The Kuhn Family: Welcome Baby Emerson!

Friday, October 21, 2011 I woke up at 3:00 am very anxious to meet our fourth son. I played games on my phone to pass the time, got up and took care of some last minute things around the house, packed up last minute items, and got ready for the day ahead of us. At 4:30 am, I called labor and delivery for the time for me to come in. They told me 7:00. While Rick rejoiced in the extra time to sleep, I was disappointed because I was ready to go. My mom was already on her way over, so when she got here we just chatted and then got the big boys ready to go. When we left for the hospital, my mom fed the boys breakfast and then took them all to school. We headed to the hospital and checked in. They took us right to our room. When I went to change into my gown, I lost my mucas plug right there in the hospital! I was hooked up to the IV and found out I was dilated to a 3!!! Which has never happened to me, so we were pretty excited that maybe we would have a fast labor and delivery! The doctor broke my water at 8 and started the pitocin by 8:15. I had my epidural by 9:00. It was all going so fast! The doctor told the nurse to try to hold me off until noon! We couldn't believe it! But then I started to feel really bad. My blood pressure dropped to 70 over 30. And I felt like I was just going to drift away. I started to get scared. They gave me a dose of ephedrine to bring my blood pressure back up. It went up and down many times and they had to give me 2 more doses of ephedrine to get it to be stable. It was still low, but at least not dipping as low as it had been. They adjusted the epidural to see if that would help. I was having so many contractions too close together, they turned off the pitocen to slow them down. But then turned it back on to increase dilation because even with all the contractions I wasn't progressing. When I was checked I wasn't any further than when I came in and they found that my cervix had shifted and he was not in a good position. Which of course did nothing for my worrying! I made it to a 5 and just stayed there for hours. Fortunately, his position changed again and he was where he needed to be. They had the pitocen up so high to bring change and nothing happened, that they finally decided to cut the pitocen in half to give my uterus a break. Talk of a csection was in the air. I am so fortunate that my doctor doesn't rush to do a csection. He knew I didn't want that. So at 9:15 we turned off all the lights, turned off my phone, and relaxed. At 10:25 the nurse came in to check me again and I was at a 10 and ready to go - hallelujah! She had to go call the doctor to come up to the hospital. He got there, I pushed 6 times in 3 minutes and Emerson made his way into our arms! After so many hours of not making progress, it all happened so fast after that! Between 10:25 and 10:46 I was a 10, the doctor drove to the hospital, they prepped for delivery, and I was having finally having my son! Those 21 minutes flew by after such a long, roller coaster of a day! But holding my sweet baby was worth EVERY second!