We went out to eat because we were both too tired to worry about cooking. We talked about all of the things we wanted to do the next day to get the house ready for the baby, assuming we would be induced later Wednesday evening or Thursday morning. We wanted to clean the kitchen floor, pick up a few more things that we realized we needed, put the laundry away, just tie up the loose ends. We went to bed around 9:30 but Charlie was up until past 10:00 messing with the stand-up fan that decided it wasn't interested in keeping us cool anymore.
Around midnight I woke up feeling definite contractions and started timing them on our alarm clock. After a half hour or so I decided to move downstairs and watched some ESPN while timing contractions on contractionmaster.com (which is a fantastic invention!) and bouncing on my yoga ball to get through the more difficult ones. By 2:00AM they were 3 minutes apart and pretty much unbearable, so I decided it was time to wake up Charlie and call my OB. We showered and packed some last minute supplies, and the OB called back and told us to head to the hospital. We left the house at 2:30 and the drive there was pure hell on earth. I thought contractions at home were bad, contractions in the car with nowhere to go were even worse.
We got to the ER by 2:45, and Charlie didn't have to run even run any red lights. A few minutes after we got there another couple came in. The 15 minutes we spent waiting to be transferred to L&D felt like a freaking eternity, and I think I scared the poor woman who came in after us because she was sitting in her wheelchair very calmly while I was cursing up a storm, writhing in agony, and puking my guts up.
When we got up to L&D they had me change and asked me to rate my pain on a scale of 1 to 10 and wanted to know if I would take an epidural right at that moment if they offered me one. I was in between contractions at that point and said that I would wait a while longer to get the epidural. I was 3cm and she went out into the hallway to call my doctor. In the 2 minutes that passed while she was in the hallway I had another contraction and decided that maybe I'd like the epidural right now, after all.
We were transferred from triage at 3:30 and the anesthesiologist came up by 4:15. Getting the actual epidural wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be and the pain relief was pretty much instantaneous. At 5:00 I was at 4cm and they broke my water. There was meconium in it, which really freaked me out. From that point on, the baby's heart rate dropped every time I changed position and took a while to climb back up. They decided it would be best to use an internal monitor and put some fluid back in for him to float around in so he wouldn't be compressing his cord.
We watched Mike & Mike all morning, and when the day nurse came in at 8:00 I was at 6cm. Baby still wasn't responding well to movement and he was facing sunny-side-up, so she had me try a few positions on my stomach for a while to get him to flip over. It worked, and by 10:30 I was at 9cm. Charlie tried to get some sleep but I was too excited to rest, knowing we'd finally be meeting Baby Charlie in a matter of hours. I was also dying of thirst and the ice chips weren't cutting it. I was still throwing up pretty regularly, so that made it even worse. I don't think I've ever wanted a drink of water more in my entire life.
At 12:00 things were ready to go, but because of the heart rate issues they decided to call in an OB from my practice in addition to the midwife who was scheduled to deliver the baby. We started pushing at 1:20 and they decided to use the vaccum to expedite the process because he wasn't responding well to the contractions. I ended up with a 2nd degree episiotomy only because they needed to get him out quickly. His shoulder had been pressing on the cord. He was born at 2:21PM and we were so happy to meet him! Parts of it were a little nerve-wracking, but he's here safe and sound and we're all happy and healthy.
First diaper change for both Charlies!
Baby Charlie in his "hopper"
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