W's Birth Story

So, with all this talk about W. I thought it would be neat for me to post his birth story. Enjoy!

W arrived on May 21, 2007 at 9:47 p.m. via c-section. His arrival was quite eventful. I pretty much had a normal pregnancy. I did have to supplement progestrone in the beginning and was on Zofran for the all-day sickness. Anywho, I was induced at 8:00 p.m. on May 20, 2007. I was given one round of cervidil and the contractions started to come on. I was in labor for 12 hours and I finally asked for vitamin E. I was progessing pretty good, 1 cm an hour. The doctor broke my water during the morning hours, and W handled all my contractions extremely well. Even though I finally dilated to seven (at 6:00 p.m), his head was only at -2 station. I dilated to eight the next hour, and his head was still far up there. My epidural was starting to wear off, and I declined to get more, because I wanted to make it easier to push. Around 8:30 p.m., I stopped progressing, and the fire alarm went off. Now, labor is already stressful enough, and now we have a FIRE?!?! My O.B. comes into my room wearing surgical scrubs, and I knew my hopes for a vaginal delivery were shattered. Thank god the fire turned out to be a "false alarm". Jesse and I just broke into tears when we heard "c-section" come out of my doctor's mouth. I've never had surgery before in my life, and I was so scared. However, I was so anxious to see my little boy, knowing I've been in labor for 24 hours. I was wheeled into surgery alone, and was given a spinal. That was the worst experience in my life. The spinal went up too far into my chest, and I felt as if I couldn't breathe. I started screaming, so of course I could breathe, but it didn't feel like it. So, they gave me some "oxygen" to calm down, and they progressed with the surgery. Jess kept stroking my forehead, and I could feel some tugging, but it never hurt at all. Finally, my doctor said he'll be here in just a few seconds. Then, I heard the loudest cry, and of course DH and I were bawling our eyes out. Jess went over to see him, and I was given a dose of "happy medicine" to help me calm down a bit. I was starting to get a little worried when I didn't see W right away. I guess his first APGAR score was at 7, and he was having difficulty breathing. He weighed 8 lbs 5 oz, and was 21 inches long. Jesse followed W into the nursery. They finished up my surgery, and wheeled me into recovery. As I was "recovering", W's pedi came in to tell me how he was doing. He had a Pneumothorax, and a fever (I gave him one, since I spiked a temp. at the end of delivery). A Pneumothorax is a sudden collection of air or gas in the chest that causes the lung to collapse in the absence of a traumatic injury to the chest or lung. So, they were giving him chest xrays. His pedi told me if it was severe enough on the xrays, they would have to give him a chest tube. Thank god it wasn't that bad. W didn't even have to stay in the NICU. However, he did stay the night in the Continuing Care Nursery, and I couldn't see him until 12 hours later. W overcame all of his problems the night before, and was able to stay in our room until we left on Thursday, May 24th.