On April 25th (my due date) I went into my doctor's office for a check up. He decided that although I was not having any issues he wanted to send me to the hospital to be induced. He doesn't really like for women to go past their due dates anyway plus he was going to be heading to a conference on the 27th and wanted to make sure he would be here to deliver the baby. He called the hospital and scheduled my admission time for 2pm.
All my parents,my good friend Kaeti, Jason and I went to Black Bear Diner to eat something since I was not considered active labor yet and Dr. Lo wanted me to eat something before heading in.
Around 5pm I was given cytogel to start my contractions and by 7pm I was having them about 3 minutes apart however they were not extremely strong. They checked my dilation around 9pm and I was now at 5 cm. They decided to not give me another pill since it seemed to be working just fine and it then became a waiting game.
At 11pm they gave me some mild medicine through my IV to help me sleep so I could get some rest before the intense labor kicked in and to lessen the intensity of the contractions I was having so I could fall asleep. The nurses woke me up to be checked again around 12 or 1 am and I was still dilated to 5 cm which meant although I was contracting things were not strong enough. they decided to give me Pitocin to help make them stronger and we would re-evaluate in a few hours.
Dr. Lo came in to have my water broken at 5:30am in an effort to make the progress move faster. Up until this point my contractions were painful but manageable... after he broke my water, NOT SO MUCH! My goal was to try and go through labor without an epidural.... unfortunately for my "perfect labor plan" that did not happen. I was informed around 6:30am that I had to choose to either take an epidural now or wait at least 3 hours for the anesthesiologist to be free after the scheduled Cesarean that was taking place at 7:00am. (They apparently only had one doctor who could perform this procedure in the hospital) I was only dilated to 5 1/2 cm and the pain I was feeling was strong enough and I had a little less then half way to go for full dilation that I chose to not chance labor without the medicine to find out an hour and half later I couldn't handle the pain and have no way out from it. The process of accepting a giant needle in my back scared me but because they had to get me taken care of in such a short amount of time (the doctor had to be in the operating room by 6:45am) it left little room to show fear or ease into the process. Luckily I had a great doctor/nurse team performing the epidural and they were quick precise and left little room for issues. I would have to say one of the biggest challenges I had during my entire labor was holding still during a full blown contraction for the doctor to place the needle in my back.
Things seemed to move pretty smoothly after the epidural was input. I was checked around 10am and found to be closer to 7 cm... things were getting close!
At 12:30pm the nurse checked my dilation and discovered I was fully dilated and said it was about time to start pushing! I couldn't believe we were going to see our baby soon!
My plan was not to have a mirror or any outside help during pushing but in the end I used the mirror and to my surprise Jason watched the whole experience! He was a fantastic help and I am so thankful to have a loving husband who could be my rock and also handle the whole birthing process with such strength. I pushed for approximately 20 minutes and although I couldn't feel an intense amount of pain I was able to still feel contractions and even the baby being delievered.
At 1:18pm we welcomed Jordan Patrick Tharp into the world! I will NEVER forget the sound of Jason, now a proud father, looking at me through tear filled eyes and saying, "We have a baby boy! It's a boy!" The emotions that overcame both of us were powerful and so very hard to explain... waiting for almost 4 years to hold our baby and finally getting to do so was surreal.
Shortly after I birthed him the nurses quickly grabbed him from my arms because he had stopped crying. They were fearful that something was wrong but in turn it was just Jordan's sweet nature. He was quiet and content and perfectly fine with APGAR scores of 10 across the board. :)
Now for the scary part of the wonderful day... (graphic information below)
Jason and Kaeti (She was amazing and took our photos during the birth!) went out to the waiting room to share the good news and inform our family that we had a boy and when they returned to the room they were welcomed by a large amount of blood hitting the floor and Dr. Lo saying, "you don't see that on the discovery channel".
I was hemorrhaging and losing a lot of blood quickly. Initially I had no idea what was going on and really had no opportunity to be scared because the medical staff was working so quickly. I had nurses on top of me pushing down on my stomach (what I later learned was they were trying to make my uterus contract), the doctor doing who knows what down below and Jason standing between me and Jordan under the heat lamp with a very concerned and scared look on his face. At the time I didn't understand the severity or danger of the situation and when he looked at me with the expression of "what do I do?" I told him to go be with Jordan, that I was fine and would be okay. The remainder of my memory during this period is quite hazy (I'm sure in part from the lack of blood) and the last thing I can make out was the doctor saying that if they were not going to be able to stop the bleeding within 2 minutes I was heading in for surgery.
I have since learned that what was happening to my body was very serious and had I gone in for surgery my child rearing days would be over. They would have had to have performed a hysterectomy to stop the bleeding if my uterus wouldn't have started contracting. I am forever thankful to God for holding me close during this time and blessing us with a great medical team working on me to prevent the surgery. In the end it was determined that I had gone from a hemoglobin of almost 12 to now 5.7 and had to have 2 blood transfusions. Apparently your body holds about 5 units of blood and I had essentially lost almost3. I was not able to get up and move around (nor would I have even been able to since sitting up was almost out of the question) so it fell to Jason to do most of the baby things at first.
In the end I consider the birth to have been relatively easy and above all else we were blessed with a wonderful little boy who has since become our everything.
