It had been a pretty uneventful Tuesday as I'd been chillaxin' on the couch for most of the day reading up on labour and delivery in my "What to Expect When You're Expecting" book since our computer was still in the shop and I hadn't been getting my weekly emails from their site (holy run-on sentence Batman). I unbeached my whale-like self to use the bathroom, grabbed a snack and then headed back to the couch around 3:30 pm. However, upon my descent to the cushions I felt a sudden gush from you know where (fear not those who have sat on my couch since this happened, I didn't actually sit down so there was no contamination). I quickly deduced that my water had broken since I had just returned from the bathroom. So I calmly walked back to the kitchen and proceeded to phone my Mom. I informed her that I was fairly certain the baby was going to be here earlier than expected and when she asked why I replied, "I'm pretty sure my water just broke." Kudos to Mom for being calm, cool and collected at this point. She advised me to phone my OB to see if I should go to the hospital and then phone her back. So I did, and then phoned her back to report that the receptionist instructed me to go to the hospital to get assessed. We then decided that Mom would drive in to Lethbridge to pick up all of the baby clothes and take them home to wash as we were planning to do this on Thursday but obviously this was not going to work out now. I then went to pack my hospital bag all the while trying to remain calm myself as I attempted to wrap my head around the fact that I was most likely going to have a baby by this time tomorrow. Once my bag was packed, I decided that I should probably phone Jay to let him know what was going on. I could tell that he was slightly confused about the urgency of the situation because I told him that it was up to him whether he came home right then (about 4: 30 pm) or stayed for an extra 1/2 hour or so to finish his shift . He decided to leave right away. Shortly thereafter, Mom arrived and we made a list of stuff that I would need asap that hadn't been picked up (ie diapers, vaseline, pads, etc). Once Jay got home, Mom headed to Wal-Mart for the aforementioned items. Jay's confusion was then compounded by the fact that I was still very calm as I told him he should probably have something to eat since I didn't know how long this was going to take. When Mom got back to our house she and Jay loaded the baby clothes into her truck and then Jay and I headed off to the hospital.
Last belly picture just before we left for the hospital.
We arrived at the hospital about 6:30 pm and I checked in while Jay parked the car. Once we arrived at the delivery suite, the nurses hooked me up to the fetal monitor and contraction monitor. They determined that I was having contractions even though I couldn't feel them and after checking that I was only 1 cm dilated, so they sent us home at 7:45 pm with instructions to be back at the hospital by 6:45 am if my contractions didn't send us back earlier. So we grabbed some Wendy's on the way home and started the waiting game. However, by 9:45 I was pacing the upstairs hallway since I couldn't sit or lay down and my contractions were about 5 minutes apart. I was also having back labor, so I got to feel each contractions twice: once across my lower back and then across my abdomen about 2 seconds later. Not fun. So we headed back to the hospital and when we arrived at about 10:30 pm my contractions were about 2 minutes apart. One of the ER nurses pretty much ran me up the delivery suite in a wheelchair while Jay was left behind to re-admit me. Once upstairs, I was hooked up to the monitors again while waiting to be checked again. A word of advice to anyone planning to have children: DO NOT eat a hamburger during labor. I ended up puking all over myself because of the contractions. Not a pleasant experience normally, but I'm pretty sure being in labor made it worse. After we got me cleaned up and into a new gown (which is definitely one of my least favorite things to wear by the way) the nurse checked me and informed me that it was time to move into a delivery room. We are now entering the part of this adventure where I stopped caring what time it was and pretty much just concentrated on how much pain I was in. But fear not, "Funny" Alisha that we all know and love still made an appearance by trying to crack jokes between contractions. Jay thinks it was great but I think it's slightly embarassing. Because of the back labor, the nurse suggested that I get in the shower so that hopefully the warm water would help with the pain. It didn't, but I stayed in there for a while until the nurse then informed me that I should get out of the shower so they could check me again. She also offered me morphine. I had decided going into this thing that I would try to do it natrually, but that I would ask for drugs if I couldn't hack it, so I immediately agreed to her offer. She then hooked me up to an IV, which of course took 2 tries since I have the worst veins on the planet I'm pretty sure, and then she checked my dilation again. I had now progressed to 8 cm and she told me that I had been 7 cm when we had arrived for the second time (so no epidural for me). We told Jay to go get the camera since delivery should be happening soon and while he was gone we tried the hands and knees position to see if that would help me finish dilating (Jay was very confused when he came back as to why I was doing this). I'm going to guess about 5 minutes later I was starting to feel "pushy" as the nurse called it. I think that this was almost as bad as the contractions since I knew that I couldn't push yet, but my body had other ideas. The nurse kept telling me just to breath through the contractions and not push to which I replied "I'm not! It's my body doing it!" About this time the attending and resident doctors decided to check in with us and check me again. Finally I'd made it to the magical land of 10 cm and was allowed to push. However, in the land of 10 cm, I discovered that I can reach octaves that may shatter glass because I was screaming from the pain. I don't think the morphine was working. Jay was frightened, but "Funny" Alisha came back after a few screams and announced, "I'm the person that scares all the other women in labour. I'm the one that they tell their family and friends about 'There was this woman screaming down the hallway ..." Ya, embarassing. But after pushing for about half an hour (I'm timing this from about 9 cm) the nurse announced that this little person had quite a bit of hair (yay for crowning!). About 5 or 10 minutes later I felt the worst pain ever and decided that I wasn't going to be pushing anymore. However, this coincided with when his head was coming out so they didn't really want me to push anyway so it all kind of worked out. Then a couple of pushes later the baby was born which was the greatest feeling of relief I've ever had! At least it was until he started crying and then I was even more relieved. The nurses announced "It's a boy!" (which we already knew, but it was good to have it confirmed) and then took him to clean him up, weigh him, etc. He was born at 12:51 am, weighed 7 lbs 11 oz and measured 21.6 inches long. Once that was done, I got to hold our new little man for the first time. It was so wonderful to finally meet the little person who'd been sharing my body for the last 9 months and so amazing how much I already loved him at that moment. We'd already decided on Paxton John Scott Christensen for his name so Jay and I confirmed that he looked like a Paxton. I was so proud of Jay as well since he was such a great coach during the whole event. He had a huge smile on his face and scooped Paxton out of my arms like he'd held a million babies before (I'm pretty sure Paxton was the first one he's held) when the nurse announced they were going to deliver the placenta. After that and some stitches, the nurse had me feed Paxton and then we headed across to the maternity ward.
Mom's First Hold
Paxton John Scott Christensen
Once we were settled in the room it was about 3 am so Jay headed home to be with the dogs and I tried to get some sleep. However, this was nearly impossible since the nurses had tokeep coming in and out of the room. First they had to give Paxton a bath. Then they had to come in to check his vitals every hour for the first 6 hours and me every 2 hours. Add to that the fact that I didn't have a private room, so they were doing the same thing for the woman and baby "next door" and that I was a little wound up from the past 9 1/2 hours and that equals almost no sleep. So I started making phone calls to family and friends around 7 am to pass the time until Jay arrived to visit us around noon. Poor Jay, he was soooo tired because he'd stopped at his Dad's house on the way home and didn't get back to our place until between 5 and 5:30 am. He got a little sleep, but people started phoning him after a few hours. However, he was the only visitor I was allowed to have because the Maternity Ward had been closed to everyone else due to the Swine Flu epidemic. Boo-urns to that. Hospitals are very boring when you are there all by yourself! The rest of the day was pretty boring, consisting mostly of feeding and changing Paxton and watching him sleep. The people next door got to go home that evening since this was their 3rd baby, but we had to stay overnight. It's a good thing the other people left because Paxton was none too happy that night and cried for almost 2 hours straight!
Tired Daddy
Gassy smile
Thursday morning eventually arrived and I was informed by the nurse that they had discharge papers for me but were waiting for Paxton's. This was at about 8:30 am so I phoned Jay to let him know. We figured we'd be out of the hospital within a few hours so he hurried to run some errands and then came to the hospital. And then we proceeded to wait and wait and wait and wait (you get the picture). The reason for all this waiting was that I had procrastinated getting a new family doctor so we were waiting for the same woman I'd been seeing before she referred me to an OB for the last trimester (see my previous post in October called "Ranting" if you are unaware of how horrible this doctor is). Once we knew which doctor we were waiting for we started to get upset because we were fairly certain we weren't going to ever get out of the hospital. So around noon Jay schmoozed one of the nurses into calling the doctor's office after which she reported that she'd spoken with the doctor's secretary and was informed that she was on her lunch break. However the nurse had left specific instructions to not let the doctor do anything else but call the hospital once she returned. An hour later we still hadn't heard anything so we started discussing signing ourselves out of the hospital. (You can actually do this. You just have to sign a form stating that the doctor hasn't signed off on it and that you won't hold the hospital liable if anything happens.) So we had one of the nurses go over all the "checking out" info with us (how to prevent SIDS, breast feeding info, etc) and check out our car seat. Poor Jay had to then remove the car seat cover he'd previously spent 20 minutes installing because it goes between the baby and the car seat which can apparently cause the baby to fall out of the car seat if there's an accident because the straps aren't tight enough. Really? The thing is like 2 mm thick. How loose can the straps actually be? Whatever. At this point the super helpful nurse who phoned the doctor returned to inform us that she had actually spoken with the doctor (see, miracles do happen). Apparently the doctor had started into her about "How dare you tell me what to do? I have patients to see, blah blah blah." So the nurse gave it back to her something like, "These people have been waiting all morning and now into the afternoon for you to show up so that they can take their baby home!" She informed us that the doctor had said she would come by after her appointments were finished for the day. That was the final straw. Jay and I informed the nurses that we would be signing ourselves out as we didn't want to wait for 4 or 5 or who knew how many more hours. We then phoned my Mom and Dad to come meet us at the hospital since they had all the baby clothes with them. Jay met them downstairs and returned with clothes, so we dressed him, bundled him into the car seat (it was about -10 outside so it was a good thing we had extra receiving blankets as we couldn't use the car seat cover!), signed the form and headed down to the atrium where Mom, Dad and Auntie Kinsey were all impatiently waiting to meet Paxton. We all then headed to our house. Mom, Dad and Kinsey stayed for about a half hour and then had to head home. Jay's Mom came by a short while later for a small visit and then headed out as well. And then we were alone with our new baby. Mo and Maggie were very curious about the noisy new bundle we'd brought them but both were very gentle when they sniffed him.
We were both really tired so we hit the hay pretty early. Mom and Dad came by the next day (Friday) to help us finish setting up the nursery. We also made a trip over to Jay's Mom's house so Dave and Great Grandpa Ben could meet Paxton. Then on Saturday, Jay's Dad and Roseanne stopped by to meet their grandson. Jay's Dad was just slightly excited to meet Paxton. I think he was actually vibrating.
We are so blessed to have so much family and great friends here to help us out. So far I think we're adapting fairly well to being parents. I'll keep you posted.
Grandpa Dooley's first hold
Auntie Kizzy's first hold
Grammie S's first hold
Grandma Daryl's first hold
Maggie and Mo checking out the new arrival
Safe in the playpen from the dogs
Chillin' with Mom
Great Grandpa Ben's first hold
Matching hospital bracelets
All tuckered out
Grandma Roseanne's first hold
Grandpa Chicken's first hold
Our little family
I TOLD YOU SOOOOOO! About the burger! Ha Ha Ha.
ReplyDeleteWe're so glad that Paxton is here safe and sound and can't wait to meet him!