Tuesday morning, Kate and I ran a couple of errands and then headed over to my doctor's appointment. My blood pressure was a bit higher, but still not over the threshold which would necessitate induction. The doctor was going to send me home for some bed rest until the nurse came back to check it one more time and this time it was higher yet. So, surprisingly to our family, the doctor told me I needed to go to the hospital. Off all the possible outcomes of that doctor's appointment, this was one was that Matt and I hadn't considered!
On the way home to gather our supplies, I called Matt, my mom, and a friend who would watch Kate for the afternoon and pick up Anna from school. We got all of the childcare stuff settled, dropped Kate off at 1:30 and got to the hospital and checked in by about 2. Thus began our times of "hurry up and wait". I was hooked up to all of the monitors and had my blood pressure checked every 15 minutes for an hour or so. We settled in, found a good movie on TV, and rested for awhile. Whenever I was lying down, my blood pressure was down, but if I was sitting up, then it went up. Again, Matt and I were preparing ourselves to be sent home, when the doctor on call from my clinic (who happened to be Karla from our church, who also went to Valpo and had delivered Anna) said it was up enough that we would go ahead with the induction.
We hurried up to get out things together to move to a labor/delivery room, got switched over, and then had to wait again for the paperwork to catch up with us. Then the nurses had to try four times to get an IV started (ouch!) before the pitocin drip was finally started around 6. Not much was happening so at about 7:30 they broke my water and that really got things moving. Baby Ethan was born at 10:01 p.m. weighing 9 lbs. 8 oz. and measuring 20.5 inches. My normal doctor was working nights this week so she got to do the actual delivery. Some of my favorite quotes of hers were "I figured this baby would be a good size for being 2 1/2 weeks early, but not this big!" and "I'm glad things worked out the way they did so that he didn't have a chance to get much bigger." It's hard to believe that Ethan and Anna were about the same gestational age, but Ethan was more than 3 lbs. bigger.
After a bit of recovery time for mom, we were moved to our room around 1 a.m. at which point I told Matt to go home, that the nurses would take good care of us, since he would be needed to help get the girls up and ready in the morning.
Matt, Anna, Kate, and my mom came to visit on Wednesday morning before Matt took Anna to school and my mom took Kate to her music class. Matt took a nap at home while I took a nice nap at the hospital and was able to rest and relax all day :) My parents came by for a bit in the afternoon and then Matt and my mom brought the girls by after school before splitting up for dinner and taking Anna to music class. Thursday my mom took Kate to Bible Study at church to Matt could stay with Ethan and I at the hospital for all of the final checks and discharge process.
Ethan and I got home on Thursday afternoon and we all began our life as a family of five :)
No comments:
Post a Comment