my birth story

our little robert came a little earlier than expected. two weeks early to be exact. i went into my normal ob appointment on tuesday, january 31st. my ob was out of town on vacation so my appointment was with the lovely nurse practitioner. around 35 weeks my blood pressure had started getting on the high side, along with some swelling of my legs and feet. well at this appointment at 38 weeks, my blood pressure was at 140/85 and i was unable to put on shoes at this point due to swelling. so the nurse practitioner sent me into the hospital to be checked out. i was only there for a few hours before they sent me on my way home. while at home i started getting a migraine that wouldn't go away. no matter what i took to try and get to to go away, it just stayed.  so come wednesday morning i had to call my OB's office back and the attending doctor who was filling in for mine told me to go back to the hospital. 

adam and i arrived at cedars around 1pm i believe, and i was admitted right away. the doc who was filling in for mine came to speak with me, and told me it would be best if i was induced to prevent anything bad happening later on down the road with my high blood pressure. so i was hooked up to monitors, and they started me on fluids through an iv. while laying around waiting, another doctor came to speak with me about putting me on magnesium sulfate to prevent me from having a seizure with high blood pressure. they really didn't want to because of the side effects, but decided it would be best. ( high blood pressure + a migraine is a sign that you could be close to having a seizure.) my husband then went home to double check on the cats, and to grab some stuff, and thats when i asked him to bring me my "last meal". while on the magnesium they said i wouldn't be able to eat, and with not knowing what would be coming i wanted to make sure i had lots of food in my stomach. 

nothing much happened wednesday night except putting me on the magnesium sulfate (which sucks btw), but come thursday morning they started me on pitocin around 9am. come 930am, i was laying on my side talking with the hubs, when all of a sudden i felt a gush of water come out of me. at this point I didn't know if i was peeing myself, or if my water had broke until i felt a second gush of water. then the nurse confirmed that yes indeed, my water did break.   then we waited around a lot.... waited....waited... i was starting to have bad contractions, but we still waited. finally the anesthesiologist came at 3:30pm to give me my epidural. all seemed well until i still could feel everything even two hours later. around 5pm, the anesthesiologist came back with a team, yes a TEAM of people. they ended up discovering that due to my neurofibromatosis there was a fibroma blocking my epidural space. therefore, they had to take out that epidural, and re-do it along with a spinal tap higher up on my spine. they made a point to say " we'd like to say this never happens,but it never happens."  he also said that this was one of the top 5 most difficult epidurals that they've ever had to do. *sigh*. anywhoo, my contractions at this point were super horrible. i was in so much pain. my night was pretty much hell. my poor nurse and husband heard me screaming all night, i was having horrible pain in my bum and bad back labor. around 5:30 am i was so desperate to be checked that i lied to my nurse (i know shame on me). i told her that the pain was way worse when i was having a contraction. so she finally checked me. i was finally at 9 something centimeters. so right as she was about to call my ob, my ob actually called her. i was then told that my ob was going to leave home, and by 6:30am my ob was there!!! as soon as she walked in the room, i told her i was ready to start pushing so we started right away. for the first hour or so, my contractions were coming about 3 minutes apart which SUCKED!!!! so they slowed down the pitocin which then made me labor slow wayyyyyyyyyyy down. they then started coming around 6-8 minutes apart, and before we knew it it was already around 10am. bob was down low, but my ob told us that it would be best if we did the vacuum and if that didn't work by the 3rd try we would need to do a c-section. the first try with the vacuum i gave a big push and she pulled but it popped off. then we gave the vacuum a second try, and bamn! baby bob came out. they showed bob to me, but then handed him off to the pediatricians to be checked because he was kind of limp, but very vocal. while they cleaned him up, i lost tons of blood. the doc took care of me, and once i was all good ( i won't go into detail with all that) they handed me my sweet baby boy. he was 6 pounds, 6 oz, and twenty inches long. 26 hours of labor total, and 3.5 hours of pushing. 

my husband was so wonderful during all of it. he held me leg and head for every contraction, encouraged my pushing, and was so excited to see his son being born. i wouldn't have been able to do it without him. as rough as all of it was, i'd do it all again for my little man. he is such a wonderful baby. (even though he doesn't let me sleep.)


and yea.. that's it... sorry for the poor grammar, and if it seems choppy. that is due to the lack of sleep.