Welcome Levi John Friesen.<\/p>\n
After having Chloe, Josiah and Madison basically all 4 days late without my water breaking and my labor getting quicker each time I thought I had this pregnancy\/birth all figured out.\u00a0 But I was wrong.<\/p>\n
Monday morning (2 days past due) started like any other day.\u00a0 The kids woke up at 6:30 when their little green light timer lit up and they came bounding into our room.\u00a0 Chloe grabbed Maddie from the crib and carried her into our room.\u00a0 I had to use the restroom (no surprise there!).\u00a0 However after using the bathroom I noticed something strange\u2026 and I immediately said to Tim, \u201cUm\u2026 I think my water just broke.\u201d\u00a0 Since it didn\u2019t break with the others I really didn\u2019t know what to expect and it wasn\u2019t the typical deluge of water that I had imagined from stories, but I was 99% certain that was what it was.\u00a0 So we got the kids moving on their before school routine while I called my midwife and Tim called Jennifer to come over.\u00a0 At this point we figured that things would progress very quickly so we needed to be prepared.\u00a0 I showered and finished packing my hospital bag while Tim got Chloe ready for school and arranged for someone to take Josiah to and from preschool.\u00a0\u00a0 Jen showed up and we got Chloe on the bus.\u00a0 My midwife said I could wait until the contractions picked up before coming in, so I waited.<\/p>\n
There were no noticeable contractions.\u00a0 For hours.\u00a0 I drove myself to Caribou to console myself in the lack of progress.\u00a0 Jen and I played Chinese checkers to pass the time.\u00a0 Lunch time came and went, and since we were still just waiting Tim took Josiah to preschool instead.\u00a0\u00a0 I passed the time by reading a ridiculously long article about what happened with the President and Air Force One in the hours after 9\/11.\u00a0 It was a really interesting article and took me and hour and a half to finish.\u00a0 Still no contractions.\u00a0 I spoke with my midwife again and she said if there was no progress by 6:30 that evening I should come in for a stress test to make sure everything was still ok.<\/p>\n
The day meandered by.\u00a0 I met Chloe as she got off the bus and she was so disappointed that I was still at home.\u00a0 Josiah asked all day if it was time for the baby to come\u2026\u00a0 Finally Tim and I left for the hospital at 6:30.\u00a0 It was the strangest feeling to walk into the hospital and go to the Family Birthing Unit without being in any pain.\u00a0 We strolled in and they hooked me up to check on the baby\u2019s heart beat and my blood pressure, etc.\u00a0 At that point we started to discuss our options.\u00a0 Since I was already past my due date they had no objections to giving me some medicine to help the contractions along.\u00a0 After talking everything through we decided that they should first test to see if my water had indeed broken.\u00a0 The test came back positive so we committed to staying in the hospital and have the baby now.\u00a0 She did check to see if I had more water that might have not broken yet and there was a bit of water that was still trapped inside so she was able to release that.\u00a0 She also gave me Cydoteck to help my contractions along.\u00a0 At this point I was dilated to a 1. The midwife was having a hard time figuring out the position of the baby so they rolled in an ultrasound cart to get a better look.\u00a0 He was face down, but slightly tipped to the side.\u00a0 The contractions started to pick up a little and I progressed to a 3 over the next hour or two.\u00a0 At that point we decided it was time to order the epidural.\u00a0 He came in a little later and got everything started.\u00a0 The epidural didn\u2019t take much of the edge off, but it did help.<\/p>\n
It was about this time that we noticed that the baby\u2019s heart beat was starting to drop during my contractions.\u00a0 As time progressed it was becoming more and more pronounced.\u00a0 They kept coming in to have me change positions to see if that would help, but it didn\u2019t.\u00a0 I started to feel nauseous from the contractions and all the position changes.\u00a0 They had to give me an oxygen mask.\u00a0 Finally after trying everything to stop his heart beat from dropping they came and talked to me and said it was time to get him out\u2014he was going through too much distress.\u00a0 And that meant an emergency C-Section.\u00a0 They paged the on-call surgeon and started prepping me.<\/p>\n
The next bit is a whirlwind of activity for me.\u00a0 I know a bunch of people started coming in the room for various reasons.\u00a0 Tim had to put on scrubs and stood by my head holding my hand.\u00a0 Eventually they led him away to the waiting room so I could finish getting prepped and they rolled my bed down to the operating room.\u00a0 I was in a lot of pain by now, so I had my eyes closed for most of this span of time, but I remember thinking the room was very bright and white.\u00a0 I also remember hearing everyone having their own conversations and thinking it seemed like a dream.\u00a0 They lifted me onto another bed and then put up a sheet in front of me then gave me more epidural.\u00a0 When they checked to see if I could still feel anything I could\u2014so they had to give me an extra 4 doses.\u00a0 At one point the anesthesiologist said, \u201cI guess she needs a LOT of medicine!\u201d\u00a0 Because of the high amount I received I was numb all the way up to my shoulders.\u00a0 Tim was eventually led back into the room and sat by my head.\u00a0 I don\u2019t remember looking at him.\u00a0 I don\u2019t remember much except that it felt weird.\u00a0 And then the surgeon held Levi over the top of the sheet to show him to me before they took him over to weigh him and clean him up.\u00a0 I remember the surgeon exclaim that it was a big baby \u201cat least 10 pounds!\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 The nurses asked if Tim wanted to help cut the cord and he declined.\u00a0 So they offered to take some pictures for us so Tim could stay next to me.<\/p>\n
It was at that point that I became insanely tired.\u00a0 So tired I couldn\u2019t keep my eyes open.\u00a0 I remember hearing something about losing a lot of blood.\u00a0 They brought Levi over to us and took a picture of the three of us.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t keep my eyes open for all the pictures, I was so tired.\u00a0 At some point I told Tim it was ok if he went back to the room with Levi.\u00a0 I remember he kissed my forehead before he left.\u00a0 I dozed in and out as they cleaned me up and lifted me back onto my other bed and rolled me back to my room.\u00a0 They started to do a lot of tests on me and as I was in an out I was aware that they were concerned about my blood pressure.\u00a0 Apparently it was dangerously low.\u00a0 It was aggravated because I was numb so high on my body.\u00a0 They worked on getting it to a safe zone for the next hour.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Something must have helped because eventually I stabilized and they set up a bed for Tim next to me and put Levi in his bassinet between us and we all slept for a while.<\/p>\n
The next day I asked the midwife about what they discovered when they could see Levi during the C-Section.\u00a0 She said he had a bunch of umbilical cord bunched up around his shoulder, so as he was pushing down during the contractions it was pressing on the cord and stopping the blood\u2014making his heart rate drop.\u00a0 In fact after all the hours of laboring his shoulders were still only at the point of the incision.\u00a0 She said it was a good thing we had the surgery.<\/p>\n
But, now he\u2019s here.\u00a0 And as they say, it\u2019s all water under the bridge.\u00a0 I\u2019m just so happy that he came out safe and healthy.\u00a0 And even though it\u2019s going to take me a little longer to recover, I\u2019m completely fine too.\u00a0 Praise God!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Welcome Levi John Friesen. After having Chloe, Josiah and Madison basically all 4 days late without my water breaking and my labor getting quicker each time I thought I had this pregnancy\/birth all figured out.\u00a0 But I was wrong. Monday morning (2 days past due) started like any other day.\u00a0 The kids woke up at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/friesens.inkingmythinking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11330"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/friesens.inkingmythinking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/friesens.inkingmythinking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/friesens.inkingmythinking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/friesens.inkingmythinking.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11330"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/friesens.inkingmythinking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11332,"href":"http:\/\/friesens.inkingmythinking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11330\/revisions\/11332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/friesens.inkingmythinking.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/friesens.inkingmythinking.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/friesens.inkingmythinking.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}