Hendrix Birth Story

Here’s the full LONG story…
Because of my gestational diabetes, my OB decided that she didn’t want me to go overdue and since I had absolutely NO progress at my last OB appointment, my doctor decided to bump up my induction a little bit. Instead of going in the morning of the 29th to start the induction with pitocin, she had me go in to the hospital the night of the 28th to begin everything with Cervadil which helps ripen the cervix. Since I didn’t want to sit around all day anxiously waiting for 9pm to finally come around, I decided to go in and work on the 28th-everyone at work though I was nuts! Then we finally got to the hospital and got all settled into our room. Instead of Cervadil, they decided to do Cyotec which typically accomplishes the same thing but I just had to take one pill-awesome! At about 10:30pm they gave me the Cyotec and checked my cervix for dilation-0 dilation, 0 effacement! About a half an hour later the contractions began, they were really mild and barely noticeable. 1:30am rolls around and the contractions begin to intensify and by 2:45am they were coming every few minutes and felt like really intense menstrual cramps. At 3:00am I asked for pain medicines in my IV which made things wonderful again.
Since my diagnosis of gestational diabetes my sugars had been very well controlled but something about labor made my sugars go all out of whack! I had to have IV insulin to help compensate for my messed up sugars.
At 4:15am I got up to use the restroom and was horrified thinking that I was peeing myself! I’d gone the whole pregnancy without having any problems with incontinence and now during labor is when I lose it? So I’m in a mad dash to get to the bathroom, I’m unplugging things and grab my IV pole and sprint to the bathroom, all while tangling my IV so badly that it takes the poor nurse 45 minutes to make sense of the mess! Well, as you may have guess, it was actually my water breaking! At this point, my contractions began to intensify and the doctor wasn’t sure if they wanted to give me another round of Cyotek since I still wasn’t dilated much more than a fingertip or if they wanted to jump straight into pitocin. They decided on Pitocin and began that at 5:00am. Between the introduction of Pitocin and my water breaking, my contractions went from completely manageable to absolute hell in a matter of minutes! One of my funny notes that I wrote during this stage of labor was “Having contractions BLOWS!” By this time the contractions were practically on top of each other and the back contractions had reduced me to tears. At 7:00 am, even though I was just over 1cm dilated I decided to ask for the epidural-boy am I glad I did! The anesthesiologist was very quick and had the epidural in place within 20 minutes of me asking for it! Another funny note from this phase “I love epidural man” One problem with my epidural is it worked fantastically on my right side but only partially worked on my left side so several times throughout labor I could feel all the contractions. Thankfully I had a magic button which I could push when I needed it to help with the pain on my left side.
At 8:45am with my epidural securely in place, they increased my pitocin. When checked again at 9:00am Hendrix head was very low but I was only dilated to just over 1cm still. About a half an hour later my doctor came in and checked me again and I was just over 3cm and an hour and half after that I was already up to 6cm! Oh the wonders of Pitocin-so glad I had the epidural! At 11:30am I had dilated to 7cm and was definitely starting to feel every contraction again. The nurses called the anesthesiologist and he came in and gave my epidural a refresher-SO wonderful! By 12:30 I was dilated to 8cm and a half an hour after that I was almost completely dilated. The doctor suspected Hendrix cord may be around his neck because his heart rate dipped a little with my contractions and I was put on oxygen. At 1:30pm I was still almost dilated and was waiting for a small anterior lip to clear out of the way but was assured that I may start pushing soon.
4:00pm, still no pushing and waiting to be completely dilated. Then I spiked a fever of 102.8 degrees. They suspect I’ve gotten an infection because my water had been broken for over 12 hours at this point. The doctor started me on two different types of antibiotics to help treat the infection. At about 4:45pm I finally started pushing and pushing and pushing! At one point while pushing, Matt had to stop and change the movie because he wanted the first thing that Hendrix saw and heard was Star Wars! By 6:00pm I had no progress with my pushing and my doctor could tell by feel that there was no way Hendrix’s head was going to fit and I was prepped for a c-section. I was so exhausted and out of it, delirious with fever and pain and so ready to meet my son! As they started to wheel me into the operating room I started to shake uncontrollably, partly because of the fever and partly because of the fear and anxiety of the c-section. I was so tired from the day’s events that I was barely able to keep my eyes open. So there I lay on the operating table, shaking my brains out with my eyes shut, hardly coherent enough to meet Hendrix when he finally made his grand entrance. Matt watched the entire c-section, he said it was crazy! The doctors cut into me and I started squirting blood and the doctors were just carrying on a casual conversation, not even fazed by what they were doing! At 6:45pm on December 29, 2009 Hendrix Kay Knell was born weighing in at 8 pounds even and measuring 20.5 inches long. It turns out it was probably a very very good thing that I was so out of it because as they pulled Hendrix out, they realized that the cord was wrapped around his neck twice and he wasn’t breathing. It took them quite a bit to get him breathing, they had a CPR breathing mask on him when he finally came to. At 1 minute after birth his APGAR was only 3 but by 5 minutes after birth his APGAR had drastically improved to 9. After they were done stitching me back together they wheeled me back into my room and handed my sweet little boy to me. Unfortunately I was still shaking so badly that I couldn’t hardly even focus, let alone feel comfortable in my ability to hold him. I really didn’t end up meeting him until the next day when I returned to my normal self.
All in all, it was a ROUGH day but so absolutely worth it because now I have a perfect son who has completely stolen my heart!