Monday, October 6, 2008

The Birth of Caleb Anthony!


I couldn't get to sleep on Sunday night so I decided to go try and get comfortable on the couch around 3am. I fell asleep and woke up around 4am and when I went to stand up I felt a leak of fluid. I wasn't sure if it was urine or amniotic fluid so I spent the next few hours trying to figure it out. I was googling all the ways to tell the difference. I tried laying down for 20 minute increments and getting up again to see if it would leak again. Sometimes it would and other times it wouldn't. I didn't want to the hospital in case it was just urine so I decided to call my doctors office when they opened. I tried at 9:00, 9:15, and again at 9:30 and continued to get the answering service so I decided I would just drive in. I asked to speak with a nurse and described what was happening and she told me to go to labor & delivery right away and they can do testing to see if it is amniotic fluid. I arrived at labor & delivery around 10:30am. The nurse had me put on a gown and belly band. She hooked me up to the monitors and checked me. She said I was 2cm dialated and she saw some pooling of fluid in my vagina so she was pretty sure it was amniotic fluid I was leaking. She did the ferning test. It was in fact amniotic fluid. They put in my IV and started up the pitocin around 11:30am. At this point I was having contractions 1 1/2 minutes apart but not feeling much. I had a slight backache and some menstrual type cramps. At 2pm Dr. Young came in to check my cervix and said I was still at 2cm but she needed to re-break my water(apparently it broke at the top before). As soon as she broke my water I instantly dialated to 4cm. This is when the pain started. I could actually feel my contractions coming and going and I finally started to feel like I was in labor. The pain was pretty intense and came on very suddenly. The doctor said I could have my epidural so I went ahead and put my request in for it incase the anestesiologist would be tied up and take awhile to get there. Luckily he arrived fairly shortly and I had my epidural in by 3pm. Within 20 minutes I was feeling good. No pain, just discomfort from having to stay confined to the bed. The doctor reviewed the monitor and said that they baby hasn't been having enough active periods so they got out the buzzer to wake him. It worked but he was back to sleep in no time. Around 4:30pm they decided to put an internal monitor on the baby. Dr. Young left and Dr. Konda came in to take over. The babies heartrate started dropping down so the doctor began to be concerned. I started feeling my contractions again so they paged the anestesiologist. He came back and gave me some more medicine and increased my epidural med. I started to feel good again. The babies heartrate continued dropping so at 6pm they stopped the pitocin. At 6:30 the doctor decided that I would need a ceserean. Caleb Anthony arrived at 7:37pm. He weighed 10lbs and was 20 1/2 inches. He is already the love of my life 3(I would really like to type up a more detailed birth story, and I will eventually... but for now... this is it)

here are some pictures:





























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