We parked and made our way up to the 3rd floor. I told them who I was and was shown to my room. From that moment on, it was procedures, paperwork, and questions, IV's, clothes changing, etc. Those nurses are like a pit crew. Each one has their own assignment and they are all working on you at the same time.
I was told to take everything off and put on the hospital gown. And to go pee, because it would be the last time I would get to until delivery... that was not what I wanted to hear. Evidently if your water has broken you are bound to the bed for safety reasons.
I had my IV going, a monitor for the baby's heart beat, and a monitor for contractions. They took my blood pressure again and had to call my OB to see what she wanted to do because it was so high. She said she wanted a urine sample to make sure I didn't have preeclampsia. Well, I wasn't able to get up to pee because of the previously mentioned reasons. My nurse, Kristin, told me I could go ahead and get my epidural (even though I was only dilated to 1 cm) or they could straight cath me. Epidural please and thank you!
They had to sent some of my blood down to the lab and were waiting for it to come back. In the meantime, they had paged the anesthesiologist. He showed up and prepped me while we waited for the blood results. He was getting impatient and sent the nurse to check on it. Evidently it hadn't even been sent through so they put a rush on it and the anesthesiologist said to page him again once it was back. He came back in and began the procedure for my epidural. It wasn't a pleasant experience, but I survived.
They gave me a large bolus of the medicine to get me numb. My nurse kept asking me all these questions about how I was feeling to make sure I wasn't having any adverse reactions. I thought I was fine, but then I said "I....feel.......like..I........can't.............breathe." Then all of the sudden I had a room full nurses working on me, pumping drugs through my IV, and checking on the baby. After I had stabilized, my nurse said the medicine had caused my blood pressure to dramatically drop and put my baby in distress. Her exact words were "your baby did not like that. Did we scare you?" I started crying and said "yes, is she ok?" They got her back on the monitors and everything was going fine.
They got the urine sample when they put my catheter in after the epidural. It was tested, but the levels were all fine. My parents showed up a little while later and brought Jason a cheeseburger and fries... I got to eat ice chips. After he ate, he left to get the car seat installed. We had planned on getting it done that day after my scheduled doctor appointment before we knew we would be going to the hospital to have a baby.
Hours had passed without much progress, so they called my doctor and started some pitocin. However, that ended up making my contractions go bizerk. So, they turned it off. They were having a hard time getting the external monitors to get what they needed on the baby, so they had to insert 2 internal monitors. One on the baby's head and one next to her. My doctor came in around 5:30pm to see me. She said she thought it would be a late night and we'd have a baby between that time and 8am. The nurses went through shift change and my parents left to go check on our dogs and get a hotel.
My epidural was wearing off, I was uncomfortable and crying, and asking for the nurse to put some more medicine in the epidural. She informed me that the anesthesiologist was in surgery and they had a page into him, but it would be a while. While I tossed and turned I told her I had some pressure. She said she was going to send my nurse in to check me. "Shalee" came in, checked me, and said it's time to have a baby. I was like "WHAT?! NOW?!" She said "don't push, act like you're going to blow out birthday candles if you need to push. I'm going to call Dr. Appel." I started freaking out and asking her if she was going to make it in time and if it was going to be her or the on-call doctor.
I couldn't tell how long it was, but it seemed like just a short time that had passed when my doctor came in and told me to push. I had to push for 20 minutes...I heard her say "page, nursery" and then when she said, "if you can do one more, I think we'll have her." I grunted and told her I could do one more, and then at 9:39pm Elise was here!
One year birthday post and pictures to follow!
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