I decided I should probably take some time to write about Nolan's birth since I'm already beginning to forget the details even though it wasn't even three months ago!
The whole process began about a week before I actually ended up giving birth. I started getting these awful back aches and so I began paying more attention and realized I was actually having contractions. It was hard to notice them without actually feeling my belly. I could feel the tightening with my hands, but they weren't painful yet (other than in my back, of course). So, I started to measure the time between contractions. One night they were about 1-2 minutes apart so I decided to go to the hospital just to get it checked out. But unfortunately I didn't dilate much during my hour under observation so they sent me home.
I decided I needed to do something to take my mind off of everything. I was in pain and frustrated that the baby just wasn't coming! Not to mention how huge and swollen everything was - I couldn't sleep because I was so uncomfortable and I could barely eat anything since there was pretty much no space left for my stomach! So I went up to spend a few days at my parent's house and to see my sister Katie and her baby Carter who were in town for Easter and to bless Carter. We had a fun time playing games and celebrating my mom's birthday!
My doctor had me come in for an appointment on April 1st. Everything looked okay to him, but because I was overdue, he set up an appointment for me to get a non-stress test at the hospital. So on April 4th I went in for the test. They basically just strapped me up to a monitor where they could monitor my contractions and the baby's heartbeat for an hour. After my hour was up, they had the on-call doctor and my doctor review the results. It turns out the baby's heartbeat was dropping slightly below normal when some of the contractions peaked (probably worn out from a week's worth of them! - I know I was!). So they opted to keep me at the hospital and induce me.
I was admitted around 12:30pm and my doctor came in at about 1:30 to break my water. I was already about 3cm dilated so they went ahead and started me on pitocin at about 2pm. After a couple of hours my contractions were coming pretty strong and I was already worn out from the past week, so I opted to get my epidural. They kept checking me every hour, but there was very little progress so they slowly kept increasing the amount of pitocin.
I don't remember all of the details and what time everything happened, but at one point in the early evening, the baby's heartbeat began dropping. The nurses came in and had me roll over onto my side. They turned off the pitocin and put me on oxygen. They also decided to put an internal monitor on the baby as opposed to the belt I had been wearing all day (so that they could keep a closer eye on his heartbeat). When the heartbeat was back to normal, they eased me back onto the pitocin, but pretty soon the same thing happened again. They nurses put me back on oxygen and came in to talk to us. They basically said that the pitocin was stressing out the baby and they most likely wouldn't be able to turn it back on. If his heartbeat didn't steady out the way they would like it to, I would need to have an emergency c-section. But they were very calm about the whole thing and I really wasn't that worried.
When they came in to check me the next hour, I was at a 3+ (a tiny bit of progress!), but since I wasn't on pitocin anymore, we decided it was going to be a long night! I sent Scott home to get couple of things for me. While he was gone, I started feeling the contractions in my back and my side (the side that was up). The anesthesiologist came in to change out my epidural drugs and I told me him I could feel the contractions and it had only been about 30 minutes since I'd been turned over. He told me just to wait a little bit longer and then have the nurses turn me over. About that time, Scott came back and I had him page the nurses to turn me over because I was in a lot of pain. It took a while for them to come in (actually they didn't come in till the hour mark when they had to turn me over and check me anyway.
I was in so much pain at that point. I remember one of the nurses said something to me but I didn't even register it because I was working on getting through the contraction. When I finally realized she had been talking to me I apologized and told her I was in a lot of pain and I could feel my contractions. I felt like all the nurses, like the anesthesiologist just kind of blew me off when I told them this. So the nurse checked me and was shocked that I was complete and ready to push! So in the past (very painful) hour, I had gone from 3+cm to 10. No wonder I was in so much pain!
They called my doctor and I began pushing at around 10pm. At this point they had increased my epidural so that I wasn't in so much pain and the whole experience seemed very surreal. I was kind of in this weird drug/adrenalin induced state and I was pushing every so often while the nurses talked to each other and my husband. I was kind of being ignored but to be honest I was glad - I was able to have the experience in my own little world.
After an hour and a half of pushing, my doctor said he thought the baby might be too big to come out on his own, but he wanted to try a vacuum before opting for a c-section. The first two times he used the vaccum, the suction broke - if it happened again, I was going to have a c-section. Fortunately the third time he used the vacuum, it worked! He came right out and yelled out to let us know he was here!
Nolan Scott Keyes was born at 12:23am on 5 April 2012. He was 9lbs and 21in long.
