Lukas is Here!

We had a doctor's appointment Tuesday morning. I hadn't planned to start taking my FMLA leave until the following Monday, but the doctor told us that my water was bulging and acting like it might break at any time. We decided then and there that I should start taking leave that day. It was too risky to drive to Kingsport every day, since our doctor and hospital were in Greeneville. I felt pretty lame taking off almost two weeks before my due date, but ultimately, I think it was the right decision.

I'd been complaining about being in the "just in case" stage of pregnancy. I did some work on Tuesday "just in case"-- vacuumed the house, cleaned the bathroom, did a little grocery shopping so there'd be some food if we had to leave and Pete's student should have to stay the night to take care of the dogs.

My water broke at about 5 a.m....but it was just a little trickle. I took a quick shower, and we grabbed the bags and headed to the hospital. Neither of us could really believe what was happening- it was dark outside, and we were the only ones driving through Greeneville, kind of freaking out that we were about to go have our baby. Once at the hospital, where they established that my water had indeed broken, we were admitted and the fun began. Since I was still only having irregular and completely un-painful contractions, they started me on Pitocin. Latent labor started at about 6:45 or so.

Contractions started getting painful at about 10 a.m. or so. Pitocin doesn't really let you "warm up" to contractions, so once they started, they were pretty intense. I made it until about 1 p.m. before we elected to have an epidural. I just wasn't progressing, and with the intensity of the contractions, and me only halfway dilated, I was worried that I'd be too tired at the transition stage to push. I felt a little guilty-- I had honestly hoped I could make it through labor without the pain medication. In hindsight, we made the right decision. The epidural almost completely took away my pain for about 4 hours so that Pete and I could both get some rest. Pete was even able to nap a bit. I laid there pretty close to sleeping, and we were able to have a little quiet time to talk about what was going on.

The pain started coming back at about 5 p.m., and dilation happened pretty quickly after that. With the nurse's guidance, we decided to go ahead and "labor down" for awhile to get him pushed down a little further before I had to physically push on my own. At about 5:45, we started pushing, and things were progressing really really quickly-- the nurses called Dr. Nelson (not our doctor, but the one on call the day before July 4th) to let him know that things were going to happen in a hurry.

Then it all kind of stopped. Lukas stopped progressing, and got caught behind my pelvic bones. For the next hour and a half, we pushed and NOTHING happened. Finally, Dr. Nelson informed us that at 2 hours, we were approaching the point at which he'd have to intervene. He wanted to get the operating room ready to go, and have things prepped in case, after trying to use forceps to pull him out (which was unlikely to work, since Lukas was such a tight fit and he couldn't get the forceps around his head), we were going to have to have an emergency c-section.

There are few things in this world that he could have said that would have scared me so much, and I started to double down (not that I wasn't pushing about as hard as I could already). Dr. Nelson left to get things arranged in the OR. Almost as soon as he left, I got Lukas past my bone and the nurses were telling me to breathe through the contractions because he was coming really quickly and the doctor wasn't back yet. It was (I think, it's hard to tell) about 6 minutes later when Lukas arrived.

Little kiddo is 7 lbs. 8 oz., 20 1/4 inches long, has an almost 14 inch head, and is just about perfect.