Rex Allen's birth story

I guess it's about time I get his birth story down on "paper" before it leaves my mind.

Thursday September 6, 2012:  
I had been laying in bed doing my bedrest thing, tracking my contractions all day.  I would get into a pattern and then the contractions would slow down for a while.  Around 9:00 that night I had a steady stream of contractions about 8-10 minutes apart.  I wasn't too worried about it because I thought they would slow back down.  But once I told Jacob he decided we should go ahead and go to the hospital.  We called Jacob's mom to come stay with Lexi for a little while until we knew what was going on.
On the way to the hospital I called the answering service to have the on-call dr. call me...secretly hoping it was my dr who was on call, but it wasn't.  The on-call dr called me back and told me to go to triage. By the time we got to triage the contractions had started to slow down.  They got me all hooked up to the monitors and I was still having some contractions, just not as steady.  The dr. looked at my strip after 2 hours and decided that nothing was going to happen that night so she was ready to send me home.  Right as the nurse was unhooking my blood pressure monitor I had one semi-high reading.  I don't know why it was alarming to her, because it wasn't alarming to me...it really wasn't that high.  She reported it to the dr and came back to tell me that bought me a 23 hour observation and a 24 hour urine collection.  I was pretty upset, because I knew I wasn't going to be having a baby, but I was going to be staying for a technicality.  We finally got moved up to the antepartem room around 2 am.  I had a pretty sleepless night and was awake around 6.

Friday September 7, 2012:
Jacob went home to shower and update his mom on what was going on.  While he was gone my actual dr came in to check on me.  She said she had looked at my chart and the blood pressure wasn't concerning to her so she was going to let me go home.  I called Jacob to tell him to head back up to come get me because they would be discharging me soon.  I called my mom to let her know also.  As soon as I hung up the phone with my mom my dr came back in.  She had looked at my strips from the night before and noticed that Rex's heart rate was dropping during contractions and she would not feel comfortable letting me go home.  She left to decide what we would do.  I called Jacob back to let him know.  He was already on the way back up with Lexi so he called his mom to follow him up there to be with Lexi while he was with me.  They decided to move me down to labor and delivery and hook me back up to the monitors to watch Rex.  My dr. checked me and told me I was around 5 cm dilated.  I started texting everyone to tell them to go ahead and head towards the hospital, because with my history of quick labor I wanted everyone to be there on time.  Once I was down in labor and delivery and everyone was coming in and out of my room the dr decided to do a contraction stress test.  Basically they give you a small dose of pitocin to induce contractions.  They want you to have 3 contractions in 10 minutes to see how the baby reacts to the contractions.  It was basically a toss up on the test.  Sometimes his heart rate would drop and sometimes it wouldn't.  It was so scary the times that it did drop though.  You could hear it just go down down down, and I would be just sitting there praying for it to start coming back up.  My dr. came back in and started trying to decide what to do.  I wasn't 37 weeks yet so she didn't really want him to be delivered yet, but we were there, and I would not be going home like this, so she made the decision to go ahead and increase the pitocin, break my water, and have a baby!!  She knew my labor would happen fast so she made sure that I had my epidural before they increased the pitocin.  The epidural was once again almost painless...I have heard horror stories, but both of mine were amazing.  I was having pretty steady contractions and had to push the epidural button because I was feeling pain.  The nurse came in and checked me and said I was around a 7-8.  About 30 minutes later I had to push the button again because I was having pain during contractions.  The nurse came in and checked me again and said I was ready to push.  They started breaking the bed down and getting everything ready.  The epidural had really kicked in good and I couldn't feel my legs really at all.  The funniest part of the delivery was a storm was blowing in right after they put my legs up in the stirrups.  Literally everyone in the room ran to the windows to look out at the wind blowing, while I'm just laying there with my legs in the stirrups.  Pushing was hard because I couldn't feel anything.  I could feel the contractions in my belly so I knew when I needed to push but I couldn't feel if I was doing it right.  But after 5 contractions, 3 pushes each, he was out.  Apparently he was really blue when he came out and my mom and Jacob were pretty scared.  But, he started screaming immediately and pinked right up.  His cord was wrapped around his foot, so it was getting pinched during contractions, thus the heart rate dipping.  He also had a pretty nice little indentation on the top of his head from sitting so low for so long.  I knew he was "right there" for at least 3 weeks.  Pretty immediately he was placed skin to skin with me, which is something I didn't get to experience with Lexi.
My birth experience was amazing.  I'm so glad that I got to experience a pretty normal labor and delivery since this is my last one.
I found out that my dr. was actually off work that day and had come in to check on me that morning but ended up staying all day.  I can't even express how that makes me feel.  I wanted her to deliver Rex so badly, and I'm so glad that was able to happen.

Right now, we are enjoying our little family of 4.  We are all smitten with "Baby Rex."