Alyson's Delivery

While I sit here watching my angel sleep, I thought I would share with you the story of Alyson's delivery!!

We were schedule to go to the hospital to start the Cervidil on Monday night (8/27). Justin and I spent the day doing last minute packing, things around the house, and resting to prepare to go to the hospital that night. My sister-in-law, Jenn, came to town to stay at our house while we were in the hospital so someone was here to take care of our dogs for us. We decided to take Jenn out for dinner as a thank you before we had to start heading to the hospital. While we were in the middle of dinner, I got a phone call from the hospital saying they didn't have a room available for us to come in to. The nurse told me she would call me back later for an update on if they could get us in that night or what we were supposed to do. The news hit me hard and knocked the wind out of my sails. I cried the whole way back home. It's so hard to go through the emotional ups and downs when it comes to getting your hopes up in preparation for something you've waited for 9 months to happen!! So we went back home to just wait. Around 9 PM I called the hospital back because we had not heard anything and didn't know if we should try to go to bed or stay up waiting for a call. The nurse told me my doctor wanted me in that night and they were going to do whatever it took to get me in. That news was music to our ears!! We were told to call back around 10:30 PM and they were going to try to get us in at 11 PM. I called back at 10:30 PM and she said they would definitely have a room for us at midnight. 

So at 11:30 PM we left home as a family of 2 for the last time. We got to the hospital and went through the process of checking in and getting all the paperwork filled out. Around 1:30 AM a doctor came in to insert the Cervidil. At that time I was dilated to 1 cm, so we had a long way to go. The nurse asked me if I was feeling contractions because she was seeing them on the monitor. I wasn't feeling them very strongly...but we started getting excited knowing something was happening. We were left alone at 2 AM to try to get some sleep the rest of the night. I had a hard time falling asleep and when I would the nurse would come in to fix the contraction monitor and baby's heartbeat monitor on my belly. They kept sliding off because my belly was the shape of a basketball. :) I think total that night I got about 2 1/2 hours of sleep. The nurse came in the next morning and told us my doctor would be coming by to break my water to get labor progressing a little bit more. She came by around 9 AM to break my water and stop the Cervidil. The Cervidil did it's job...I had progressed to being dilated to 2 cm and thinned out to about 75%. Having my water break was a strange sensation. I won't go into details here because it's just TMI. :) Shortly after my water had been broken my contractions started increasing in frequency, duration, and strength. I finally talked Justin into going to eat breakfast with my Dad while my Mom stayed with me. He had been at my side non-stop since we got there and I knew he needed a break. While he was gone, the contractions got so severe I decided it was time for an epidural. My Mom and I talked it out and I decided it wasn't worth going through that severe pain the rest of the day knowing there was a possibility of C-Section due to baby's size in the end. My doctor had told us when she was in earlier in the morning that she would be surprised if I went the whole day without medicine...that because of the Cervidil being used and Alyson's head and body was facing away from my spine rather than toward it, I would probably have a lot more pain than if she came naturally and was facing toward my spine. Anyway, when Justin got back from breakfast we talked about it and he was completely supportive. He called the nurse to let her know that was the path we wanted to take and she started getting things in motion to make it happen.

Justin was able to watch the anesthesiologist place the epidural. He really enjoyed watching and the doctor was great about showing and telling him step by step what he was doing. I thought for a minute he was just going to let Justin do it and talk him through it. Haha!! At that point I didn't care who put it in...I just wanted some relief. It's amazing how fast it starts to kick in...and once it did the feeling was night and day. When my parents came back in they said I looked completely different than when they left the room before I had it. After the epidural was placed, the nurse had to insert a catheter since I couldn't feel my legs to get up to go to the bathroom. When she did that she checked to see how much I had dilated and I was up to 6 cm!!! It was 11 AM at that point, so I had progressed 4 cm in 2 hours....another reason why the pain was so intense - labor was progressing quicker than they thought it would!! And it was progressing mostly on it's own. Just a little help to get it started with the Cervidil then having my water broken...but they never had to use the medicine they had planned to use all along with the induction, which was great!! My doctor came back by a little while later to check on the progress. I was at 8 cm dilated and 100% effaced. So things were looking great!! She said they would continue to watch progress and I would be at a point to start pushing before dinner time.

The nurse came in to do another assessment around 5 PM and I was dilated to 10 cm. The baby's head wasn't down as far as they wanted so she was going to let me "labor down" (or just wait another 30 minutes to an hour to let the baby move down some on it's own), but she called my doctor to give her an update and make sure that's what she wanted to do. My doctor said because she anticipated a big baby, she wanted me to go ahead and start pushing. So I started pushing with contractions at 5 PM. As we got her moved further and further down, it was taking her heart rate longer and longer to recover after each contraction with pushing. Our nurse became concerned so she called the doctor again to let her know what was going on. Our doctor arrived at 6:30 PM...not long after the nurse called her...to watch a couple rounds of pushing before making a determination on the different options we had. The baby's head had moved down, even to where Justin could see it, but it was just not going through the pelvis and it was taking her longer and longer to recover after the contractions and pushing. Our doctor said she could get her head out with forceps, but was concerned that her shoulders may not fit through once we got that far and we would have a baby that was stuck. Her recommendation was an emergency C-Section to get Alyson out safely since she was starting to show signs of distress. We quickly agreed because the end goal from the start for us was a healthy baby...it didn't matter what it took to get there. 

After we gave the go ahead for the C-Section, things went into motion fast and we were in the OR in no time. The anesthesiologist increased my epidural so I couldn't feel anything from chest down....and I mean I couldn't feel ANYTHING!! Justin found it amusing...I thought it was just a down right weird feeling to be able to see your foot and see someone touching it, but having absolutely NO feeling of it whatsoever. They prepped me for surgery, then brought Justin into the room. They let him stand up to watch the surgery over the drape that was in front of my face. He loved watching all of it. He kept telling me how cool it was and how it wasn't anything like what he expected. At one point he even said it was better than watching YouTube!! It didn't take them long to get to where the baby was and get her out. One of the nurses said, "What is it, Dad?" and Justin didn't respond right away. I was lying there looking up at him waiting for his response. After what felt like years, he finally said, "A GIRL!!" I began bawling, then I heard her cry for the first time and completely lost it. I thought hearing her hear beat all those times at doctor appointments was the best sound in the world, but I was completely wrong. There is nothing more precious than hearing your baby's cry for the first time. 

While the doctor's worked to suture and staple everything back up on me, the nurses took Justin over to the bassinet/warmer to see the baby. At that point we didn't know what we were going to name her. We had a couple girl names we liked that we had to choose from. I could see Justin around the end of the drape that was in front of me, but I couldn't see the baby. He was bent over talking to her and holding her hand and kissing her. Again at this point I was a crying mess. The anesthesiologist kept asking if I was ok. I kept apologizing and he said he saw it all the time...he was just making sure they were happy tears and not tears of pain. Haha!! Watching Justin interact with our child for the first time is definitely one of the highlights of my life. It was like instantly he was a Dad and his instincts took over and it was just amazing to watch. He took lots of picture of her and the nurses actually took his camera away and took pictures of him with her and gave him time to just bond with her. The nurses brought the camera over to me so I could see her. They were all so great. After they determined everything was OK with the baby, they told Justin to pick her up and bring her over to me. He picked her up like he had done it every day of his life and came over so I could see her for the first time. She was beautiful from the start!! I fell in love instantly. People say it happens, but until you experience it you just don't understand. We sat looking at her talking about what we were going to name her. Instantly we were able to throw out one name because she didn't look like that at all. We kept putting Alyson at the top of the list and finally agreed to go with it when we were in the recovery room. 

After they got everything finished with me, we were taken to the recovery room to be monitored for 1 1/2 hours before being moved to a room upstairs. The nurse helped me breastfeed...which was good since I couldn't feel anything!! I finally talked Justin into going out to the waiting room to let everyone know what the baby was and her name. I knew they had to be on pins and needles waiting out there. He brought back both of our Moms to see her for the first time and they fell in love instantly. They then switched with our Dads, who also fell in love instantly. By then it was time for us to move to our room upstairs. I hear they filled up the waiting room up there as well waiting for us. By the time we were moved and the nurses did their assessments and got us settled in, it was late and a lot of people had left. The few that remained got to come by and see our sweet Alyson before they went home for the night. 

Our first night was ROUGH!! We were both going on very little sleep after such an emotional day. We were drained. Alyson had a little bit of trouble picking up breastfeeding so there were a lot of frustrations with that. We finally decided we had to send her to the nursery, even if for just a couple hours until she was hungry again so we could get some rest. Each day since then has gotten better and better and each feeding gets easier and easier. She has definitely picked it up and figured out how to do it...which makes us so happy. Looking at her sweet little face makes the tiredness, exhaustion, sleepiness, etc more tolerable because she is completely worth it!! I still find it hard to believe how fast you can fall in love with someone after only 4 days. It was instantaneous and the love grows stronger each day. She is sooo worth it...I would definitely do it all over again to have this little baby in my life.

Looking back, I'm so glad I got the epidural when I did. I was fine with having to go ahead with the C-Section and I think it was mostly due to not being in pain all day. I would have been so frustrated if I had labored without medicine the whole 17 hours then had to have an epidural anyway for the C-Section.

Our little Alyson Dawn Shields came on August 28, 2012 at 7:10 PM. She weighed 8 pounds 6 ounces and was 20.5 inches long. She's absolutely perfect in every way!!! :)