The Baby is here

Dad here, blogging for a tired Mommy.

Jill must have felt something, because at 2 AM on Saturday, she was still up creating a music mix for the labor. I was watching the USA Volleyball team win their match.

I had the alarm set for 5:30 AM because I was supposed to drive back up to Road Atlanta to drive on the track again. So the alarm goes off and I'm about to get up, when Jill says my water broke. We call up the doctor and they say you need to go to the hospital. Ok, so it is 5:30 AM, who the heck is going to watch Jason?

Nobody is even up yet. So Jill calls her friend from the neighborhood, Beth (absolute lifesaver), and she comes running over to watch Jason who is still asleep.

What's weird about this is that Jill is not feeling anything. Hasn't even had a real contraction yet.

So we hop in the car and start off, but I am so tired I need to make a quick stop ... at Starbucks(see pictures).

AJ Labor and Delivery

After getting my, Quad Venti Soy Vanilla Latte, we are off again to the hospital. Still no contractions.

At Northside we check in and get Jill into the birthing room. They are busy hooking her up to the monitors, so I go to move the car and get the paperwork finished. While I'm standing there waiting for the papers, I guy comes in with the exact opposite situation. "Where's a wheelchair?" and he goes running around the corner to find one. The nurse goes to get him one but he has disappeared. As the nurse comes back here comes the guy and his wife who is in some serious pain. He goes running away again outside while his wife gets carted off. I'm thinking to myself, at least I'm not freaking out like that.

Skip ahead 6 hours and still no contractions. So the decision is to put Jill on Pitosin so the contractions start (no Epidural, because she still wants to go as natural as possible). This is usually not the way to do it because the contractions are so intense that you need the epidural.

Contractions start pretty quickly now, but there is a problem. The baby's heartrate keeps dropping during the contractions. I look this up while it is happening because there is wireless in the hospital. It is not terrible, but still a concern, but as long as the baby's heartrate comes right back up it just needs to be watched. 2 hours later things are getting worse, when contractions get really big the heartrate is dropping too low (once it went down to 50 and it should be up above 120). The doctor suggests we think about a C-Section. So we go off the pitosin to see if the baby's heartrate stays normal during contractions. The situation we are experiencing is called decelerations (This link helps explain a little towards the bottom).

At this point we are kind of freaking, but the doctors are very good about explaining the situation and they tried to keep us from having to go this route as long as they could based on our wishes. They tell us that the umbilical cord could be pinched, kinked, or wrapped around a body part. The next step is to go to internal monitoring (instead of wearing the monitors on the outside they put a tube in to "listen" from the inside). The process also allows the nurses to push Saline into the womb and maybe "float" the umbilical cord away from the body to remove the kink. We try that, but things don't seem to get any better. So the doctors call for the OR to get prepped.

Next issue, since we were going natural the epidural was not put in, but if we don't get an epidural in, then Jill needs to be put to sleep for the C-section (not a good situation for the baby or mommy). At this point the nurses, start pumping fluids into Jill so she can get the epidural immediately. Within 30 minutes, I'm waiting outside of the OR.

30 minutes later at 3:32 PM they bring out, 5 lbs 12.8oz, 19.75 inch AJ. Turns out his umbilical was wrapped around his arm and twice around his neck. So with every contraction he would lose oxygen and his HR would drop. If we had tried to go the natural way, AJ might have been in some serious trouble.

The body has a weird way of telling you what to do. Jill's water broke without any contractions, forcing us to go to the hospital. If we had been laboring at home with big contractions we never would have known that there was anything wrong with AJ. Scary thought, but everything happens for a reason. I guess the moral of the story is to be open for change. You may have a birth plan but keep an open mind, ask questions, and listen to the doctor before make a rash decision.

Mom and AJ are now doing very well and sleeping.

Thanks Beth for watching Jason and Ray for picking up Jill's mom at the airport.