Coming Home

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All packed up to go home

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Three Zimmers and a Baby (and Keith)

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Sam Begins

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Sam Begins

Stats

Samuel David Levin
Hebrew name TBA
Born May 20, 2009, 3:50 p.m.
8 lbs 4.3 oz, 21.5"

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This is Sam

Healthy baby, healthy mama.
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Brand new day

We both got a few hours of sleep, or at least 90 minutes of sleep and 90 minutes of good rest in between. This might not sound like much, but compared to late last night, we both feel relieved and even rested. Carolyn rested comfortably through hours of contractions, a real blessing. Those who advocate a fully natural process either don't experience pain of the same severity -- and so early in the process -- or are just nuts. (Possibly, some of them are lying -- the staff confidently told us that practically all patients eventually ask for the epidural, almost without exception, even those who hadn't planned to. And again, induced contractions are more severe, so that too is a factor.)

Anyway, the 9:30 a.m. checkup showed that Carolyn was at 5 cm, and also that her water had broken at some point over the last hour. So basically, after about 11 hours in the hospital, we had finally reached the point in the labor process where it's time to go to the hospital. I kid, but this was a great sign of progress. Of course we're eager to get to the big finish, but we understand that a slow, steady labor is probably the best thing for an induction, and we're happy it's going so smoothly.

It's 12:30 p.m. now. Carolyn has been resting comfortably pretty much the whole time, albeit limited to a diet of ice chips and apple Jolly Ranchers. (I had cafeteria scrambled eggs and cold hash browns -- not recommended -- but at least I got a big cup of Starbucks.) The transition stage could hit at some point in the next hour or two, and after that, it's pushing time. Our nurse-widwife just showed up again for another exam. We're at 8 cm, 90% effacement, +1 position. It won't be long now.

About last night

So here's what happened yesterday. We had our two appointments as detailed in our last post. Everything was great, and had an unlimited parking spot, so we went and caught an early dinner on campus with Sandy. Before long, though, we got a call from the Perinatal Observation Unit, which is right upstairs from the testing office in the Ravdin building -- it is in fact right next door to the Labor & Delivery Ward. Anyway, the call was for Dr. Wu, who had not been with us earlier. Evidently, the nurse who told us we should go home screwed up -- possibly, she was just trying to go home herself. Dr. Wu wanted us to come back for another hour or so of monitoring based on something she saw in the stress test. We asked if it was urgent, and she said no, we could take our time coming back -- frankly, we wanted Carolyn to finish her dinner, because it's impossible to get them to feed you once you're back in the hospital.

So back to the Perinatal unit, which, by the way, has a registration process that is longer than every other registration we've done combined, in 40 visits to various offices over the past eight months. This is our third trip to this unit, the other two being when Carolyn had a small stumble and they wanted to monitor things as a precaution. This is what this unit does -- they strap on a bunch of stuff and do HOURS or monitoring.

So what was it? Well, there were a few seconds where Junior's heart rate had dipped just a little bit. The actual heart-rate dipping was inconsequential and not cause for any concern, in and of itself -- Junior was totally fine. The warning flag was the timing of the dips, which was immediately following a small contraction. That apparently is an indicator that the placenta might be getting a little long in the tooth -- and at 40 weeks plus, who can blame it? (If you think about it, the placenta's function is pretty incredible. It is essentially the same thing as The Patch, except that instead of nicotine, it provides all of your food and oxygen.)

So Junior was totally fine and in no imminent danger, but this is just a small risk indicator, that maybe at some point, the placenta would start functioning less efficiently. And the thing is -- this is the key factor in inducing -- there is no real reason NOT to induce at that point. I mean, you might rather go into labor 100% naturally, but the baby is already "ripe" at that point and not getting any riper. As the doctor put it, once you're late, you're almost waiting for something to go wrong.

So they checked us in to labor & delivery, and around 11:00 p.m., they started a very slow induction process. The idea is to bring the cervix along slowly, to get it ready first before administering the pitocin, which is what really gets the contractions going. The more gradual the induction process is, the more similar it is to a natural labor process, which greatly reduces the chance of a C-section later on. So the plan was to take two to six hours before getting the pitocin going, and though we tried to get some rest during this time, we couldn't get too much. Carolyn's contractions suddenly got a lot worse right around 2:00 a.m., and by 2:30 a.m., we were requesting the epidural. This was always part of our plan, but Carolyn figured she might wait later in the process.

In retrospect, knowing that inductions can involve much more violent contractions, we probably should have started it earlier. As it is, we ended up behind two somewhat problematic patients in the anesthesiologist's queue, so she didn't even get to work on Carolyn's for over two hours — 135 minutes, actually, and yes, we were keeping track. That last 90 minutes was pretty rough. Carolyn was a trooper, though, and once the anesthesiologist started working on her, she was able to deal a lot better with the pain, knowing it was going to go away soon. It took about 30 minutes to hook up, and there was some improvement immediately. By 5:30 a.m., there was no pain anymore at all, and we got some real sleep over the next few hours.

Change of plans

Looks like we won't get to start the dishwasher after all. We're staying the night and inducing.
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The latest

Had last checkup today, everything looks great. Got a "membrane sweep" which may help get the process going. Had a "fetal non-stress test" which is standard for anyone past their due date, and everything looks great there, too. Baby appears non-stressed, which is nice for him. He's in the perfect position. Everyone is saying it won't be long now. Must run dishwasher.
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