August 6, 2009

On Tuesday I woke up rather late because of the disappointment of the previous night keeping me up (an induction that we decided against), around 1:00 or so. I had a fever of 101.3 with no other symptoms (I am known for stress related fevers) so I called the OB’s office and they told me to take tylenol and keep an eye on whether it gets worse, or other symptoms arise.
Nothing else happened, my fever went down, etc.

Wednesday I woke up around 10:30, feeling irritable and uncomfortable. I confined myself to the couch all day. By 4:00 I began wondering if I had been having irregular contractions all day. My wonderings were confirmed by 5:00 when I realized that I was not only having contractions, but that they were regular at 12 minutes apart.

I had a light dinner filled with protein because I figured this was it. About 8:00 we were all (me, my husband and my FIL) convinced that I was truly going into labor. My husband took my blood pressure and found that it was 160/110. He called the OB on call and she said, “Get thee to the hospital!!” So we went. I got checked at the triage unit of L&D and they determined I was maybe dilated 1cm, no effacement and baby in Egypt. Wonderful.

But my contractions were 4-6 minutes apart and painful. I was crying. My OB ordered that I be admitted and they asked if I wanted an epidural. My husband, and I just about fall apart with love when I remember this, squeezed my shoulder and said, “Don’t be a martyr. If you want one, we discussed this long ago for this very reason. Remember you can get one if you want it.” So I got one. At this point it was about midnight.

At 12:30 my water broke - true labor! Yay!

They monitored me for the next 13 hours. There was a lot of concern because my fever returned and I wasn’t making any dilation progress very well. The most I got was 4cm, 90% effaced and -2 station - and it remained that way for six hours. They said they’d let me battle it out all I wanted to if it wasn’t for the fever, so we went with a “vaginal bypass.” Snark snark, I love the new name. ;)

Baby Levi Zechariah was born into the world at 2:37pm on Thursday August 6, 2009. He was 9lbs 8 oz at birth and 20.5 inches long. Big Baby!

The c-section went extremely fast and uncomplicated. I ended up with no ill side effects from the epidurals. The only thing I experienced was shaking (from the epidural) during the operation but the staff were excellent at keeping me focused and they oohed and aahed when the big baby head emerged.