The Fischer Family: The Birth Story

Thanks to my husband for keeping up with the blog....I've been a little preoccupied with taking care of baby Caleb. He requires a lot of time:) HAHA!!

Caleb is actually such a good and easy baby!! He sleeps really well, is very easy to soothe, hardly cries except when he's hungry or during diaper changes and baths, and eats very well. We have been very blessed with his personality and we think he's pretty cute too!

For those of you who care...here's the story of my labor & delivery experience. It's really mostly for me so that I can remember everything. I feel like I've already forgotten so much of the hospital experience and it was only 3 weeks ago! It was truly surreal being a patient instead of the nurse and I still kinda feel like I was watching the whole experience from the sidelines instead of it really happening to me.

I've been praying since 2004 (before I ever met Matt or got married or even had any prospects of having children) that I would have an uncomplicated labor & delivery. When you work in L&D, there's something we call "The Nurse Curse" where bad or weird things tend to happen to nurses. Praise God that He heard my steadfast prayers for the last 7 years and I had a very normal and easy and fast labor and delivery!! And thanks to my great nurses - Reny & Brandy for taking such great care of Caleb & I.

I went in to the hospital at 8:00 on Monday night (Memorial Day) as scheduled for my induction. I got all admitted, got my blood drawn, IV started and then my Cytotec was placed around 9:30pm. It's a small pill that goes behind the cervix and helps get everything ready for the Pitocin induction in the morning. I was 1 cm dilated when she checked me which was better than I was when I saw Dr. MacDonald in the office Friday. Matt and I played some card games and then we went to bed. I had such a hard time sleeping....I was distracted by the monitors, the heartbeat, not wanting to be an annoying patient and coming off the monitor 1000 times during the night, going to the bathroom with the IV and everything. Don't worry....Matt slept just fine through all of this! I began contracting after the 1st dose of Cytotec and I felt some of them, but they weren't too painful. Then Reny placed the 2nd dose around 1:30am and I was able to finally get a little sleep. I guess I contracted more with that 2nd dose because she woke me up at 5:00am to get ready and then put me back on the monitor around 5:15 and I was contracting every 2-4 minutes! I felt them, but again they weren't very painful.

Around 5:30am, Reny checked me and I was 1-2cm dilated and then she started my Pitocin. Brandy came in at 6:30am to be my nurse during the day. She continued to increase my pitocin throughout the morning. Dr. MacDonald came in sometime between 8 and 9 and broke my water and put in an internal contraction monitor (IUPC) to measure the strength of my contractions. I was still 1-2cm dilated at this point. My contractions were already at the strength they needed to be for labor....I didn't know I was that tough (MVU's were 245)!! I hung in there for a little while with the strong contractions. My parents and Matt loved watching me move the sheet on the bed through my fingers while they talked to me during contractions!

I decided to go ahead and get my epidural around 9:30 or so....I knew it was time when I almost cussed with one of the contractions (which I never do!). Dr. Troop came to put my epidural in and did his normal spiel (but sadly didn't say "1,2,3, and a bit" :( . It went really smooth and wasn't painful at all and I was so proud of Matt for not passing out. I got comfortable within 15 minutes or so and Brandy checked me and I was 2.5cm dilated. About an hour after that, I started feeling pressure, so Brandy checked me again and I was 3.5cm dilated and 100% effaced and the baby was way lower. Caleb was a little particular with my position and didn't really want me to be on my right side, so I spent most of the time on my left side with my right leg in a stirrup or sitting straight up or in hands and knees. Dr. MacDonald came in around 12:30pm and I was 7cm dilated. That's when I started to get really excited and hopeful that Caleb would be here soon! After he left I started feeling A LOT of pressure....I would almost say it was worse than the contractions I felt earlier. It wasn't painful, but I remember asking Brandy how not to push. I was holding onto the side of the bed so much and Brandy felt like I needed an extra epidural dose to deal with the pressure. It's so funny because some patients really feel that pressure and some people don't, and I often will tell people "You'll be fine. Just hang in there and it will feel so much better when you can push.". I will NEVER say that again now that I've experienced that sensation! Brandy checked me at one point and I was 8.5cm then shortly after I was 9.5cm. And then after I finally got a little more comfortable after my extra epidural dose, I was 10cm and the baby was like at +2 station. Brandy and I had talked about "laboring down", but she felt like he was already low enough to begin pushing. I was still feeling the pressure and knew when I was having contractions, so we started pushing. I ended up having to push for about an hour, but it didn't feel very long. Dr. MacDonald almost used forceps to deliver Caleb, but once they got them out and ready, Caleb decided to go ahead and come out. I swear I didn't push any harder!

Caleb Paul Fischer was born at 2:16pm. I started crying as soon as he came out and said "He's not weird looking!". I was worried he wouldn't be cute and I would have to pretend that he was:) Matt did so good helping me and encouraging me with pushing. He was in charge of taking pictures after Caleb was born and he got some great ones! It was so cute to see how excited he was when Caleb was born.

So that's the story! Nothing else from the hospital was really that eventful. Despite being tired, I felt good enough to go home that night, but we stayed until Thursday morning. It was so good to take Caleb home and begin our journey at home. I'll update with the events of the last few weeks sometime soon and then hopefully I won't be playing catch-up anymore! Here's a few pictures to make this post a little more interesting to those of you who don't care about the birth story:)

After Bath Time...