baby bode's early arrival

thursday, april 7th was like any other day (at first) except i felt a little 'off' when i was getting ready to leave for work. i had begun having what i though were braxton-hicks contractions on the tuesday evening before, but on thursday morning it was a bit more. charlie kept pushing me to time how far apart they were, but i am lazy and didn't do it. however, once i got in the car for my hour commute to work, i had nothing better to do than count contractions. at this point, they were 7 minutes apart, only in the front and down very low, and no back pain. so, i really thought they were not going to amount to anything. i did call the doctor's nurse that AM (after charlie made me) who agreed with me that they were nothing. i went about my day like normal, not noticing the contractions as much because i was up and moving with patients. however, after lunch i would lose my train of thought with my patients when a contraction would begin. i called the nurse back and we decided i would go to the hospital to be 'safe'. i finished work for the day (it was my last scheduled day of work before my c-section on the 13th) and then went to the hospital to get checked. i arrived there about 4:15 or so and completed all the necessary paperwork before they put me in the triage room to check everything. sure enough, i was dilated to a 4 and 80% effaced. the nurse told me i was staying (obviously) and i started making calls. charlie was already headed to amarillo from dalhart (where his rotation is this month) and my mom had smith at home.

i had a decision to make concerning the way bode was going to enter the world. i had already planned a c-section due to his size, but when my body went into labor on its own, i felt a VBAC may work. i so, so wanted to have a normal birth with this baby. sooooo, i labored it out...getting an epidural around 2 hours after i got to the hospital. by about 9:30 p.m. or so, i was all the way to a 10, fully effaced and with no pitocin. i thought we had it in the bag...i was going to have a VBAC and was so excited. then, it was push time. my nurse stopped letting me have any extra meds from the epidural, which was fine at first...but not later(read on). i pushed and pushed and started having increasing pain as the minutes ticked by. i kept telling the nurse the epidural had stopped working and i'm sure didn't believe me because she did nothing about it (not sure if she could have done anything at this point anyway). my pain was really excrutiating, not only from the contractions, but bode must have been right on my pubic bone because it was on fire!!! by the time I had pushed for two hours with basically no epidural, i told the nurse we needed the doctor in the room to assess why bode's head had not descended. when he came in, he said it hadn't moved much since the last time he checked (about an hour before). he then led me to the decision to go back for a c-section.

when the anesthesiologist came in to 'up' my epidural, I told him he really needed to do a spinal because the epi was not working anymore. he asked if I could wiggle my toes and I did a high kick off the bed .... hoping that would make obvious the lack of numbness in my lower body :). it did the trick because he decided on the spinal...which was awesome by the way.

all the drama ended and bode arrived on April 8 at 12:15 in the morning....thank goodness. AND, should the Lord bless us with a third child, this mama will NEVER think about trying for a vaginal delivery again (after my two failed attempts)....sign me up for my scheduled c-section with a spinal and versed :).

Following are some pictures from the hospital and return home. smith is thrilled to have bode along for the ride and is already so cute with him. i am recovering well and bode is great. I will post some stats and new baby info on bode soon.