Delivery

There are a lot of things that went extraordinarily well with the delivery of baby Thomas.

• My water broke before the contractions were painful. In my book, this is good.
• We were the only ones in labor in the hospital all night long. We had the undivided attention of....everybody.
• Night Nurses were hilarious (one even had a cool accent) and a pleasure to be around. Somehow it's less annoying when they say "we're going to check you again" with a cool accent.
• Dr. Man decided that we could wait until morning to start the Pitocin. "Get a good night's sleep. It might be your last." I heart Dr. Man.
• When they gave me the epidural (at about 10am) it went in really easy. Nice Anesthesiologist told me she'd never seen anybody get in a more perfect position than I did. What can I say? I'm good at sitting.
• The epidural set in quickly and was quite effective. Nice Anesthesiologist kept asking if I was sure I couldn't feel anything. "This is the lowest dose I can give, so if you start feeling anything just let me know and we'll give you more." "Wow. you're really sensitive to this." "You still think you're numb?"
• Dr. Man walked through the doors about 10 seconds after they declared me "complete" (That sounds like a grade you get in school for a class that doesn't really matter...shouldn't they call it something cooler? I worked hard for that, way more work than showing up for badminton class.)
• I rock at pushing. Nice Anesthesiologist and Dr. Man told me so. After 2 sets of 3 pushes Thomas' head was delivered.

Other things didn't go so well.

• Thomas's heart rate dropped every time I turned on my left side or had a contraction.
• The inability to be on my left side means I had no epidural on that side. I started to feel contractions on that side which actually made me appreciate the epidural more than I would have.
• When they put me on my left side Thomas' heart rate dropped and 3 nurses and Nice Anesthesiologist stood staring at the monitor trying to figure out what to do. 
• When Dr. Man came in announced that "this baby will be here within 5 minutes one way or the other." That was because of his heart rate. The nurses mentioned c-section if we couldn't push him out fast enough.
• Episiotomy. In Josh's words. "Whoa. That's gonna hurt tomorrow."
• When his head was delivered they confirmed that the cord was wrapped around his neck. Tight. Really tight. So tight that no blood was getting to him. Dr. Man could barely fit his finger under the cord so he could cut it. Fortunately Dr. Man is the best and handled it beautifully.
• When Dr. Man delivered the rest of Thomas there was so much blood built up in the cord that it squirted all over the room. Everywhere. I have a Thomas-blood spot on my purse.
• Thomas was freezing cold, his blood wasn't circulating, his heart rate still didn't get normal and he wasn't breathing, just panting. 30 minutes later he was still on oxygen.
  
  
  
  
  An hour later his limbs were still purple.
  
  
  
• They only held him up in front of me for about 2 seconds before they took him off to the nursery to get all of that under control. Josh brought back pictures (above), and 2 hours later I finally got to meet my little guy.
  

Totally worth it.