RP and I had settled in to get some rest about an hour after I received my epidural and after we updated our families that the baby would be coming in the morning. We were both able to get a couple hours of sleep before eight nurses, followed closely by the doctor, rushed into our room. The baby wasn’t responding well to contractions and his heart rate was dropping rapidly. They quickly gave me an oxygen mask and had me roll onto my side. They also began to monitor him internally to get more accurate readings. The nurses kept a very close eye on the baby’s heart rate and when they didn’t like what they were seeing, they’d have me roll over to the other side. RP and I were still able to get some rest, but we spent a majority of the overnight hours glued to the numbers on the monitor to make sure that the baby’s heart rate stayed stable.

At 7am, the doctor returned to check my progress. I was now 10 cm dilated and the baby was in position. Because of his size, she still wasn’t convinced that I’d be able to push enough to deliver. We set 8am as the time to begin pushing and we did some practice pushes so that I’d know what they needed from me when the time came. At this time they turned down my epidural so that I’d feel my contractions and know when to push with them.

At 8am, Michele (our favorite nurse) came in to start the pushing process. The doctor had instructed her that I only got to push for 30 minutes before we’d move to Plan B and head to the OR. After a couple of contractions, she realized that they were too far apart and I was losing all of the progress that I was making because the contractions were about five minutes apart and they needed to be closer to every minute or two. Michele was a fantastic advocate and asked the doctor if we could increase my Pitocin, continue to reduce the epidural and wait until 9am to start pushing. That plan was approved and RP and I were left alone to get through the next 45 minutes before it was time to push again.

By 8:30am, I was really feeling the urge to push and we were anxiously watching the clock, waiting for go time. At about 8:50am, I told RP to head out to the nurse’s station and find Michele because I needed to push. She came in, paged the doctor and instructed RP grab my leg to help me push.

*side note about RP during L&D. He was absolutely fantastic, but prior to our delivery, he wanted to have a Don Draper delivery experience. His preference was to sit in the waiting room with a bottle of brown liquor and wait to be told that we had a healthy baby boy. Unfortunately for him, times have changed and he was an extremely active participant in my labor. Probably much more than he had bargained for, but he was a champ!

Thankfully our doctor was very close because I only pushed for about 10 minutes before Michele looked at me and said that my next contraction would deliver our baby! RP and I couldn’t believe our ears. That soon? I braced myself for my next push and sure enough, our healthy baby was born at 9:13am. They wrapped our little guy in a blanket and immediately handed him to me. The umbilical cord was clamped and RP was handed the scissors to cut it. This was something that was also on RP’s “no thank you” list for child birth, but he didn’t have any trouble when our nurse handed over the scissors.

RP followed the baby over to the station where he was cleaned up, weighed, measured and checked out. In the meantime, I delivered the placenta and received some stitches for level two tears. By the time that I was stitched up and the baby was checked out, I was able to hold him again. That’s when the tears started flowing. We did it! We had an absolutely perfect little baby boy.

Official stats:
July 14, 2012, 9:13am
9 lbs. 4 oz, 20.5 inches

Now we just needed to name him…

Part III to come.

Dash’s Birth Story: Part I