It all started at 2:12 Saturday morning. Ilene woke up feeling feverish and nauseated. She was also having some contractions. I got up and started packing a bag, just in case we needed it. I also got the baby monitor plugged in so that Grandma and Grandpa could hear Toby if we needed to go. While I dressed and packed, I had Ilene tell report her contractions to me while I kept one eye on the clock.
The contractions were mild at first, but progressing to moderate, and started at about 6 minutes apart but moved to 3 within 45 minutes. So I went upstairs and knocked on Grandma's bedroom door and told her we were on the way to the hospital.
It was about 3:20 when we arrived at the hospital, and the nurses hooked Ilene up to the monitors and checked her cervix. She was above 2 and below 3 cm dilation, so they weren't concerned. They said we were either in the midst of a false labor or an early labor, and that we could go home if we wanted or we could wait a while and see what happened. We decided to wait a while.
About 7:00 nothing had really happened, and while Ilene's contractions were still regular, between 4 and 7 minutes, they were fairly mild, and she hadn't contracted any more at all. Ilene was also becoming very uncomfortable on the hard delivery bed, and so we decided it was time to go home and get her more comfortable.
We got home and both took a nap for a couple of hours, but we were up and caring for Toby, trying to stay awake. After we had been home for a few hours, Ilene was feeling a lot better. She had been able to sleep, and the contractions had all but stopped. Where she had been mostly immobile, she was again ambulatory, and was even playing a bit with Toby. I took another nap for a couple of hours in the afternoon.
We had been thinking about maybe going to see the new (last) Harry Potter movie, and since she was feeling better, we reasoned that if we didn't go tonight, we might not get another chance, once the baby was here. Little did we know how right we were on that point!
We looked up show times and chose the first one with a reasonably decent seat left, which was the 7:30 p.m. showing at The District in South Jordan. We left Toby with Grandma and Grandpa again, and went to see Harry. We both really enjoyed the movie. On the way back, we stopped by McD's drive-through for some chicken nuggets, and headed home.
We had just reached home at about 10:30, and Ilene was getting out of the car when unexpectedly, her water broke! (Side note, it's a good thing we chose the 7:30 showing and not the 9:00, or her water would have broke mid-movie). Ilene went into the bathroom to see what was going on, and called to me that we might have a problem. My expert (yeah right!) opinion was that her water had broken, and off we went to the hospital again.
When we got to the hospital, the nurses hooked Ilene up to the monitors again. We told them that her water had broken. The nurse asked her to describe what had happened, and told us she thought it was the "bloody show" or "mucous plug", which is not the same thing as the water breaking. But she took a swab test to confirm. In a few minutes she was back; I was right (how dare they doubt me!), it was indeed her water that had broken. Next thing we knew, we were in full observation mode!
The nurses told Ilene that if she wanted to walk up and down the halls to try to progress the dilation she could; she was actually not any more dilated than she had been when we left early that morning. By this time it was almost 1:00 in the morning. We started roving the halls, Ilene's IV in tow. At 1:30 we asked for the anesthesiologist to come and administer an epidural on Ilene.
We had been told to ask for the anesthesiologist about a half hour before we wanted it administered because it would take him a few minutes to come. About 2 minutes after we asked for him we were told he was already in the building and would actually be with us in just a few minutes. An hour later, he was there.
Initially, everything went well with setting Ilene up with the epidural, but in the final stages, suddenly she was in severe pain. I had been standing in front of her, helping her to do what the doc asked, but standing for several minutes I had locked my knees. Coupled with my lack of sleep, I was soon blacking out, and had to sit down on the floor. That's when my usefulness came to an abrupt end. Luckily, it was only a couple of moments before the doc had the epidural finished, and relief replaced pain for Ilene.
When Toby was born Ilene stalled in her progression after the epidural was administered, and we told the nurses that we expected that might happen again. They talked to our OB/GYN and said that if things hadn't basically progressed to near the end by 6:00 a.m., that they would begin Pitocin to induce labor.
Around 4:30, Ilene was starting to panic. This time the epidural was working too well, and Ilene couldn't feel or move anything from the waist down. In addition, she was struggling to breathe and was afraid that the epidural might be shutting down her ability to make her lungs work right. In came the nurse to talk to her. She talked to the anesthesiologist, who was in the middle of a procedure with another patient and unable to come right then. He gave permission for the nurse to turn off the epidural, completely, but not to reduce the flow.
Ilene said that would be okay, but she wanted him to come in and check to see if he could decrease the flow to allow her to move her legs while still allowing her to kill all the pain. Somehow that message got lost in translation because instead of coming into the room he went to bed somewhere in the hospital and never came.
At that point, both Ilene and I were getting pretty tired, and Ilene was able to fall asleep, so I did as well. We both slept about an hour. At 6:30 the nurse came to administer pitocin to induce labor. At that point we were able to finally convince her to bring in the anesthesiologist again to turn the epidural back on, with a decreased flow to allow her to move still. Once the epidural and the pitocin were both moving, we went to sleep again.
At about 8:00 the nurse came in to check Ilene's progress. She announced that Ilene was at 6 cm, and that she was going to call the doctor, and left the room. I was still mostly asleep at this point, but within a minute or two Ilene was groaning a bit with the pain, so I got up to help her. Within a few minutes more, she was really starting to get loud, and we pressed the button to call the nurse. We were also pressing the button for more pain meds through the epidural, but to no avail. It was another couple of minutes before the nurse arrived, anesthesiologist in tow. The anesthesiologist pulled the line from the pump and started pushing a syringe of meds directly into the line. It was now 8:15, and the nurse checked Ilene again and exclaimed "She's complete!", meaning that she was completely dilated at 10 cm. She told another nurse to call Dr. Nichols (our doc), but right after realized that our baby was already crowning, and there was no way that he could get there in time since he was on his way to a C-section at the Riverton Hospital (10 minutes from our Jordan Valley location).
She then said "Get Dr. Moreland in here, right now!" Dr. Moreland was in the next room over delivering a baby. As soon as that baby was out, in she came to our room, and had only enough time to rinse off her hands and reach the bed. She put the palm of her hand under our baby's head, fingers sliding down to her neck and back, and with only a slight pull, she came shooting out! Total time from when Ilene was determined to be 10 cm dilated and the baby being completely out was only 3 minutes! The anesthesiologist hadn't even had time to finish plunging the whole syringe into Ilene before the baby was already there! (Point of fact, the drugs kicked in about 2 minutes after the placenta was out).
The really good news (I'm told) is that there was no tearing and Ilene didn't need an episiotomy, which will make her recovery quite a bit easier than last time.
Here are the stats: She was born at 8:18 a.m. on July 17, 2011. She weighed in at 7 lbs. 12.0 oz., and is 18.5 inches long. Officially named Afton Abigail Platt.
