Zachary's Birth Story

I have been meaning to getting around to writing this and posting pictures for 6 weeks now! I am being a little bit lazy and not actually posting pictures on this post, but instead I will post a link to my Facebook album of our time in the hospital. (Those of you who are my friends on Facebook have most likely seen it, but this is for those non-Facebookers!)

Click Here for the pictures: Zachary's Birthday!

And now, here it is folks, Zachary's Birth Story! (I will make it as short as I can for a 34 hour experience!)

On Tuesday, March 9th at 5:00am we checked into St. Joseph's Hospital in Orange for me to begin the induction process. At that point I was 8 days overdue! I got all checked in and all paperwork filled out and by 7:00am the pitocin was flowing after the 2nd try at putting in my IV! (I should've known it was sign of crazy things to come when the nurse tried to put in the IV the 1st time and hit a valve!!! That was extremely painful and she ended up having to put the IV in the other arm!)

So the pitocin was flowing and I thought things were looking good, but at around lunch time, my OB was doing her rounds and came to check in on me. She checked to see if I was making any progress dialating. She checked my cervix and said, "This is the same cervix I felt last week in my office!!" OH NO! I was only 1.5 cm the previous week and now, after 4 hours of pitocin I hadn't made ANY progress! She decided to stop the pitocin and give me medication to help soften my cervix. Here's the catch: Each dose of this medication takes 4 HOURS and most people need 2-3 doses!! I ended up needing 3 doses of this magical medication, so I got a dose every 4 hours, which means we were hanging out for 12 hours just waiting for me to progress.

After those 12 hours I was put back onto the pitocin and my water was broken early Tuesday morning. (I expected that to be a terrible experience, but it wasn't that bad.) By this time we had been in the hospital over 24 hours already and still no baby!! I had dialated to about 3.5 cm, so I knew it would still be awhile though. I was now actually having contractions that were pretty painful. Not fun!

At around 7:00am, my day nurse Rachel (who I actually used to work with at Disneyland) came in and told me that if I wanted an epidural I would need to get one now, or wait until the anesthesiologist was done with a c-section which wouldn't be until after 8:30am. (I did NOT want to wait, so I got my first epidural.....yes, I said first!)

Right away, I could feel the epidural kicking in slowly, but I could also feel a pretty bad headache coming on. After a few minutes, I was still having strong contractions while I was waiting for the epidural to really kick in and my mom started rubbing my upper back. I told her, "It's kind of tingly where you are rubbing." My nurse said "It isn't supposed to be tingly that high!"

The anesthesiologist came back in and at this point I was getting very sleepy. I actually passed out and my blood pressure dropped. I was given a shot of epinephrine! The epidural apparently knicked something in my spine and I did not react well. I was put on oxygen and my pitocin was stopped again. My epidural needed to wear off enough for me to feel the contractions again and then the anesthesiologist would check and see what happened.

The epidural didn't take too long to wear off and when he checked on me he did a little test through my IV that told him that the epidural needed to be re-done. Epidural #2!! Luckily I was numb from his IV test so I didn't feel a thing!

Around 2:00pm, my OB came to do her rounds and I was at 5.5 cm. I couldn't believe it! After all that I had been through I was barely half-way dialated enough to give birth!!

At that point my OB said," I have to go do another delivery, but I think you pretty much know where this is headed." She left to go deliver another baby and came back about an hour and a half later. She checked my one more time, hoping there would be some progress and.....nope! Nothing! It was C-Section time!

After that things moved right along. I started getting prepped and went into the operating room. Joey got prepped and came in. It didn't take long and I didn't feel a thing and then all of a sudden I heard Zachary crying!! It was amazing! He was born at 4:14pm and was 8lbs 3ozs and 20 1/2in.

Everyone at St. Joseph's was so great! They tried their best to get me to deliver him without a c-section, but my body just wouldn't cooperate!

We arrived on Tuesday morning and went home on Saturday around lunch time.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading all that! It was an amazing experience!