7 Kids, 3 cats, 1 dog, Mom, and Dad

Baby stuff or It was a dark and stormy night.

Well, it wasn't actually dark or stormy...it was sunny and hot on July 11th and PW felt a little like she did when her blood pressure went up during a previous pregnancy. We took her BP at home and it was high so we made an appointment with the OB office to have her checked.

She was a week overdue and her BP in the office was 144/102, definitely high enough to require a trip to the hospital and a comfy bed in the birthing center. This was around 4:00 in the afternoon.

We got settled in the room and they did an immediate assessment to make sure that the baby was ok and then talked about induction. They started with a Miso pill that was inserted "you know where" and required PW to stay in bed for two hours. After that she could get up and walk around. They did another pill four hours later and by that time it was getting to be pretty late and I was beat.

The doctor assured us that nothing was going to happen that night and I decided to go home to sleep because they were going to give PW something to help her sleep too.

I woke up a little after 5am to the sound of my phone chirping because of a text message. I had missed 8 phone calls because I had been sound asleep and never heard the phone ring! Contractions had been happening since around midnight but go more intense at around 5am. I told PW that I would take a quick shower and then be right there.

I called her when I was on the road and she gasped, "I can't talk right now, this is really bad!" before hanging up. I drove much faster and raced into the hospital to find her in the midst of a contraction at around 5:30am. The nurse and doctor told me that she was still at 1cm (had been that way for over a week) and they wanted to give her some pain medication so that she could cope with the contractions until they were more productive.

All PW wanted to talk about was an epidural but they told her that wasn't a consideration until she was at least 4cm dilated. She kept having intense contractions so they checked her again before deciding on the pain meds and she was suddenly 5cm! They told her that now she could have an epidural and moved us across the hallway to a birthing room.

They came in with the IV pole and went about starting the IV while she was having one intense contraction after another. They said that the anesthesiologist had been contacted and would be there shortly. The doctor checked her again and told her that she was 10cm!

At this point PW said, "Can I push?!!?" and when she was told yes she wailed, "I can't!"

The nurses were awesome with getting her to focus and breathe and when PW realized that the only relief from the pain was going to be had by pushing and getting the baby out she pushed with all she had.

Our little boy was born at 6:36am, not even an hour after I arrived, and I got to cut his umbilical cord and feed him his first bottle.

I am so proud of PW! I know that it must have been so scary and painful but she did what she needed to do and brought our baby into the world.

So, now our baby brings our total of kids up to seven and has added to our lives already!

The last two nights he has slept from 10:30pm until 4:30am so we are getting a chance to rest and recover from the whole process.

Posted by bbarton at July 21, 2008 10:44 AM