might be a good idea if I got checked out by my nurse. She gave me a quick check and I was complete and ready to go.
My doctor had another patient in the room next to me and had told me earlier that she and I needed to coordinate our labors so that we were not both delivering at the same time. Well, we didn't cooperate but it is a good thing that I am a very fast pusher and managed to beat her to it! My doctor came in and got set up and 3 rounds of pushes (about 4 minutes) later Oliver Benjamin was here!
Most of my previous deliveries I have needed the NICU team to be in the room to do a great job sucking the baby out due to meconium in my amniotic fluid. This baby was meconium free so they placed him right up on me and we got to snuggle right off the bat. It was so nice and such a different experience. The nurse then took him from me so she could do his APGAR testing (8/9) and wipe him down a bit better. Then I got to do skin to skin time and even nurse him prior to his weight being checked. It was really, really cool.
Oliver Benjamin weighed 9 pounds 8 ounces and was 21.5" long. He has a 14.5" head full of dark hair. He is so sweet and we couldn't be happier.
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