Jonah's birth story.

WARNING: this may be way to much information for some people. I don't think there are too many gory details and there it will not be accompanied by live action shots or anything. It's mostly for me to remember the events of the birth of my baby boy.

Jonah’s birth story.

Wednesday the 13th I had my regularly scheduled doctor appointment at 9:45. Paul was out late the night before and had planned to take the morning off so he came with Leah and I to the appointment. Leah was excited to hear baby Jonah’s heartbeat as usual. Well once again my blood pressure was high. 140/110 or so I think. The week before it had been 150/90. Dr. Foster checked me and I was dilated to 2cm. He suggested induction for the same week. With the high blood pressure there was some risk of my passing out while doing things around the house and the only way to get it down is to have the baby! We waited in the office while he made some calls and set us up to be at the hospital at 8:00am the next morning.

We spent our day of waiting getting the car seats put in the car, going to Costco to stock up on some groceries and going out for a nice family dinner to Red Lobster which Paul and I were craving. We gave Leah some extra attention too. We also made about 100 phone calls letting everyone know what was going on. My mom and Bethany did some serious rearranging to make it down to our house yet that night so Leah didn’t have to go anywhere the next morning.

I was awake at 5:30 on Thursday morning, unable to sleeping knowing that “today was Jonah’s birthday!” Said a few prayers that all would go well and we would be meeting our healthy son soon! I got in a few snuggles with Leah and made breakfast for everyone. Jumped in the shower, gave hugs and kisses and we were out the door. We were running a bit late thanks to me and Paul sped to the hospital.

We walked right up to the second floor and into room 208. The nurse, Pam, was ready for us. She had a great sense of humor considering she had been called in on her day off! Busy place. It took a while to get all the questions answered and me changed and my IV in. We did all the stuff for cord blood donation as well. They had to stick me 3 times to get it going. I have good veins but hard to get the blood flowing out I guess. My doctor was unavailable to give the orders to get the pitocin started until 10:30 so we spent about 45 min just waiting around.

From 10:30 until 2:30 it was just lots of contractions but nothing that hurt to much. It was a bit frustrating because the nurse had to continually up the pitocin. Oh and we got switched to Sandy so Pam could head home. There were a few laughs with Paul napping in my hospital bed while I posted on-line sitting in the chair. We watched lots of the Olympics and other crappy TV. I also did tons of crossword puzzles and read my book. I squeezed in a bit of a nap while Paul went home to have lunch with Leah.

At 2:30 or so Sandy let us know that Dr. Foster had called and given the okay to break my water since the pitocin was making the contractions painful yet. I guess I needed to be in pain for any changed in my cervix to occur. So at 2:45 the house doc, Dr. Venizio, broke my water. Well that had the desired effect and I was feeling much stronger contractions by 3 or so.

From 3pm till 5 or so we sat around watching more TV and Paul did some work on his laptop and took a nap. About 4 or so I was really starting to be in some pain and complaining that the contractions hurt. Paul did his best to rub my back and push where I told him too but what I thought would help didn’t.

By 5 I was anxious for the nurse to check to see if I had made any progress since I was in a lot of pain and ready to ask for drugs of some sort. I remember rationalizing that if I was dilated to 5 or less I’d ask for the epidural. If I was more than that I’d go for some IV drugs. Well I was at a 6, almost 7. Lucky for me since at 7 I didn’t have the options for IV drugs anymore. Anyway, Sandy gave me Stadol at about 5:15. Now, Stadol is supposed to “take the edge off.”. It also makes you feel like you are drunk. It totally made me feel drunk but didn’t do much to take the edge off.

I spent from 5:15 till 5:45 feeling drunk and complaining about the pain. I could feel the contractions getting stronger and stronger. I know at about 5:50 I was upset with Paul for watching Family Guy and laugh really loud and told him he HAD to change the channel. He did to the movie Road House. Nice 80’s flick with Patrick Swayze. The nurse came in shortly afterward and I let her know that I was starting to feel like I was going to crap on the table. I think my actual words were not quite so nice. They checked me again and I was dilated to 8cm and almost totally effaced. I asked if I could push now and of course was told no. I think this is when they called my Dr. and told him I was just about ready. I’m not sure if the nurse left during this time or not but I continued complaining that I really needed to push and push RIGHT NOW! The kept telling me to wait but there was no waiting. They checked me again and the baby’s head was right there.

Well that led to pandemonium. The house dr. rushed in and the nurses got me on my back, pulled the bed apart, etc. I got to push with the next contraction. I got Jonah’s head about halfway out and then got stuck. I had to wait for another contraction. These few moments were pretty horrible as all 14cm of his head were stuck. I pushed again and he was still stuck so the dr. cut an episiotomy. After that I pushed once more and he was out!

Oh I forgot to add that during the pushing, Paul was on the verge of passing out. The nurse next to him let go of my leg to get him a chair which I was NOT happy about. The dr ended up running across the room with his bloody gloves and kicking a chair on wheels over for Paul to sit on. He nearly crashed again when they were sewing me up, poor guy.

They put Jonah right up on my chest. His face was a bit blue due to the cord being wrapped around his neck and he didn’t cry right away because he was still so full of fluid. He came through the birth canal so fast that there was no time to squish it all out. The nurses hauled him off the warmer to suction him out and get his temperature up. He was chilly for a long time and I don’t think they had the warmer turned on since they were busy with me.

It took at least a half hour to get Jonah back up the temperature he needed to be before they would let me hold and nurse him. When I finally got him he latched right on and nursed for 35 minutes.

So yeah, 6:10 pm on Thursday, August 14, 2008. 7lbs, 9oz and 20 inches long.