Rush

When did you get your best rush of the year?

Hands down, when I expelled a fourth human being from my body.

Grab a cup o’ warm milk and pull a rocking chair over to the fireplace ’cause I got a story for ya. Or. Stop reading if you don’t want to hear about the machinations of mah ladybits.

Mmmkay.

Archer’s Birth Story

My OB agreed to induce me at 39 weeks, to ensure that Brad would be there for Archer’s delivery (our closest family members are 250 miles away, and we didn’t really have friends with kids that we felt comfortable asking to watch Kieran, Anneke, and Griffon for an indeterminate amount of time) and to ensure that I’d make it to the hospital and get the antibiotics I needed before delivery. (I was GBS+ this time, after three GBS- deliveries, boo, and she thought I’d have a fast labor, since this was my fourth baby.)

Run-on much?

I had to be at the hospital on Wednesday, May 13th, at 4:30 a.m. for a 5 a.m. induction. After all the requisite paperwork/questions, they got me started on pitocin and IV antibiotics (WHICH MADE ME FEEL LIKE MY ARM WAS BROKEN, I AM NOT KIDDING, HURT LIKE A MOTHA) at 6:15 a.m. I started out at 2.5 cm, 50% effaced, and baby floating (see here for info).

After around two hours of pitocin, my contractions were getting painful, so I got an epidural (I did the martyr labor with Kieran, not particularly by choice, and decided that I enjoy a good epidural). I also got started on a second bag of antibiotics at that time (my OB wanted me to have two bags of antibiotics before breaking my water).

At around 11 a.m., I was checked and had only progressed to 3 cm (still 50% effaced and floating). I thought I was in for a long delivery. My OB broke my water and found really thick meconium (mmm, meconium). She decided to place a uterine catheter to infuse saline into my uterus to try to thin the meconium, so that, if the baby aspirated some, at least it would be thinner than the stuff he had passed in utero.

The nurse increased my pitocin about 30 minutes later.

At 12:30 p.m., I was checked and had progressed to 5 cm, 100% effaced, and -2 station. My doctor thought my labor would go really quickly after that. She told the nurse she wanted to be in the room before I started pushing, which she expected to happen in an hour or two. My nurse turned my pitocin down at that point, to give my uterus a break because I’d progressed so quickly.

Around 1 p.m., Archer’s heartrate kept going off the monitor when I’d contract. My nurse called the charge nurse to come place a heartrate monitor on his head. It had only been 30 minutes since I’d been checked, but I was feeling a lot of, as they say, “pressure.” My nurse had changed right before, and the new nurse wanted to get a baseline, so she decided to check me. I had gone from 5 cm to 10 cm in 30 minutes! Yippee!

Everything went into high gear at this point. My nurse called the charge nurse to tell her to forget the heartrate monitor, called my OB to tell her to get to the hospital, and called the NICU (and some other baby unit – never knew what it was) to tell them to come over, so Archer could be checked when he was born because he’d passed meconium. She got my legs set up (because I couldn’t feel them, see, sweet!), she got the warmer set up… Everything was ready to go.

My OB got into place, and I pushed once. Everyone in the room was like, “He’s *right* there!” She told me to push once more, and I could feel him crowning. She asked me to stop halfway through, so she could suction as much meconium as possible from his throat and nose. With just one more half push, my Archer Gene joined the world at 1:28 p.m., gorgeous and healthy. SUCH an easy delivery.

He weighed 6 lbs 12 oz and was 20 inches long. His Apgars were 8 and 9. He looked like this.

And now?

I get a rush every time I look at his sweet face.

* This post was written in response to Gwen Bell’s December 14th prompt for the Best of 2009 Blog Challenge.