Labor & Delivery....

Alrighty... into the fun details of how it all went down... along with my recommendations and suggestions for those of you about to have your own little bundles of joy in a few weeks (yes, you Amanda and Holly...) Ill consider this my journal entry and print it up and stick it in Ziek's journal...

So, on Sunday around 11am I start feeling contractions... consistantly about every 5 minutes but they dont hurt at all, just a tight feeling. I decide to let Cam know, and I get ready for church and finish packing my bag - just in case. For the next hour Im getting pretty excited as the contractions continue to come consistently...

We go to church because Cam was invited to be in the circle for a good friend's baby's blessing. All throughout sacrament the contractions continue... still not painful, but now I'm starting to feel really out of breath when they come. Just after the baby blessing is done I really start feeling funny and let Cameron know that we should go after Sacrament is over. Now Cam starts to get a little anxious and excited... :)

After Sacrament meeting is over, we let my sister and my mom know that we're going in and ask them to watch Makoa. No problem.

We head to the hospital, and decide to run home real quick to get a change of clothes of Cam... then we realize we forgot to leave Makoa's car seat at the church... so we drop that off quickly... all the while the contractions are getting just a bit more intense, but more than anything, I was getting more and more out of breath with each contraction.

We get to the hospital, and since its not regular ours, we go to the ER, and the lady checking us in is not in any hurry whatsoever... I preregistered a while before, so it didnt take too long... then this nice nurse named Sarah came down and took me to Labor & Delivery in a wheelchair (love it!)... we got to L&D Room 1 where we get all comfy in the hospital gown...

I'm thinking things are gonna move pretty quickly (everyone kept telling me it would with baby #2)... so when they told me I was at 2cm I was sooo bummed! but contractions were coming regularly, so from 3pm-6pm I was pretty much under observation... when the doctor (Dr McDonald) finally arrived to "make the call" he didnt get in to see us for another hour or so because they had to do an emergency c-section for another lady there. I didnt mind waiting.

Dr McDonald comes to see me and I'm now at a 3/4. He tells me that I'm staying and that I'm going to have the baby tonight. Yay! I've already let them know that I would like an epidural, so he recommends getting that done asap, since baby #2 could come really quick. The nurse (now Lea) gets the IV running because I need to be nice and hydrated for the epidural.

I had an epidural when I had Makoa... and to put it simply, having him was a pleasant experience. So, naturally, I wanted to do it again.

Got the IV going, now Dr Sanchez, the anesthesiologist (sp?) shows up for the administering of the epidural. It goes as well as can be expected when injecting 3 needles into my spine... teh weirdest thing was that when Dr Sanchez said I might feel a "zing" down my leg, I'm thinking a tingling feeling... and then "WHAM" my leg shot up! lol... and the nurse tells me "right on cue!" It scared me more then anything, since I was trying soooo hard to hold completely still!

So now... we wait. and wait... and wait... then sleep... but all night long the nurse is coming in and out of the room to get random things from the cupboard and checking my vitals every so often, so it wasnt like a nice long nap or anything. The blood pressure arm-wrap thing would go off and a nice loud beeping would always follow... all the while the baby monitor was going and baby looked "just great"...

So sometime during the night they let me know I was at 6 cm... which was just great! so when Dr McDonald came in at 5am and told me I was at 8cm and the baby was finally low enough that he could finally break my water... so he did. By 6am I was feeling the pressure of the contractions even with the epidural. And the pressure kept getting more and more intense... and then the weirdest thing... I felt like I should start pushing. I heard about that, but didnt feel it with Makoa... they just told me i was ready and told me what to do. But this time, I really felt "ready"... and I finally told Cameron to go ask them to hurry because they seemed to be taking forever! Just after 6am they came in and the Dr told me that we were having this baby before breakfast... and we got right to work. The nurse (still Lea) was still there and she must've been exhausted because the whole time I'm pushing she was so distracted going off and doing things in the middle of my contractions, so I finally told Cam that he needed to take charge and tell me when to push and coach me because the nurse was ticking me off and not helping at all! After about 30 minutes of seriously intense pushing, he was here! he arrived at 633am to be exact.

I'll get to the spinal heachache in a bit... this episode of "Lost" is almost over... :) And it's getting a bit intense...