Pete's Grand Entrance

I know a lot of folks write up a 'birth story' to share on their blogs. I wanted to describe it before the details start disappearing on me. Please forgive my lack of correct paragraph form and general grammar. :)

Now onto Meeting Pete!

After having falsey contractions for a week or two, I had my 40 week appointment the day before Pete was born and was told I was just hanging out dilated at 3-4 cm. That's enough to make you crazy when you're getting anxious at the end. I figured it would keep going like this for weeks :) Finally on Friday morning, March 9, I started having pretty intense contractions that were much more painful than the ones I had previously. They were getting within about 3-5 minutes so we packed up our things and headed to the hospital at 4am. When we got there I was still at about 4-5 cm, but I was ready for the epidural. The pain was amazing, probably the worst I'd ever felt, much like people had described it! After leaving things to progress on their own for awhile, I was at 5-6 cm and not getting anywhere too quickly, so they decided to start Pitocin and break my water. It had been a long morning and I was finally at about 9-10cm and ready to start pushing around noon.

Me holding up a nine for 9cm dilated!

After a few sessions of pushing, they had me relax for awhile and explained that they wanted to confer with my doctor before having me continue. It turns out that Pete's heart rate was going down during the pushing, and then back up to a higher baseline than before, both causes for concern. My temperature also was on the feverish side, which raised concern with Chorioamnionitis. After looking at the risks and options, my doctor explained to me that I could either continue to push in spite of these risk factors, or have an unplanned C-Section. She was great about letting me choose and didn't really tell me what she was leaning toward. It was so great to have a doctor that you trust in this situation because I definitely didn't know which direction to go. She said that she was leaning about 80% toward a C-section, which I then agreed to. On the way out of the room, to the O.R., she took another look at the monitors and said that she had no doubt that it needed to be done. It was such a crazy experience from what I was expecting and brought a lot of mixed emotions. Here is a picture of Pete's first cries. (sorry if its a bit graphic)

 It was slightly traumatizing to be so 'out of it' for Pete's birth, and disappointing that I couldn't really hold or look at him right away. I also couldn't focus on much else than my own nausea and eventually the pain, when the anesthesia wore off later in the evening.

Luckily, after my pain was under control and the chaos of visitors died down, I was able to really bond with our new little baby, and finally felt like things were going to be okay. Definitely not how I pictured his birth going, but so grateful to God that we are all safe and sound. And now I can't remember before Pete was here! :)

Pete Wallace, born March 9, 2012 at 5:32pm.