a few grindy's: The whole truth, part 2, at-labor

Now begins the second part of this tale. The gist: Nicholas born healthy, Katy just fine. Disclaimer: very long post, wait until you have enough time to read it all.

Thursday September 4, 2008 2:00am - The next 4 1/2 hours were filled with a lot of the same stuff, 20 minutes of either laying down or sitting on a yoga ball and rocking while connected to the fetal monitors, 40 minutes of walking around the hallways aimlessly. Probably the toughest battle Katy had to face was determining when she should get her epidural. The contractions were getting fairly consistent, around 4 minutes apart, and still lasting about a minute. She said she wasn't in a ton of pain but didn't want to miss the window of opportunity that she could still get the shot. Tough choices but she ultimately decided to wait a while longer.

6:30am - As we trudged back to LD6 Katy had to stop multiple times for contractions in order to breathe a little deeper through them and lean on me as we quietly danced in the hallways to no music but our own rhythm. Once back in the room, Nurse Emily came in for the 4th cervix check revealing Katy was now dilated 5cm. We found out the anesthesiologist had two cesareans to do that morning, one at 7, and one at around 8:30 which meant our best chance was to have the epidural in between the two. We were sad however when Emily went off her 12 hour shift and Nurse Sydney took over for the day shift. Sydney turned out to be awesome as well! Her first news wasn't so good though as she told us that although our doctor, Dr. Nomeland, was on call that day, the midwife for our medical group would be the one delivering. Well, Katy wasn't having that and "requested" Dr. Nomeland deliver our son. Request accepted. Good news for us!

7:45am - Katy was able to take a shower with some assistance and feel a little refreshment before the long haul. While taking a shower, we were pretty sure her water broke. Obviously hard to tell though. Finally, about an hour after the shower, Katy got her epidural. That was quite a trying experience. It was the first time in the process that I actually got worried. It's hard to see your wife in a pain that you can do nothing about. And that was just with the local anesthetic. But once it was all said and done, Katy didn't really feel a thing until she had to push. Let me tell you, after the epidural, she was feeling GOOOOD!!!

Half an hour after the epidural procedure, Nurse Sydney didn't want Katy moving around so she had to hook up a catheter so she could still go ya know. My dad showed up just afterward and I'm sure it creeped him out a little, but he handled it well, remaining composed, and taking some pictures of the two of us together.

Of course, he had to leave pretty quick as Katy had her 5th cervix check in 24 hours, showing her at 6-7cm dilated and revealed her bag of waters was pretty much gone. Good stuff, almost there.

9:30am - We got our first glimpse of Dr. Nomeland in LD6. He hooked up a tiny suction probe to the top of the baby's head to directly monitor his heart rate. He also checked her cervix for the 6th time. Katy was now 6cm dilated, 90% effaced, and at 0 station line. Closer and closer.

11:00am - Last cervix check before the push showed her at 8-9cm dilated, with no more bag of waters at all, and at +1 station line.

12:20pm - Katy was finally ready to start pushing. Her mom and dad, Gene and Robin, showed up just in time.

My mom just missed seeing us before the big push, making it about 10 minutes later. Katy was still in relatively little pain, even through most of the pushing. The contractions stayed almost exactly 4 minutes apart throughout the final phase, allowing Katy to push 4 times for 10 seconds during each contraction and giving her a lot of time to recoup after each one. Again, another blessing. Sydney did a great job setting her up for everything and it was just the three of us through most of the pushing. She did give Katy some Petosin (sp?) to help the contractions increase in intensity, duration, and frequency.

1:35pm - Dr. Nomeland showed up again for the final push and had a resident with him. Another nurse joined us who was sweet enough right after Nick was born to ask me if I had a camera we wanted her to take pictures with. So the ones right after were courtesy of her, unanimous nurse. Katy did awesome through the whole thing and said it didn't start to become really painful until just as he started crowning. Dr. Nomeland came in and changed up almost everything that Nurse Sydney had done, which didn't give us less confidence in Sydney as she had helped get Katy to where she was, but it did give us more confidence in Nomeland that he knew exactly what he we wanted, where he wanted it. He did have to use this crazy vacuum thing that looked like a baby plunger to aid in pulling Nick down and out. I guess it's like a new form of forceps, which is what they had to use on me. True story. Just ask my mom and look under my right eyebrow and right behind my left ear to prove it. Anyway, Katy pushed hard for a long time and Nick came out, perfectly healthy. For more details on what happened to Katy, see the previous post. As a side note, some may or may not know that I am a bit of a softy inside and have been known to cry at various important emotional occasions (brother graduating high school, various people's going away parties, engagement, wedding, etc.) so the answer to whether I did cry or not is no. I did not cry. I sobbed. Uncontrollably. Like a little baby. Actually, almost as hard as Nick did. And no. I'm not ashamed of it.