Rowan's Grand Entrance

Tomorrow Rowan will be a week old, and I'm just now getting around to writing about labor and delivery. We went into the hospital at 8am on Monday, January 19th for an induction due to my high blood pressure. We had high hopes for a fast labor, since I was already 4cm. dilated. We should not have gotten our hopes up. Twenty-seven hours later, Rowan had arrived.

I didn't start actual active labor until 8:30 on Monday evening, and the first 3 hours went very smoothly. I hurt. A lot. But I was making good progress and at the end of 3 hours the doc said that I was entering the "transition" phase and would be pushing soon. Transition is the most intense and painful part of labor, but it tends to be the shortest. I was so glad to have had the extraordinary support of George and my doula Flora and was continuing labor without pain medications. And hour of transition came and went and I seemed to have stopped progressing. Two more hours came and went and I was DONE with the pain. I was stuck at 8cm. dilated, so at 2:30 am I went for the epidural. It was the best thing ever! I think I may have told the anesthesiologist that I loved him. Within minutes I was feeling a lot better and in half an hour I couldn't feel anything below my waist. Yay!

We all slept for about 3 hours and then it was time to start pushing! The doc said that I was fully dilated and we went for it. I pushed for 2 hours with no progress. In fact, I un-dilated (didn't know that was possible) to 9cm. and the baby's heart rate began to drop with each push. They stopped the pushing and knocked down the pitocin to give the baby a chance to recover a bit. A couple of hours later I had still not fully dilated and my contractions had almost disappeared. The doctor gave me the option of pushing for 2 more hours and if that didn't work, we would have to do a c-section.

The possibility of a c-section terrified me, but I the idea of pushing for 2 more hours and still having to do a c-section scared me even more. So I decided that since I had been resting, that we should just go ahead and do the surgery. I was so ready to meet my little guy and there was a bit of relief to know that the end was in site.

The rest of the delivery went so fast. At 10:30am on Tuesday the 20th they ordered the c-section. At 11:00 I was in the OR being prepped. It was the most well orchastrated set up I've ever seen. There were about 10 people buzzing around me, hooking me up to things, strapping my arms down (yes, that was alarming, but aparently they don't want you accidentally contaminating the open wound), and setting things up for the doctor. George says that at 11:25 they started cutting and at 11:30 Rowan was born. It was amazing to hear his cry, and everyone was relieved. By noon I was patched up and back in my hosptial room with my little baby boy.

Once they got in there to get him out, they discovered that he had the cord wrapped around his neck twice, and that there was no way he would have come out the other way. That's why his heart rate was dropping when I pushed. My doctor says that they call them "bungie babies" because everytime I would get him into the birth canal, the cord would snap him back up :)

The whole process was pretty amazing, and I'm happy with all the decisions we made along the way. We are so thrilled to have Rowan and at this point it's hard to remember life before him. There have been many comments about the date of his arrival, and I agree that it's an excellent birthday. Many have said that Rowan just couldn't bring himslef to enter a world where George W. Bush was president and I couldn't agree more. Welcome Rowan!