The Rest of the Story (almost...)

Well, first friends, let me say that I love Todd for protecting my energy reserves. I have missed all of you, and want to see each of you, but I've had to rest and restore myself.

Today's been a quiet day; already I could take another nap.

Because of a great loss of blood on delivery day, and because I often need more iron, I have experienced some anemia and am just - JUST - starting to feel better. I have to take it slowly; got some natural color in my cheeks (not Mary Kay color, LOL...)

Basically, what happened was this:

Sunday night the 19th
We went to triage to receive 'cytotec' to start natural contractions. I had some, and enough of them that they did not give me a 2nd dose, but sent me home. They were confident that this would dilate my cervix by the next day to start inducing labor.

Monday, the 20th
Went in to induce, and found that my cervix was only dilated to 1 cm. So they gave me more cytotec (not sure I"m spelling that right) until evening when I'd dilated all the way (drumroll, please!)....to 2 cm.

Hmm. So they gave me an IV drip of pytocin (the "real" labor-inducing drug) all Monday night to Tuesday.

Tuesday, the 21st
This caused me to dilate all the way to 4 whole cms. So throughout the entire day of Tuesday, they gradually increased by pytocin levels.

They tried to break my water around 3 or 4 pm; can't remember when. But it didn't work. I was greatly discouraged, not to mention TIRED and...TIRED...3 days of contractions with few results was not encouraging.

But...at 6:30 pm, my water finally broke! Yay! And the real hard contractions started!!

By 11:30 pm, though, I was still not dilating any further and the pains were getting worse. The midwives stated that due to my slow dilation process, it would be a long night.

So we decided to go with the epidural because after 3 days of contractions, I was just exhausted. No way could I go through an entire night of hard contractions without assistance. So at 11:30, we did the epidural, and I slept much of the night.

Wednesday, the 22nd
At 5 am, they checked my cervix, and I was STILL dilated at 4 - 5 cms at the most. The midwives and doctors were not encouraged and I was losing hope. HOW would this baby come??

We discussed it, and even though this was THE LAST method of birthing that I wanted, it seemed that the C-section was my only (and last) option. By that point, it was easy to say, "Let's do it."

So they operated at 6:20 am, and Tucker hollered his way into the world at 6:40 am. He was a beautiful, awesome sight, especially after being overdue for 12 days, and a 4-day fight to have him!! More on that later...I'm losing energy right now and need a nap....but, still the rest of the story is this...

In recovery from the C-section, someone noticed at about 7:30 am that my IV with the pytocin in it had plugged up, and so the blood was not being contracted out of my system. My system was filling up with blood clots and I wasn't doing well. So, these last few days have been something of a process between getting the rest of the uterine blood out while rebuilding my blood supply. My blood pressure has been high and swelling has been bad, but I finally got a water pill today and they're watching me closely.

No one can explain the high blood pressure, but I think that the fact that they come in every 2-3 hours to check my blood pressure is what's making my blood pressure high!! Anyway....

I am off to a nap, and I have more to say on all of this, but some of you have been asking "What happened?" and that's the story. God is good. We go home tomorrow!

Love you guys!

Jennifer