ll 8lbs 9oz and 21.5″ of him was delivered by c-section here in Salt Lake. We checked into the hospital for a scheduled induction (because we were a week overdue) on Saturday 3.17.2012 at 7pm and he was delivered 3.18.2012 at 10:59pm. I have written out the delivery details below, but if you aren’t interested in that sort of thing, feel free to skip the next paragraph.The details (or skip ahead): We were scheduled for an ‘indicated induction’ because little William was a week overdue, and even after massive gardening and yard work, really wasn’t making all that much progress towards delivery. We checked in Saturday night (3/17) and after 2 tries at starting an IV we started dosing some medicine to ‘get things ready’ so to speak. At 4:30am my water broke unexpectedly on its own. I was pretty sure this was a good sign we were headed in the right direction. Without any water cushion the contractions ramped up and approximately 5 hours later I got an epidural. They let us progress for awhile on our own before starting pitocin to speed things up a bit. At some point in the afternoon I ended up with a slight fever, and I got to also start a course of IV antibiotics. Between the epidural, catheter, internal contraction monitor, IV and a bit of supplemental oxygen it was quite the party! Then, because I’d been in bed for hours I got to wear these pressurized leg cuffs to keep the blood circulation in my legs going. So we carried on that way for many hours. Jason was amazing the entire time, bringing water, various juices, ice chips and being amazingly supportive. After almost an entire day of “sufficient contractions” I was still only at 4cm, and William was not any further interested in coming out. It was 10pm when the decision was made to do a c-section. It was not my first choice, but after 27 hours at the hospital (about 13 of which I spent in bed with an epidural) I was ready for whatever was going to get the little guy out. They also have concern for the baby acquiring an infection if he’s not out within a certain time-period of when your water breaks. So it was time. The c-section would have been much less miserable if I wouln’t have ended up getting sick from the anesthesia, but we made it through.
One of the upsides of having a c-section is that it allowed us 4 days at the hospital to get up to speed. Will started out as a very fussy eater with no schedule, and he’s SLOWLY coming around. I can hardly blame him in a lot of ways. Due to our having a fever, he ended up on 48 hours of antibiotics that they unfortunately had to put into a vein in his head after he pulled the catheter out of his arm.
He wanted to sleep all the time and went immediately from sleeping to so frantic we couldn’t get him to latch on. On our second day we attended a breastfeeding class (offered daily for the maternity ward) and the lactation consultant came to our room twice. After teaching us every trick in the book (spoon feeding, using a shield, using a syringe) we’re way better off today than we were yesterday, and I’m very hopeful that more and more of our feedings will require fewer and fewer tricks and tools.
The nursing staff has been PHENOMENAL! This hospital has 18 labor and delivery rooms, and 2 floors (30 rooms each) of maternity rooms. In a month they can deliver upwards of 300-500 babies. They have taken care of myself, Jason, and William like we were family. I’ve never had so many offers of “can I get you anything?”. I think we’ve been pretty good patients which probably helps. One of the nurses tonight told me she was sad I wasn’t one of her assigned rooms. Between Jason and the nurses’ help I feel VERY blessed.
My recovery is going nicely. They got me up and showered the very first day after the c-section and have encouraged daily walking trips around the hospital. I joked that on that first day, even if I would have passed out in the bathroom, I wanted the nurses to wash me off before dragging me back to bed. After my 24 hours of antibiotics (which only took another 4 tries to restart a catheter), all of my wires and IV’s are out. Although getting up and down is a bit sore, the nurses were very complementary of my progress. My dad would say it has something to do with coming from “hearty German stock”; my mom would probably say I’m stubborn. On our last hospital day tomorrow I get my staples out, and Will has a circumcision. Jason just has to bring us juice. 🙂 We appreciate everyone’s love and support. We look forward to continuing to recover at home and getting to know our newest family member. Enjoy lots more pictures to come!
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