Late last week, Traci's doctor let us know that she was scheduling her for an induction the morning of Monday, January 16th. The morning of the 16th, our nurse woke us up around 6am and told us that there had been a lot of women coming in to deliver, and they didn't have enough room to induce us in the morning. We put our plans on hold and anxiously waited for them to come for us. Around noon, a nurse showed up to bring us downstairs to the delivery room. She started a Pitocin drip at 12:40pm, and Traci started having contractions right away. I could see that she was in a lot of pain, but she was able to maintain her composure. Around 5pm she entered active labor and the contractions started getting much worse. Michele, our Nurse-Midwife, had been in and out of the room until that point, but once Traci was in active labor she stayed with us the entire time, helping Traci with the labor. I was very happy to have her there, because she knew just what to do and say to help Traci feel more comfortable and move things along. After a couple more hours, Traci wasn't progressing very quickly, so the nurse turned up her Pitocin drip. This made the contractions much faster and harder, and though I have never seen Traci in so much pain, I was amazed at how well she handled it. She never screamed, and she never blamed me for "doing this" to her, or any of the other negative things all the women in the movies say to their husbands!
As the evening wore on, Traci continued laboring harder and harder, and around 9pm, she asked for an epidural so that she would have some energy left to push. The anesthesiologist was called in, and after taking about half an hour to set everthing in place and another twenty minutes or so for the medication to start working, Traci was finally able to have a slight respite from the pain. Her Pitocin was turned up again, and I couldn't believe it when she was ready to push just before 11pm. After about twenty minutes of pushing, I was able to see the top of my son's head! It looked gray-blue, with what looked like a tiny bit of hair! A few minutes later we had the Obstetrician, Neonatologist, and 3 nurses in the room. About 11:25, the head was all the way out, but all I could see was the back of his head, which looked purple and kind of swollen and bruised. At 11:27 he popped out the rest of the way, and I was finally able to say 'Hello' to my son! Our Nurse-Midwife clamped off the cord and handed me a pair of scissors to cut it. It was hard and rubbery, and it actually took me about 4 attempts to finally get all the way through it. He had just started to cry a little bit, which was SO relieving! I was so excited that he was able to start breathing on his own, being 6 weeks early! He was quickly handed off to the neonatologists who cleaned him off, checked him out, and weighed him.
After a few minutes, I went out and announced that he had arrived and revealed his name to the family members waiting in the hallway. After I got back in the delivery room they let Traci hold him and we had a couple pictures taken of the three of us-our first family portrait! They gave him to me and let me carry him to the elevator (after briefly showing him off to the family) and into the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), where he has been living ever since.
In the NICU, the nurses continued cleaning him off and started monitoring his vital signs. They attached sensors to his chest to pick up his heartbeat and breathing, and a temperature probe on his tummy. They wrapped a blood oxygen sensor around his foot and a blood pressure cuff around his leg. They then put a teeny tiny IV into his hand, which took 3 or 4 failed attempts before they got in a vein. That's a lot of tubes and wires poking out of a 5 1/2 pound baby! The nurses also drew some blood for testing. His blood sugar was a little low, so they put some sugar water in his IV, which cured the problem very quickly. Around 1:30am Traci came up in a wheelchair, and we sat and watched him until around 2:30. I took her back to her room, got ready for bed, and then went back to check on Landon. He was doing so well that I decided Traci needed my help more, so I went back to her room for a little much needed rest. I got to bed around 4am, (but was back up at 6:30). What a day!
