Labor & Delivery

So, the past few days have been quite busy. It's hard to believe our little Garytt is already a week old! Anyway, we thought we would play a little catch-up and give you an idea of what the last week has entailed, starting with labor and delivery.

Thursday, March 25th
4:15pm - Jennifer's water breaks on her way home from work. She calls me at that time and says, "I think my water broke, but you don't have to leave work yet." Yea right. Well, I grab my stuff and interrupt the boss on my way out of the office to tell her we might be having a baby. Little did I know how quickly the next few hours would fly by!

4:45pm - Jennifer gets home first and is more certain that her water broke. She calls the doctor and they tell her to come into the hospital, but there's no big rush. Jennifer tells them we would be there within the hour. We started packing all of our stuff up (luckily, we had just packed most of our hospital bag two days prior thanks to Jennifer insisting it be done that week). I thought we had a little more time for all this! Jennifer was concerned that the doctors wouldn't let her eat anything once she was admitted, so she grabbed some pop-tarts to eat in the car on the way to the hospital. It was actually a very calm drive, as Jennifer wasn't feeling any contractions yet.

6:00pm - We arrived at Saint Luke's Northland Hospital in Kansas City, MO and were taken to what we like to call the "holding tank," but they call the triage room. They confirmed that Jennifer's water broke. As they prepared a labor and delivery room for us, we began calling immediate family to notify them that we would definitely be having this baby within 24 hours. At the time, the nurses were convinced it would be more like 6:00 a.m. before Garytt would arrive.

6:30pm - Jennifer gets hooked up to all the necessary monitors as well as the dreaded IV. Jennifer has a healthy fear of needles, so she wasn't too excited about getting the IV. And it didn't help that on the first try, the nurse blew the vein (I think she might be recovering from that injury more than delivery!). Jennifer still hadn't felt any contractions, so the doctor said she would give her an hour or so and if labor had not progressed, they would have to augment. We weren't too excited about that since we've heard from people that augmenting/inducing labor can be more painful because the body's natural hormones haven't started taking effect yet.

7:30pm - Jennifer's labor was not progessing on it's own a Pitocin drip to augment the labor was started.

8:30pm - Just as the K-State game began, Jennifer started feeling some minor contractions. Jennifer's parents were able to be in the room with us at this point to watch the game and bring me dinner. (Poor Jennifer just had ice chips for the rest of the night.)

About 10pm - Just as the game was getting really exciting, the contractions were getting much stronger, although not in a regular pattern. The nurses still thought we had a long night ahead of us becuase the contractions were not following a pattern. Jennifer was experiencing "coupled contractions," where she would peak on a contraction and start to come down but then peak again before the first contraction was complete. When I would tell her she was coming down from a contraction, she would say I was lying because she could already feel another one coming.

About 10:45pm - Jennifer was starting to get "very uncomfortable" (this was the term she used to prevent herself from thinking it was too painful...but in fact she was in pain) and the nurses started suggesting an epidural, even though this was not in our birth plan. Jennifer really did not want an epidural (again with the needle phobia). However, she was finally uncomfortable enough that she asked for the epidural. Unfortunately, the anesthesiologist was finishing up another procedure, so it would be a few minutes before he would arrive.

About 11:25pm - Jennifer had a strong urge to push but the nurse didn't think it was possible based on the last check. The nurse checked her again and agreesd and left the room with instructions not to push. The labor nurse and a team of other nurses scrambled into the room to set up for the delivery. We were informed that it was too late for the epidural...Jennifer was going to do this without any pain meds.

About 11:30pm - The doctor finally arrived and also scrambled to get into position. It was time to push.

11:50pm - Garytt Kort Brown arrived!! Jennifer did such a great job of pushing that it only took 20 minutes to deliver our baby boy. Did I mention that Jennifer had no drugs...like none?! I was able to cut the umbilical cord and follow Garytt over to the warming bed to watch as the NICU nurse cleaned him up. He weighed 7lbs 6oz and was 19 3/4 inches long.

The rest of the evening and the following few days are a blur. We will try to catch up on the blog in the next few days in between feedings and naps.