Nathaniel Spencer Hansen

Since this post is a little long, I'll start you off with this:

So, I came to the hospital expecting to be here about 3 weeks before being induced, at 37 weeks.  One of the doctors noticed that my chart had two due dates: November 16 and November 24.  It turns out that since the Maternal Fetal Medicine doctors were going by the November 16 date and had charted his growth based on that, that it should be my actual due date.  I was so excited at the prospect of one less week in the hospital and one less week before meeting my little one.  After a lot of vagueness on the part of the doctors, one of the doctors from my OB's office, Dr. McKinnie, came by to see me on Monday morning and said that we would induce either Thursday night or early Friday, and she would be the doctor on call Friday.  We got a few differing opinions from doctors, but stuck with the date.

Here's my last belly shot at 36 weeks and 6 days:

Finally, on Thursday night, they wheeled me down to Labor and Delivery to start the Cervidil to soften my cervix.  They placed it at about 11:30 pm and an hour later I was having pretty painful contractions.  After two hours I was sobbing from the contractions, which were also in my lower back and tail bone.  It really felt like I had broken my tail bone whenever I tried to get up or turn over.  At this point I was 2 cm, so it was too early for an epidural.  They gave me some iv pain meds that lasted about an hour.  They gave me a second dose that also lasted about an hour.  It was a pretty rough night.

By about 10 or 10:30 I was at 3 cm and they said I could get my epidural.  IT WAS AMAZING.  I highly recommend them.  I honestly don't know how anyone can give birth without one!  But I'm not here to judge.  Anywho, after the epidural I was able to sleep!  They took the Cervidil out early because I was having too many contractions (could've told you that a few hours ago...), but I wasn't feeling anything.  An hour or two after that, I was at 4 cm, and Dr. McKinnie came in to break my water.  That was a strange feeling.  The next few hours I just dozed and relaxed.  Since I was progressing pretty well, they decided to hold off on Pitocin and let my body try and get where it needed to be on its own.  My nurse kept asking if I felt any pressure or anything different.  I didn't, so she didn't check me.  Finally, after asking several times if I felt anything, she decided to check me anyway.  Jesse was in the cafeteria eating.  It was about 4 pm and she said I was at 10 cm!  I was so excited.  Once Jesse came back we would be able to start pushing.  We would have a baby soon!  This was going to be a breeze...

We did some practice pushes with the nurse.  I had a hard time pushing just because I couldn't feel anything.  The nurse told me to not push the extra boost of meds button on my epidural and let some of the effects wear off so that I might feel some pressure or something.  Shortly after that, I did feel a little bit of pressure and I could start to feel that I was pushing, just a little bit.  I kept pushing for a while.  The pain got more and more intense.  Dr. McKinnie came in to see how close I was and I was pretty close, so she took over.  After lots more really painful pushes, baby just wasn't getting past a certain point.  I was in a lot of pain and totally exhausted.  I had been having a sharp pain on my left side for some time now that didn't go away in between contractions.  She knew I wouldn't be able to handle much more, so she said we needed to get the vacuum.  I was glad.  I was thinking she would just like press a button and this little vacuum would suck him out and do all the work.  I was sooooo wrong.  The vacuum is just a big suction cup thing.  I can't even explain how painful that thing was.  I couldn't tell at the time, but the pain I was feeling was intense ripping.  2nd and 3rd degree tears.  Jesse said they looked pretty awful.  After they yanked Nathaniel out at 7:37 pm I couldn't understand why I was still in so much pain.  They put him on my chest right away and I remember thinking he had a lot of hair, but other than that I was so focused on the pain.  They told me to press my extra boost of epidural button again, gave me a shot of Lidocaine, and began stitching.  The epidural kicked back in after 10 minutes or so, and I felt a little better. 

They wrapped my baby up and put a hat on him and set him on my chest for a few minutes while I was getting stitched up.  He was so alert and just looked at me with his beautiful eyes.  They told us he was doing well, and his Apgar scores were 7 and 8.  He was just using a little too much effort to breathe, so he needed to go to the NICU for a minimum of 4 hours.  Jesse went with him and I stayed behind to be put on magnesium due to my still high blood pressure.  That stuff burned sooo badly going in my IV. My whole hand and wrist were hurting so badly.  Magnesium causes some intense hot flashes and grogginess.  When I got up to go potty for the first time, in a bedside commode about a foot away, I almost passed out.  It was so scary.  The next several hours were kind of a blur, but I'm glad Nathaniel was being taken care of and I was able to rest and recover a bit. 

Dr. McKinnie came back later to tell me kind of what happened during labor.  Apparently he was facing the wrong way, or "sunny side up."  She had been trying to turn him manually, which explained some of the intense pain everytime I was pushing.  I really had no idea what she was doing to me at the time!  He just wasn't turning and making it past the same point, so she had to use the vacuum to turn him and pull him out.  He sustained a pretty big bruise on his head from the suction cup, and a few bruises on his body from being yanked out.  Good thing he was pretty small.

They ended up keeping him in the NICU for about 16 hours.  Jesse visited him a few times, but because of my blood pressure and my reaction to the magnesium, they didn't let me leave my room.  They finally brought him to us, and I was sooooo happy to spend some time with him and finally bond.  He is just perfect.  They kept us in our Labor and Delivery room until Saturday night, the day after he was born, since they were keeping me on the magnesium.  Apparently giving birth doesn't immediately fix high blood pressure. 

They moved us up to our post partum room and told us we would get to go home Monday morning, since they kept us extra time for my blood pressure.  I was cleared to be discharged this morning (Monday), but baby boy's jaundice got to be a little too much, so he's spent all of the day under the bili light.  He was really upset at first becaues he doesn't like to be left alone in his crib and he doesn't like to have all his clothes off, but he's adjusted very well.  Also, his eyes have to be covered and he really likes to look around at everything.  He's very alert.  Mommy didn't adjust so well.  I was kind of an emotional wreck all day.  Jesse gave him a very sweet blessing and that helped me calm down.  He goes to be tested again in about 30 minutes to see if he has to stay under the bili light until the next test at 6 am.  I hope he doesn't have to stay under because I just want to hold him and snuggle him for hours!

Jesse is the best daddy, and took such good care of Nathaniel while I was recovering and couldn't do anything.  He is superdad.  This picture makes me cry when I look at it.

Since that was a whole lot to read, let me now leave you with some pictures of my perfect little angel.  He was 6 lb 4.5 oz and about 20 inches at birth.  He is a long, skinny little thing.  He has lots of gorgeous hair and perfect, big blue eyes.  I can't imagine anything more perfect in this world, and I feel so blessed that Heavenly Father is trusting me with this perfect little one.  We can't wait to get him home and go on with our lives as a new little family of three.