Caleb's Birth

Tuesday night I started having some mild contractions. I went to bed thinking that they would go away. They didn't. I woke up at 2:30 and they were stronger, I tried going back to sleep so that I could wake up Pete at a decent hour. :) I think that I may have dozed off once or twice...but the contractions kept coming and they were getting somewhat stronger. Still, nothing to write home about. I finally decided that 5:30 was decent enough and told my dear husband about these persistent contractions. We debated for awhile about if Pete should go to work or if we should both go to the hospital. I finally called my dad (retired OB/GYN) he thought that I should go and get checked out.

So we got everything ready and dropped Nathaniel off with some friends (thanks again Sandra!) I was praying the whole morning and felt a real peace about going to the hospital. The contractions were not all that bad but I was already 5 cm dilated and I didn't know how long it would take for them to get bad either. Looking back I see how God's hand was in all of this. I felt rather foolish for going to the hospital. The nurses looked at me like I was crazy but they were very kind and took me into triage and monitored me and the baby for about three hours. While we were being monitored Caleb's heart rate dropped a few times (at least three but he was so squirmy that they couldn't always get his heart rate). This was enough cause for concern that the doctor did an ultrasound. She discovered that my amniotic fluid was a 4 (I think that she said it should be around 10) so we decided to induce. Yahoo!!!

As a result of having such low amniotic fluid they were pumping fluid into me so that (as my sister put it)...he wouldn't get rug burn on the way out. Very odd feeling. They also loaded me up with some pitosin (sp) then we waited for the epidural and all would be good. It didn't take long for the pit to start putting me into a world of hurt. The epidural wasn't as fast to counteract the hurt. It did great on one side but then the other side I could feel every single contraction (OUCH!) Pete was great and was very sweet to me and compassionate while I was in so much pain. The doctor finally came back and fiddled with something and all was numb! Yippee! The nurse checked me and told me that the baby was still pretty high up so it would be awhile. (this was about 3:10) About 5 minutes later I told Pete that I felt a lot of pressure. The nurse walked in and said that they noticed a big jump on the monitor so she was going to check me again. She did and said, "oh, I see the head". WOW!! We waited for the doctor to come and then I started pushing. After two or three pushes little Caleb was born!