La Vita Dolce

Josh and I went to bed at 11pm on Sat. night and I had two contractions. Then the baby wiggled around for 1/2 hour. I knew that this was it because this kid NEVER moved inside me. I laid there for about an hour or so, excited, but not in labor. Then I fell asleep. Woke up at 3am with a strong contraction, went to the bathroom and came back and told Josh, "We're going to have a baby!" I knew with just that one contraction. I crawled into bed and with the second contraction, my water broke. All over the bed, over the floor and all over my hospital clothes I had laid out next to the bed :] We left for the hospital immediately. By 3:20am I checked in and was at 6 cm already. My poor midwife had just laid down to rest when the nurse ran in and told her I was here and was "fast and furious". She came running in with no shoes on. By the time I got a gown on and into the bed, I was at 8 cm. After two natural childbirths and another car accident...I was really ready to try an epidural. So they brought him in ASAP, and I had contractions two minutes apart by this time. I had to sit still through 3 contractions and he grazed a nerve...but then after 5 minutes I couldn't feel a thing!! Unfortunately about 10 min. after the epidural I started to feel sick, and I crashed. My blood pressure was 60 over 40 and I remember a bunch of people running into the room and yelling drug stuff, being rolled over and given shots in the arm and things in the I.V. After a few minutes I recovered, but then Grayson took a dive and his heartrate was below 60 bpm for over 5 min., they pushed more drugs for him and they started prepping me for an emergency C-section. Luckily he recovered and they gave me some drugs to stop my labor so Grayson could recover. At this time we found out he was face up, so they had me turning over in different positions every 20 min. to try to flip him. My contractions started up again but they were weak, and Grayson would crash with every 3rd or 4th one. I told everyone let's just get him out with a c-section but they said it's still okay because he spikes after the contraction so he still had strength. Josh and I discovered that if we both talked to him during those contractions, he didn't drop as far and he recovered more quickly. How neat is that? Well, at this point they aren't sure if it will end up in a c-section or not so we texted a few people and also our pastor about his heartrate. They had to put in an internal monitor that screwed into his head and another internal monitor to record contraction strentgh. Then because of how Grayson was reacting to the contractions we found out the cord was around his neck, and possibly wrapped around twice. After another hour or so, I leaked merconium...so then they started prepping me that if he inhales the merconium after birth, the best case is complications like pnuemonia and worse case is life-flight down to Denver Children's Hospital. They said that I wouldn't get to hold him and if something does go wrong, I probably wouldn't get to see him. So after all these complications, I told them if they get me to the pushing stage, I will have him out in less than a minute. My midwife decided to give me pitocin to start stronger contractions...at this point I had been stalled out at 9 cm for over 5 hours. Grayson had turned 1/2 way around by this point and within an hour I was ready to push. My midwife had to wait for the pediatrician to arrive, because she was going to suction and check for the merconium. Here is the really neat part...at this time my friend is asking the prayer team at church to pray for me and the baby's heartrate. This neat older couple (who Josh had sold a house to a few months prior) happened to be the people my friend went to for prayer. They are very intune with the Holy Spirit and get words of knowledge quite frequently. They start praying for the baby's heartrate for a few minutes and then Nancy starts praying really specifically for me to have God with me when the baby is born because the baby is not going to cry for a long time, and that there is amniotic fluid in the baby's throat... the baby is not going to cry but he is healthy and everything will be okay. So that prayer was about 5 minutes before Grayson was born we think. So my midwife preps everyone that I am going to push fast and if everyone was ready. She told me I could push, so I pushed three times for about 15 seconds each and Grayson's head popped out. She had me stop so she could unwrap the cord (later she told me she was worried that it would tie into a knot and we also found out later it was an extremely short cord which has it's own set of complications). I just remember seeing Grayson's dark purplish, limp body dangling over her forearm and watching her frantically clamp and cut the cord, then throw Grayson over my leg to the pediatrician and blood flying all over my leg. It seemed like three minutes, but Josh said it was only about 30 seconds till Grayson started frantically crying because the pediatrian had suctioned out his airway and then scoped into his lungs to see if there was any merconium in them. After about 10 minutes he was given a green light and I finally got to hold him! He scored an 8-9 apgar score and I've been told there should be no lasting effects. Grayson was born at 11:19pm on Sunday and even though we had 7 major complications that could have been bad, he was a healthy boy. God sure is Good. Right after birth he did have a golf-ball sized knot on his head, another bloody bump from the internal monitor, and a really swollen right eye. But by that night, it all disappeared. God was with us and Grayson has an amazing birth story.

In between complications...

After we found out we didn't need an emergency c-section...

About 10 min. after birth...we finally got to hold him. Check out that huge swollen right eye. He also had a big golf ball size knot on his head...but all disappeared by that night.