It's a BOY!

Wow does time go fast when you have two little ones!

Baby Boy arrived on his due date - April 7th at 4:54pm 8lbs 21.5in

So much to catch up on! Let's see...

The last few weeks of my pregnancy were mostly uneventful. Due to my geriatric pregnancy I had to start doing weekly ultrasounds at 37 weeks. The first one baby decided not to do practice breathing so that bought me an NST test. I did some research and from what I could find it seems there is no solid data supporting these types of extra monitoring in an otherwise healthy pregnancy. The next week I thought about refusing the ultrasound but decided to go along with it when my husband expressed his concerns about not doing them. The last ultrasound I had the week of my due date the fluid looked much cloudier than the previous week. This means one of two things. The mostly likely explanation is baby is shedding their vernix and skin cells. The second and much less likely scenario is meconium. The recommendation is to then induce labor sooner rather than later. The ultrasound was on Monday and they suggested coming in the next morning for induction. Aside from the cloudy appearance on ultrasound baby was perfectly healthy so I refused. Instead I agreed to be induced on Friday - my due date. In the meantime I tried everything to get labor going on its own. I had a good run of contractions Wednesday night for a couple of hours. I did all I could to enhance them, but eventually they tapered off and stopped completely. 

Due date and induction date. We had to check in at 1am. I had our babysitter come and spend the night with our daughter and then I had a patchwork of a few other people including our nanny that would be staying with our daughter the next couple of days. At 1:45am  I was given my first dose of cytotec. I was only 1 1/2cm dilated and about 60% effaced. The first dose gave me a few tiny little cramps, but nothing otherwise. The second dose of cytotec was given at 5:45. My doula showed up around 7:30am and she suggested I get up and try going for a walk. We walked the halls for a good 45min and I started having some actual contractions! Just before 9am labor took off and around that time I was already 3cm and 80%. I spent the next few hours doing my best to cope with the contractions. I used the exercise ball, wandered around the room, and eventually ended up in the whirlpool tub. My contractions become really intense when I was in there and around 1pm or so I decided I had enough fun and asked for an epidural. I was 6cm and 100%. The epidural did not take on the left side the first time. So anesthesia had to come back and luckily all that was needed was to pull the catheter back a little bit. They had to hang a fluid bolus for the start of the epidural but once it showed my blood pressure was doing fine I asked them to turn it down as low as it would go - basically just enough to keep the vein open. They gave me so many liters of fluids with my daughter and I do believe it played a huge role in how bloated I was for weeks after and why my milk took five days to come in with her. This time I was given less than one liter of fluids total. The nurse wanted to give me more fluids because she said my output from the foley wasn't much, but I again refused and instead drank more water. I then rested for a little while. They asked several times throughout the morning and afternoon if I wanted my water broken, but I didn't feel it was necessary. An hour or so after the epidural was placed I started feeling baby pushing down during contractions so I listened to my body and would push a little along with baby. My water finally broke on its own a little after 3pm. It was just a little bit of a trickle, no where near the gush I had with my daughter when the doctor broke my water with her. My doula suggested the nurse come in to check the fluid since they were concerned about the cloudiness on the ultrasound. The nurse came in and pulled back the sheet to check me and she stepped back in shock and said, is that the umbilical cord?? You could have heard a pin drop. We all knew that would mean an immediate c-section. Thankfully, it wasn't baby's cord. It was instead part of the amniotic sac bulging out. Since so often the hospital will break someone's water the nurse and my doula had never seen someone's sack bulging out like that. The fluid was clear so the cloudiness was the vernix. Which I believe since baby was almost completely clean at birth! At that point I was fully dilated. But I asked to wait until my body felt like it was ready to push. at 4:04pm my body was ready. This time I made sure they didn't turn my epidural off. They turned it off when  I went to push with my daughter and that was 3hrs and 31min of pure torture. During the pushing phase when baby moved down into my pelvis my sacrum started hurting way more than labor. It had been bugging me throughout my pregnancy. I went to the chiropractor three days after I had baby and she said my sacrum was completely out of place - which I believe as I felt it during labor!! Pushing only took 50 minutes this time!! Baby came out a little crooked. I got the head out fine, but once I pushed his shoulders out everything tore. I tore down and also tore my labia completely in half. With my daughter once I agreed to the episiotomy she popped her head through and the rest of her body came flying out. This time I felt every little bit of baby come out - I could tell exactly when his head, nose, chin, shoulders, etc. was coming out. And when he was crowning I could still feel him kicking me in the ribs! My husband was able to catch him - better than with our daughter since baby boy came out a lot slower. As soon as baby came out there was a big gush of fluid and blood so my husband wasn't able to tell immediately what we had. Then I heard him practically shout, it's a boy!! Now that we've done it both ways - finding out before hand with our daughter and waiting for our son - we both agree - finding out in the delivery room is So. Much. Better!! We actually wish we wouldn't have found out with our daughter now that we know how much more fun it is to find out at the end. 

I'll try and get another update typed up soon to get up to date!