Day of Induction - June 22, 2007

On Friday, June 22, 2007 we arrived to Allen hospital a little after 7:30 am for our scheduled induction at 8 am. I was very nervous and so I had stopped by the ladies room for a minute and then proceeded to the admissions area to get the rest of our paperwork finished. The admissions lady was rather chatty and we were running late already! We finally got upstairs around 8:15 am, but our doctor had already gone back to the Family Practice Center. We got settled into our room and I had Ed take a photo of me for the very last time pregnant with the baby. At my last doctor's checkup I was measuring at 41 weeks, so it was nice that I was going to be induced early... if only a DAY early! (My due date was Ed's birthday, the 23rd).

I was finally induced at around 9 am I didn't think it would take so long to start having contractions, since it only took like 20 minutes for the contractions to start with Eden. My mom came up and sat with us for most of the day. The contractions were getting more intense and finally when I got to a 5 I could get an epidural, "Hallelujah"! It worked right away and I was in heaven after that! Ed and I played some games and I did some crosswords and we watched some television. A little before 4 o'clock I started feeling some pressure and it felt like I had to poop. It went away and then came back again. I was about to ring for the nurse and then Dr. Day and the nurse came in. He checked me and said, "You're right. You are feeling pressure. The baby's head is right there!" They got everything ready for the delivery and a fellow doctor, Dr. Dechristina (?) came in as well. (My mom had actually left about 5 minutes earlier, thinking that I would be pushing for awhile). The baby pretty much just kept coming. I pushed a few times and it was going well. Dr. Day was gently guiding the baby through and I pushed about 3 more good pushes and before the last push, the nurse said, "Look down!" I of course couldn't see the baby because of my belly, but on the last push I heard the gush of liquid and then my belly just collapsed. (I wish that it would have collapsed into a 6 pack or something, but no such luck!) I saw the baby and Ed said, "It's a Boy!" Then they let Ed cut the cord. I started to tear up and we were excited that labor was over. He was born at 4:01.

The nurses took him over to get cleaned up and checked. After several seconds, he still was not crying or moving around much. I was quietly FREAKING OUT and looked at Ed and started to cry. I was thinking, "What is going on!?!" They weren't saying much to us, but there were at least 3 nurses and one doctor over by the baby and I kept hearing things like, "Come on little guy, you can do it, it's been 60 seconds, snap out of it." So, of course I was wondering what was happening. He was a nice shade of pink and looked okay, but was not crying at all. They called in another nurse and Dr. Waziri, the neonatalogist. He checked him for a murmur, but didn't find anything. I could only hear bits and pieces of what was going on.

Then they took him down to the NICU and plugged him up to all sorts of things. They thought it may be an infection of some sort so they were running all sorts of tests and doing x-rays and stuff. Dr. Waziri said that he thinks it's pneumonia so he's been on some antibiotics for that. He's on oxygen, antibiotics, sugar water (because he was born with low blood sugar as well). He has an IV in, tubes all over the place and wires hooked up to monitors to measure his heart rate, his breathing, and his blood oxygen level I believe. (The nurses are wonderful, by the way.) He will probably be in the hospital for 10 - 14 days. It's hard when you can't even hold your newborn baby...