Rudy Thomas is here! I'm sorry you guys never got your name hint. I promise my intent was to post a picture of the monogrammed wall decal on Wednesday, but Rudy decided he wanted to come before I did it. The past few days have been a whirlwind, but I wanted to get on and write his birth story before I forgot all of the details. PLEASE NOTE: This is an extremely long post!
I guess it really started on Monday. I woke up feeling a little bit different and noticed that my contractions had become painful. I'd been having lots of Braxton Hicks contractions since about eighteen weeks, but they had never hurt at all. All through the day on Monday and Tuesday I had these painful contractions sporatically, but they were not getting longer, stronger, and closer together so I thought I was probably just in pre-labor. I also lost my mucous plug progressively on Monday and Tuesday. (Sorry if that's too much information but I am doing this blog as a sort of scrapbook of my life so I can remember all of the details as well). I thought that labor could be coming at some point so on Monday night I put a towel underneath me when I went to bed, just in case my water broke. Most women don't have their water break before they arrive at the hospital, but I just wanted to be careful. (I think only 8% have their water break beforehand.) Nothing happened Monday night, but I didn't sleep well at all. I think it was about 4:30 in the morning before I finally fell asleep and I only ended up sleeping for about four hours. The contraction continued throughout the day on Tuesday and on Tuesday night Josh noticed me put the towel underneath me and joked with me, "You think it's going to be tonight, huh." I told him I wasn't sure but I wanted to be safe. We had gone to bed early (about 10) because I hadn't slept much the night before. However, I never made it to sleep. I was still having contractions and they were between 20 and 30 minutes apart. They were painful, but probably only about a four on a scale of zero to ten. At about 12:15 am I started having a contraction and I rolled over. As I rolled over I heard and felt something pop down by my pubic bone. I thought, "Uh Oh, was that my water?" So I stood up but nothing came out. I went to the bathroom and as soon as I sat down water started coming out and my contraction got about twenty times more painful. However, I couldn't really tell if I was peeing or if it was actually my water so I called to Josh and told him that I thought my water broke but I couldn't really tell and then I asked him what he thought. He thought that was really funny because he would have no way of knowing whether or not it was my water. He told me to get off of the toilet and see if it stll leaked. So I did, and it did. So I called labor and delivery. Usually when your water breaks they tell you to come right in, but they told me to wait until they were four minutes apart. Well immediately after my water broke they started picking up and becoming closer and closer together. Josh and I were frantically running around the house trying to get all of the last minute things together and by one oclock my contractions had become about three minutes apart and were getting really painful. Josh told me three or four times that we really needed to leave but I kept on thinking of something else that we needed to do. We finally left around 1:30 for the hospital. We called our families on the way there. We got onto the interstate and to our dismay learned that they had closed the interstate for night time contstruction and were redirecting traffic onto back roads. So, we had to take a two lane highway into town and were stuck behind semi after semi. Josh was passing them and driving like a mad man. It was how you always picture men driving when their wives are in labor. I had originally thought that maybe I would try to go all natural for the birth but I wasn't completely opposed to having an epidural. I wanted to wait and see how things went. However, on the ride over I informed Josh that I would indeed be getting an epidural as soon as I could because my contractions had been getting so painful and were right on top of one another. We got to the hospital about 2:15 and were admitted. The nurse initially took her time getting me admitted because she thought I was going to be like a typical first time mother and be in labor for a really long time. When she finally got done asking me questions she checked my cervix and was surprised by how far along I actually was. I was dilated to five centimeters and his head was at a plus one station. She kept saying, "his head is really low." After that she got moving and tried to get me prepped for the epidural. It was about four o'clock before the CRNA finally arrived to give me my epidural. Immediately after I got it I started to feel relief from the contractions but my blood pressure dropped really low and Rudy's heartrate started to drop really low as well. I couldn't see the monitors, but about 7 people rushed into the delivery room and started turning me and putting an oxygen mask on me. I looked at Josh and could tell that he was really scared and had no idea what was going on. I knew what was going on, but I was surprisingly calm because I knew that regardless they would take care of me and if they needed to they would take me in to an emergency C-section. But they didn't need to. After 5 shots of ephedrine they got my blood pressure and Rudy's heart rate back up, but I had to stay on my left side for awhile. That was when I began to notice a "hotspot" on my left abdomen. I could still feel my contractions there and it felt like it was burning. I also noticed that I could feel and move my left leg, but not my right leg. I called the nurse and told her and she said that maybe if we changed positions it would help. She put me on my back and immediately I began feeling even more pain. I was having horrible pain in my back and it felt like it was going to break. I told the nurse and she told me that I was probably already completely dilated and she would come back in 30 minutes to check me. If I wasn't completely dilated she would call the CRNA and have her adjust the epidural. When she came back she checked me. I was indeed fully dilated and it was time to start pushing. I started pushing at about ten after six and Rudy was born into this world at 6:51 a.m. As soon as he was born they brought him up to my chest. I was completely overwhelmed I just kept saying Oh my gosh, Oh my goodness and Josh was bawling. They let Josh cut the cord and then they took Rudy over to do an assessment. They noticed that he was grunting a little bit and his oxygen saturation was a little bit lower than they would have liked it to be. They called up the Nurse Practitioner from the NICU to assess him. She decided that he needed to go to the NICU for some monitoring and oxygen therapy but thought he would be out within six hours. So they let me see him one more time and give him a kiss and they took him off to the NICU. They kept reassuring me that he wasn't that bad and I knew that he wasn't, but I was so sad because I wanted to hold him and I wanted to be able to have him in the room with me. So Josh and I cried together for a little bit. Our nurse let us stop at the NICU to see him really quick on our way from Labor and Delivery to Postpartum. But we had to be admitted to postpartum before we could return.
They were able to wean him off of the oxygen after about three hours but his respirations started becoming very rapid. When they reach more than sixty per minute they don't allow them to eat because they get too stressed. His were ranging between sixty and a hundred. They did several tests on him and found that he had alot of fluid in his lungs. They began giving him antibiotics just in case it was an infection and they told us that he had to stay the night in the NICU but would most likely be able to come to the room with us first thing in the morning. However, in the morning they ran more tests that said he had inflammation somewhere in his body, so they had to run more tests to rule out infection. He ended up not having an infection but wasn't able to come back to the room with us until around nine oclock on Thursday night. I don't think I slept but a half an hour that night because everytime he would make a noise I would worry. The next morning he went to the nursery to get checked out by the doc and to get his circumcision and we were discharged around 1 o'clock.
We are home now and he is doing fabulous. He doesn't have to go back to the doctor until his one month check up and we are trying to adjust to life as a family of four (don't forget Murphy). We are so thrilled to be parents and are so in love with Rudy. I can't wait for all of you to meet him.
The first time I got to hold him in the NICU.
What he looked like when we first got to see him in the NICU.
Josh changing his first diaper. It was a mess..... and hilarious.
Waiting to be discharged.
The handsome men in my life.
SO Little!
After his first sponge bath.
