The Brady Bunch Kids

The Brady Bunch Kids

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Turkey comes early to the Brady Bunch House

This next post was supposed to be a continued update on our little turkey's 'roasting' journey, but instead I am thrilled to say, it's going to be a little more exciting than that!

My next OB appointment #10 (39 weeks) was scheduled for Tuesday November 19th at 12:45pm, however nature had different plans. On Monday I started to lose my mucus plug and a quick trip to the restroom at 2:30am on the 19th resulted in not only the full loss of my mucus plug, but my water decided to break too! This was a first for me and to throw me off even more, after my water broke all the random contractions I had been having over the last few months stopped too! Hmmm

Call to the staffing service resulted in NO call back from the on call doctor and after an hour wait and another call to the staffing service I was conference? in with my OB (who wasn't on call) and instructed to go straight to the hospital. During my wait on a return call Eric and I had gotten ourselves fully ready to go, except getting everything into the car and verifying what the kids were going to do. Now that it was about 4:30 am, we checked with Jarom to see if he'd rather go to school (which would require us to take Bre with us) or stay home and watch Bre. He chose to stay home, I think deep down we all thought we may up to another day before Turkey would make her appearance.

Kids are back to sleep, car is loaded including the car seat (the base had been in the car for the last week), and Eric and I are off to the hospital. I have to say it was kind of weird heading that way and the staff in the ER probably thought we were crazy because we were just laughing and joking the entire time we were getting checked in. I have no clue why they had us pre-register because we ended up registering again, but oh well we were in no hurry and at least we were humoring the Registration staff at 4 in the morning.

Maternity ward called, wheel chair brought over, we were wheeled out of the waiting room back to the ER for yet again more registration stuff, and then wheeled up to the second floor to labor and delivery. I put on my lovely hospital attire, got strapped up to monitors, which just showed no contractions, and waited to see what our outcome was going to be. The on call doctor had two scheduled c-sections to take care of before he would see us, so our RN was hoping contractions would start up before he arrived, but stated that we would be staying until our Turkey arrived.

About 8:30am we spoke with the doctor and he recommended changing the external monitor to an internal monitor and to continue to monitor my contractions, which were just starting back up, and after some time determine if I needed to be started on Pitocin. Because Turkey was sitting so low, it took a bit longer than expected to get the internal monitor in, and sadly it fell out shortly afterwards, but no one, including myself, realized this until about an hour or so later. While the nurse discussed this with the doctor, I was able to go and use the restroom (maybe tmi, but the longer I could put off a cath the better!). They decided to go ahead and start me on Pitocin and replace the internal monitor, and the nurse asked if I was going to go ahead with an epidural or continue to try and do this delivery naturally. At this point, I decided I wanted to hold off and see how I could handle the 'new contractions' as I was doing pretty good so far, and to be honest I was terrified of having a bad reaction to the epidural like I did when I had MyKayla. While the nurse gathered all the necessities for the meds and new internal monitor, she had re-hooked me up to the external monitor and my contractions seemed to be doing pretty good on their own, coming pretty consistently and ranging from a 4 to an 8.

Once the meds started, my contractions dropped down to a 4 with each one, but they were coming right on top of each other. They were enough that I was really debating on the epidural, our final decision on getting it was trying a little test to see if I could focus enough to be able to push (no I did not practice pushing) when they told me too. Turns out, I couldn't, and I had such mixed emotions that I actually started to cry, which in turn made Eric feel even more helpless because he knew my hesitations, knew I was in pain and unable to fully focus if needed, and while he wanted me to be comfortable he knew he couldn't fix or chose the right choice, because deep down neither of us knew what to do. The nurse checked to see how dilated I was and since I was only at a 4.5-5 she said I could wait until I was at least 7-8 to make my choice. She did state that if I waited until an 8, there was a possibility that between sitting up and getting the epidural I would go straight into delivering our turkey. Within 30 minutes of starting Pitocin, Eric and I decided the epidural was needed and he contacted the nurse to start the process.

A few minutes later our nurse had returned, she did a quick check and determined I was now at a 5, so we had plenty of time, the anesthesiologist had been notified and would be in shortly. Our doctor was also notified and he was to be called after the epidural was in to replace the internal monitor. Eric was asked to step out while they placed the epidural, this was new to me but I am glad that he was asked to leave because of the events that happened within the next 10 minutes (or less) were more than enough for two people to witness. Once I sat up my contractions seemed to be on top of each other, I mean no break in between, not even enough to take a breath. I felt awful, I was in so much pain, and as much as I tried to sit still, I felt it wasn't enough.

While the epidural was still being place, my contractions jumped from a constant 4 to a constant 10 (several apologies spoken here) and then there was the pushing sensation (more apologies). I told the nurse my body was pushing and I was trying to fight it but it wasn't working (even more apologies). No the epidural was not fully in! They both told me to lay on my side, I told them I couldn't, I needed a minute (massive apologies), they helped me into an almost laying position, the nurse did a quick check and hit the nurses button so fast and requested the nursery and the doctor STAT! Yep never a good sign.

Slight recap of those few minutes: No I didn't cry although I really wanted too. Yes I apologized over and over to the nurse and the anesthesiologist, they tried to refrain from laughing, but a few snickers slipped out between the two of them. They told me to stop apologizing for having a baby, I told them I was apologizing for being non-compliant, which made them laugh even harder! The nurse regained her composure and told Eric he needed to come in cause it was time to have a baby while the anesthesiologist attempted to finish starting the epidural.

I won't bore you with any more details other than once the epidural was started, the room was set up, the doctor was ready to go, the contractions slowed down! For me this was good, it gave the epidural a slight chance to take affect (not enough though I still got to feel everything). Three sets of contractions later our turkey was here.

I had some slight complications, so I wasn't able to really hold or see turkey for about an hour after she was born and Eric and I thinking we were being smart by not hauling all our stuff in realized our camera was still in the car. Yep we are that awesome, you'd think with us each having three kids we would have made sure we had the camera with us, but thank goodness for cell phones!

Now that I have bored you with our dramatic day that was supposed to be just a regular OB appointment at 12:45pm turned into the birth of Turkey.

Born at 11:34am Central Time
Name: none at this time, so she will be known as Turkey!
Weight: 7 pounds 7 ounces
Length: 19 1/2 inches
Head Circumference: 13 inches


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