on wednesday, march 20, we had an appointment with the doctor at noon. she said i was 3 cm and 50% and offered to strip my membranes to help get things going...which i kindly declined...sounded way too painful! she did schedule me for an induction on monday if i hadn't had him by then. after an afternoon of running errands and having pizza for dinner with granny great, aunt debbie and lesli, we headed home. at 9:30 that night i started having "crampy" contractions... they felt very different from the contractions that i had with macie. we started timing them and soon they were about 5 minutes apart. we started packing up the car and got macie up...which she was not happy about! at 1:00 a.m. we headed to the hospital. when we got there they checked me and said i was at 6 cm with a bulging bag and admitted me. my mom and blake stayed with me most of the night while macie stayed in the waiting room with my dad and cherith. the nurses tried 3 different times to get an i.v. going...which was only the beginning of my frustrations with this delivery. after the i.v. was in they called for the anethesiologist and i had an epidural put in...which seemed much more painful this time than with macie. at about 3:30 a.m. when the epidural was in the nurses told me to get some rest. at 7:00 a.m. they came to check me and i was only at 7 cm...again, very frustrating! we rested for another couple of hours and at 9:00 i started to feel the epidural wearing off...the anesthesiologist was in a c-section and didn't make it to my room until 10:00...at which point the epidural had completely worn off and i was in a lot of pain. after they got the epidural going again the nurse checked and i was 9 cm...finally some progress! over the next couple of hours i kept feeling a lot of pressure, but never could make it past 9 cm. at noon they started me on pitocin to try to get me the last cm. at 1:00 the doctor came to check me and said that the baby's head was turned to the side making it hard for him to come down into the birth canal. so for an hour, they positioned me in stir-ups all contorted around in something called the "chicken wing" to try to get him to turn, but it never worked. even though i was not fully dilated, they let me start pushing at 3:00. i never felt like i was pushing right...and every time i pushed brax's heartrate went way down. at 3:30 they told me we would have to do a c-section. i was so mad and couldn't quit crying... i did not have a c-section in my plans! macie came out so easily and i just couldn't figure out why he wouldn't come out! everything seemed to be so rushed and before i knew it, at 3:44 p.m., brax levi was out and looking at me through a little plastic window in the curtain hanging in front of me. the instant i saw his precious face i fell completely in love! he had a strong cry and looked very healthy which was a relief. i heard them say that he was 9 lbs 10 oz and 22.5 inches and had an apgar score of 9. while blake was with brax and the nurses, i started to feel claustrophobic and had the sweet anesthesiologist give me some medicine to relax me...which i later found out was morphine! after about 5 minutes blake brought brax over so that i could kiss him. he held him next to me while i was being stitched up and then we all went back to the room where i got to finally hold my baby. macie was the first person we let in to see brax...she was so excited that he was here! the rest of that first night i just held him while trying to stay awake...the drugs were making me so drowsy and itchy. we stayed at the hospital until sunday morning when we got to take our sweet baby home...it was the best spring break "vacation" ever!
