Nathan Tyler's Birth Story

We get to the hospital at 5:30am on 4/7/08.  They get me set up to the monitors and get all my paper work done.  I'm actually having contractions every 3-5 minutes.  They were small ones but registering.  The doctor comes in and checks me and I'm 2cm dilated.  He goes ahead and breaks my water.  Which took him forever to do because he said it was a really tough bag and it didn't want to break.  No wonder my water never breaks on its own.  The nurse then starts the pitocin around 7am.  She asks if I want an epidural and I tell her no.. for now.  So the contractions start and I'm handling them pretty well.  Then the pressure starts and THAT of all things I couldn't handle.  I just didn't like that feeling.  At 9am she checks me and I'm at 3cm.  At that point I just couldn't take the pressure and told her to go ahead and call the doctor for an epidural.  He was able to immediately come in and do it.  Whew.  10am rolls around and I'm checked again and I'm 4cm dilated.  All was going well until Nathan's heart rate dropped and they couldn't find it.  So they do an internal heart monitor that goes on the top of his head.  It was showing that with each contraction his heart rate decreased greatly.  So they had me flip to my left side.  His heart rate then went back to normal for a little bit but still would dip some with contractions.  From 10:30-11:30am they had me flipping from my left, to my right, sitting up, etc.  Just trying to find a good position so that Nathan's heart rate wouldn't drop.  Nothing was working and even a few time they couldn't get his heart rate at all.  Scared the living mess out of me.  They put me on oxygen and were telling me over and over and over to take deep breaths, to just take deep breaths.  I was.  But Nathan's heart rate was still all over.  Finally at around 11:30am I told them that I was having a ton of painful pressure and felt like I needed to push (epidural wasn't very effective at this point because of all the flipping).  So she checks me.  I went from 5cm dilated at 11am to 10cm dilated by 11:30am.  She calls the doctor and tells him that I'm ready to push, but he was in a csection.  Again, at this point Nathan's heart rate was dropping and things were getting scary.  Nurses were running around getting things ready and a student nurse was repeatedly telling me to take deep breaths and to take in as much oxygen as I could.  The doctor calls back and tells us to go ahead and start pushing that he was on his way.  This was around 12:15pm or so.  So I pushed once just enough to move him down a bit and the pressure was so intense.  At about 12:30pm the doctor was in and dressed and the pushing began.  I pushed through 3 contractions and Nathan Tyler was born at 12:50pm sunny side up with the cord around his neck.  As soon as they put him on my chest I knew he had to be one of my biggest.  He weighed 8lbs, 3oz and was 20.5 inches longs.  His apgars were 9 and 9.  He had a slight breathing bump to get over.  But nothing that required any oxygen or other medical assistance.  He took right to nursing and he is still going strong with it.  So far he is a good baby.  He does like to be held, but what baby doesn't!?!?  He is wonderful in every way.  Jon Kent and Zoey love him.  Jon Kent will talk about him and give him a kiss but he has better things to do.  Now, Zoey she loves to kiss himover and over and over.  She has to sit right next to me the whole time I have Nathan and everything is about him.  We are still settling in and I'm sure we will continue to adjust for quite sometime.  But so far so good.  Enjoy the pictures!!