39 week appointment

On Friday, December 21st I headed down to Ben Taub hospital for what I thought was going to be my normal 39 week appointment for our baby girl.  Since I changed doctors at 36 weeks in hopes to have a successful vbac our doctor appointments have become a little bit more of an ordeal.    My original doctor was pressuring me to have a c-section to the point where she put me on the schedule for surgery on December 18th and when she did my group B strep test she told me, "There really is no reason why we need to do this since you'll have a c-section so its just a protocol thing", so at 36 weeks my doula and I did some research and found that the doctors at Ben Taub Hospital were extremely supportive of having a vbac, to the point where at the hospital tour the guide mentioned that this was the hospital to be at if you were to have a vbac.  The switch though now caused me to drive an hour to appointments (instead of 15 minutes), pay ten dollars for parking for each visit, hire a sitter or ask a friend to watch Joseph for appointments and be at a county hospital instead of the brand new private hospital that I was going to deliver at.  At my 37 week appointment Rich was there with me and 2 inmates (in shackles with guards) walked by us and Rich just looked at me and said, "Really, Lisa, this is where you want to deliver our child?"  I feel very fortunate that he was so supportive of my decision...as crazy as it may have seemed to him.  Even with all of these nuisances I am so glad that we made the switch.  For this appointment, Rich was home with Joseph because our sitter couldn't stay with him for the entire time, so I was there by myself.

At my appointment on the 21st the first thing they did was take my blood pressure and it was high-140/90 where normally it falls around 115/75.  The nurse didn't say much other than it was high and then brought me to the room.  The doctor came in (I have never seen the same doctor down there-I was assigned a doctor but you just saw whoever was on rotation for that day) and she was very nice but basically told me that after looking at my history and how my blood pressure is normally on the lower side and since it was borderline high and that I was almost 40 weeks that I was going to be admitted to the hospital NOW!  Not gonna lie, I totally lost it for a few minutes-I called Rich in tears-mostly because I felt like I didn't get to give Joseph one last hug as an only child but pulled myself together before the head doctor came in and gave me the same speech.  Thankfully I had everything written down on two lists with everything that had to be added to my hospital bag and to Joseph's overnight bag just in case.  I had also taken out the carseat of my car before the appointment just in case-guess my motherly intuition pushed me to do that!  Rich got everything together, dropped Joseph off at our good friend's home and headed down.

There was a lot of waiting for a few hours and finally around 5:30 I was admitted to a room.  They took my blood pressure and it was still high but they had me lie on my left side and as soon as I did it went back to the normal range.  I asked if I could go home since it had dropped but they told me I was there for good now.  We were going to have our baby!  I was 0 cm dilated still (almost a 1) and was told that I was 50% effaced which I found funny since the week before I was told that I was almost 100% effaced-all subjective, obviously.  The plan was to have the foley bulb inserted which is a more natural way to dilate the cervix but by the time the doctor came to see me I had started having contractions on my own which were 2-3 minutes apart!  Crazy!  When the dr came in at about 7:45 the decision was made to start me on pitocin since I was having contractions-I was pretty nervous about it since my experience with Joseph and pitocin was not the greatest but they assured me that they would start me on a very low level and take it slow.  And sure enough it worked out great!  At 11:30 p.m. my water broke on its own and the contractions got much more intense.  I had the epidural around 12:30 a.m. but was in pain for a good hour after as it did not ease the pain at all on my left side. Finally it all kicked in and we were all able to doze off every now and then until about 5 a.m.  I started having some pain again around then and the dr came in and checked me and I was a 10!  Yay!  At 5:45 I started pushing and at 6:02 a.m. on December 22nd, 2012, Ella Jane was born.  Dr. Jennifer Bump was the doctor who delivered her and we were so happy with the care that we received throughout the night and during the delivery.  Welcome to our family Ella Jane!

 The hospital's policy was for the babies never to leave the room with the mother as long as all looked healthy so they did everything in our room which was great.  They also don't have a nursery so the babies are with you all of the time once you go to your recovery room as well.