Baby Ruth's BIRTHday - Part 1: The wait

After a long uneventful weekend, Ruth Irene was finally born on 10/11/10 at 2:52 PM.  She weighed in at 8 lbs 15 oz, 20 inches long and had a 14.5 inch head.  I know the head isn't normally mentioned, but the nurse kept commenting on how HUGE her head was.

And I'm going to skip to the end momentarily and mention on more thing.  This is another God thing.  One of the side effects of gestational diabetes is that babies can be born hypoglycemic.  It is temporary (usually), but increases the risk of that child developing diabetes later in life.  We know God healed me, so I wasn't particularly worried.  The nurse took Ruth's blood sugar.  In infants, the blood sugar just needs to be above 40.  Ruth's was 60.  The nurse exclaimed "WOW!  That is a really good blood sugar for an infant this age!"  (You know - maybe 30 min old! LOL)  It was just a blessing to me that not only did God bring Ruth into this world healthy, but ABOVE healthy.

Now...this is your warning.  I'm going to start from the beginning and tell the entire story.  But, mostly for my sake, I'm putting all the nitty gritty details in.  So if you have a weak stomach (or no interest in details of a birth haha), take a look at the cute picture of Ruth and stop reading. ;-)  I've had to divide this post into several parts (there will probably be 3).  This particular post is not really so bad - but I thought I'd warn just the same.

Ok...you have been warned! :-)


At my doctors appointment on Wed, my membranes were stripped.  This can often cause women to go into labor.  It worked like a charm with Peter.  This time around, I did have contractions...and lots of them.  Nothing regular or painful, but there was lots of action.  I really didn't believe I would still be pregnant when I woke up on 10/11.

10/09 rolled around, and I actually went and hung out with some friends for dinner.  I actually didn't anticipate going, but was glad I got to go.  A friend who moved out of state was there, and it was great fun catching up with her.  (Sorry no pictures...but I promise there were barrels of laughs!)

I was rather disappointed that I woke up 10/10 and still pregnant.  I was SO disappointed, I couldn't fathom facing my church friends. So we went shopping instead.  (It was actually William's idea...shopping equals LOTS of walking!)  We shopped until we dropped.  I didn't buy much as I enjoy window shopping.

10/10 came to a close with absolutely nothing.  No baby.  I was pretty sad.  William's family showed up Sunday evening.  The plan was for William's mom to go with me to the hospital and William was going to drop the kids off at school.  We felt they should go, as there are a lot of changes going and this was our attempt at helping to keep their life a little bit normal.

I woke up bright and early at 4:30 AM.  It was only an hour early from my normal wake up time, but still.  Early is early.  I left the house a wee bit late, but still made time to stop and get a diet pepsi from QT! :-P  Not exactly "proper", but I knew they would be starving me so I felt like I could fudge with a little DP!

Around 7:30 AM I was plugged in and ready to go - when the nurse came in and said the doc wanted things to be taken slowly because he had double booked himself.  He had a surgery that morning, and was worried about missing the birth.  I was actually fine with this, because I was worried that William might miss something, with dropping off the kids and all.  I just didn't realize HOW slowly things were going to be.  William showed up around 8:30 (much to my relief).

I met a few people during this time (before William showed up).  The first is my nurse...nurse Teresa.  She was so completely AWESOME and the first absolutely positive nursing experience I have had!  It gave me faith in the nurses at that particular hospital.  I was prepared to combat the nurses, but Teresa was so wonderful I simply didn't have to.  It made the entire day absolutely pleasant!  Something else I was not planning on.  (I particularly hate hospitals.  So add in bad nurse experiences, and of course my outlook wasn't positive!)

The next person I met we will call Dr. A.  I honestly cannot recall her full name, and couldn't even begin to pronounce her name.  When she said it, I had honestly thought she should have said something like "But you can just call me Dr. A!"  How she expected a patient to pronounce...or remember...that name I really didn't know!  She was the resident on duty.  Besides her name, she had absolutely terrible bed side manners.  She may have been having a bad day...but dealing with a pg lady who is about to have happy event really dictates that you simply put on your happy face whether you feel happy or not.

I had some downtime myself that morning, so I took a picture of myself still pregnant.  William thinks this picture is hilarious - he says I look surprised.  SURPRISE!  You're having a baby!

After my visit with nurse Teresa and Dr. A, the computers went down.  It started beeping and I had to call in lovely Teresa to make it stop.  I thought that was kinda weird.

My doctor then stopped in and apologized for the delay.  Apparently he had double booked himself.  He was very worried that once the pitocin started, I would go fast and he would miss the delivery.  He said once he was far enough into the surgery, he would give 'em a call to start me up.

So we hung out...William and I.

Recently (as in just a few days before all of this) he discovered a show called "Pawn Stars".  He LOVED it, and had been watching it like crazy.  He stayed up until something like 3 AM that first night watching episodes of it.  And it turns out, they were running a marathon of this show on The History Channel (or whatever channel it normally airs on).  So lucky me spent the morning watching episode after episode.  I didn't mind the show - but there is such a thing as too much of a good thing you know? But this provided me with some great material to tease William with!  So that is always a bonus.

Pitocin was finally started at 11:15.  Yep - you read that right.  I woke up at 4:30 AM just to be delayed until almost lunch time.  I had no idea the "take things slowly" meant THAT slow.  My doctor came in with the resident to break my water.  This was done at 11:20.

At this point, I'm not sure exactly what happened, but Dr. A did a no-no.  My doc (Dr. Z) was very stern with her.  Here is a case in point of her attitude.  Instead of accepting the first teaching moment gracefully and learning from it (he was not stern at first, just straight forward), she tried to dismiss whatever it was she did.  So HE had to make his point stronger.  I thought it rather arrogant of her...he has been delivering babies for a very long time...since she was in diapers I'm sure.  I didn't catch much of the conversation, other than whatever she did could have allowed the baby's head to flip around.  His point was he prevented it, and he was trying to show her whatever it was she missed.  BTW - I love my doctor.  I've seen him be stern when he needs to before, always with my best interest at heart.  He does NOT accept less than excellence, which I sincerely appreciate!  (I recall him getting onto some nurses when I was in with Rebekah as well.)

Me waiting - that is my 'lunch' on the bed!  ICE CHIPS!

And so we were hurrying up and waiting some more.  The computers went off again.  When they came back on, nurse Teresa had lost all her notes and was instructed to rewrite them all out by hand.  So she sat in my room monitoring things and writing her re-writing her notes.  Over lunch, the power (apparently throughout the entire hospital) blinked.  It was off for a few seconds (2 or 3?).  I'm very happy I wasn't on a ventilator or something. ;-)  The power outage caused more beeping.

Really - I'm not sure what was going on with the electronics, but I found it all ironic and funny.  After all...10/11/10 is a binary day. :-)

And that concludes Part 1.  Hopefully I'll get to part 2 very soon! :-)