Birth Story

On Monday night, I went to work and shortly after arriving my eye sight started to dim and blur. I tried to blow it off and take it easy to see if I was just over doing it, but it didn't get better so I went to the ER and had one of the nurses take my blood pressure. It was 156/86 with a pulse of 124. The nurses said that I should be admitted so I went back to the lab and called Kelly. He called OB Triage to see whether they thought that I should come in. They said I should. So he drove down to work and picked me up and we went down to the hospital in which I was to give birth. After sitting in their little make shift room for a few hours they told me that they were going to admit me and we were going to indeed have a baby. My blood pressures were just a little too high and they just figured since I was so close to my due date that it was safer to induce then to let my high blood pressure continue on. It has been an issue for a lot of the tail end of my pregnancy.

So at 0330 they finally got an IV in me (it took a few tries) and started the pitocin to get the contractions going. I wasn't having any contractions for a while and it was making me nervous that I wouldn't be able to actually go into labor.. But after 7 hours or so (you can see in the pictures) the contractions start coming. They came in and broke my water around 10 or so. Shortly after breaking my water the contractions started coming harder and a lot more painful. I got really nauseated and even after the anti-nausea meds I was sick so I asked them to give me my epidural at that point. The epidural was horridly painful to get but made the contractions bearable.. I had gone in 3 cm dilated and 50% effaced. And that hadn't changed after all the hours of pitocin and my water breaking. But a short few hours later they came in and said that I was now 4 to 5 cm dilated. It was around 330pm at that point. As I was laying and talking to my mom I could feel the contractions coming and going and suddenly I felt the need to push.. I tried to ignore it and figured that it was just the contractions getting more normal and stronger, but I couldn't ignore it for long and finally said that I needed the nurse to come in because I really felt the need to push even though it had only been 45 minutes since they had last checked. And when they did check I was 8.5 cm dilated. I went from a 4-5 to a 8.5 in 45 minutes!! And was now 100% effaced. And the nurse noticed at that point that my epidural was out so they gave me a 'booster' shot for that. Then a short while later the doc came in to talk to me and I felt the over whelming need to vomit everywhere.. and I did. But the doc said that it is a good thing because it is a sign that baby is ready to come out. As they got things ready for baby I felt a really sharp pain in my left hip area that got worse with each contraction. We later found out that it was because baby was being pushed down into my hip and the doctor ended up having to reach up there and help pull her down right.

But after doing a few test pushes, they told me that it could be a few hours of that. I got really scared at that point because I had been up for nearly 26 hours and didn't have the energy for hours of pushing.. But after 1.5 hours of active labor and me in tons of pain as my epidural had worn off once again, Manhattan Hope Orman came into the world.. Thankfully I only had to get a few stitches down there and everything else was perfect. She is doing well and we are enjoying are very well behaved little girl.

I am glad that my mom was there to take the pictures because I was so out of it that I barely remember some parts of what happened. I didn't even know that any pictures were being taken and the first thing that came out of my mouth when they put the baby on my belly was 'that thing came out of me!' I couldn't believe that there was actually a baby inside me.. As odd as that sounds!!