Labor & Delivery

On Thursday, April 8, 2010, we started the day early on little sleep (turns out it's hard to sleep with fetal monitors hooked up to you, even when you have two sleeping pills, haha). At 3:30 am, the nurse came in and removed the cervadil. Thirty minutes later, they started me on pitocin. By 6:30 am, I had dilated only 2 cm, so we thought it would be a long day. The contractions started getting stronger, and I decided that it was time for my epidural. I asked for the epidural at 7:30, but I didn't actually see the anestheisologist until 8:30 because a lot of mommies asked for an epidural at the same time. The epidural didn't really agree with me, sadly. The first epidural was a "wet tap" epidural, which only happens to 1% of epidurals and is the result of incorrect placing of the epidural, so the medicine travels the wrong places. It gave me a huge headache and didn't numb me at all. The second attempt had a tubal malfunciton, where the tube part of the epidural had a part lodged in it and it wouldn't accept any of the medicine in the tube. They had to completely do the epidural over again and this time, it seemed to work.. But, in that process, my blood pressure dropped and I vomited. No fun! I was finally feeling no pain, so I was a happy camper. At 11:00, I had dilated to 4 cm, and they were going to check me again in two hours. Within that time, I began to feel contractions again on the right side of my body. They made me tilt to the right side to get the medicine to travel to that area. It did nothing, and the pain only got worse. I tried to wait until 1:00 when they checked me again. Dr. Pevoto came into the room to check on my progress and he checked my dilation at 1:00. I told them about the pain and the epidural not working on my right side. He checked me and then shocked all of us when he told me I was fully dilated!! WHAT?!? We were thinking that I would be good to progress 1cm per hour, not 6 cm in 3 hours!! He asked me if I wanted to go ahead and start pushing, but I was shaking so bad from the pain. I had not prepared to feel childbirth at 10 cm! My hat is off to you ladies who go through childbirth with no pain meds!! They developed a plan to get the anesthesiologist in the room ASAP to give me additional meds to help with the pain. She gave me more meds and 15 minutes later, I was finally feeling great! I had renewed energy and was ready to have this baby! I started pushing at 2:00, and knew that I might have to push for as long as three hours. I was most scared about the pushing stage beforehand, but it was not bad at all!! I only had to push for 45 minutes, then Dr. Pevoto came in, along with the surgical nurse to assist him in stitches if needed. The baby's nurse came in and then a couple of contractions later, Hudson entered the world! I immediately felt relief and not pregnant, it was so cool. They put him on my chest and cleaned him off. It was so surreal and I just remember thinking, I can't believe he is here, and he is so perfect!!

They moved him to the bassinet to check him, weigh him and get his measurements. Hudson Lane Hogg was born at 2:52pm, weighed 7 pounds 9 ounces and was 19.5 inches long. He has chubby little cheeks, blue eyes and pretty much looks like Travis everywhere but his nose. :) It was such a good experience, even considering the epidural problem. I would still get an epidural in the future, because when it finally worked, it was wonderful!!

I will blog about our hospital visit and our visitors later. I need to go feed my baby! :)