The Whole Year In

The kid turned a year old yesterday. All day long I was thinking about what I was doing at that time a year ago. When we got up yesterday, I was thinking about when they started the Pitocin drip. Lot of good that did. I had the drip all day, and dilated a whole fingertip. So, around 2pm, that day... a whole year ago... they decided to give me the epidural and see if that would help things along. The epidural was craziness. Since, people have asked me what it felt like getting the epidural, and I describe it as a corkscrew on your spine. As the needle goes in, it taps all the nerves along your spinal cord. It was nauseating. Once I had the epidural, I told the anesthesiologist that it felt like I was hanging upside down. After the epidural kicked in, I was feeling pretty good.

Still, the kid was happy as a clam up in the belly. He wasn't moving. So, around 5pm, she said, "well, we can take out your epidural, get you something to eat, and do the pitocin again in the morning, or you can have a c-section." At that point, I had been up since 8am the previous morning, having not been able to sleep at all in the hospital, with all the fetal moniters on my belly and my blood pressure being taken every 15 minutes. Ambien didn't even work. I didn't sleep a wink. I had been having really painful contractions all night, and still no dilation. I was done with it. We had been attempting the induced labor for 24 hours and nothing worked. So I said, "Do the whole thing again tomorrow, no thanks. Let's do the c-section."

So it was a little less than an hour later, that I got this:



He was born at 5:59pm, weighing 8lbs, 9oz, 19.5 inches long. He is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. And now he is a whole year old.