Ethan's Birth Story Part 3

At 3pm they started the pitocin (at level 1).  We waited.

By 3:30 we could tell that Ethan's heart was decelerating after each contraction.  He was not able to tolerate labor, so they immediately started prepping me for c-section.  It felt like a whirlwind happened and the next thing I knew we entered the OR.

It was 3:58.

They gave Jeff a place to sit and asked him if he brought his camera.  ...blank stare... oops.  We were so rushed and caught up in the moment that we hadn't even thought about it.  Luckily Megan was there and had her iPhone with her.  She offered to take pictures for us.

As I was laying there and they were working on me, I couldn't believe it was really happening.  I could not believe that in just a few minutes we would get to meet our special baby boy.  I could feel them working on me, but I felt no pain... so strange.

Then, at 4:15pm Ethan was born!  He surprised us all with his ability to cry.  The doctors took him aside in the OR and checked all of his stats.  I could hear them shouting out numbers and wept tears of joy when they announced his oxygen level was 66%.  Sixty-six!  So good!  Megan was going back and forth between taking pictures of them working on him and coming over to show them to me.  Jeff was holding Ethan's hand as they worked.

We found out our baby boy was 7lbs 3oz.  He was 21.5 inches long.

One of the nurses brought Ethan over and laid him on my chest.  She told me that his skin looked pretty blue, but we were all expecting that.  His APGAR score was 8.8/10.  She told me that the only thing that was wrong with his score was his color.

I can't even describe what it was like to see my baby boy and "hold" him for that moment.  So special and so sacred.

The nurse told Megan to snap a picture, ordered me to kiss his cheek, and then she took him away.  How long was it, probably 30 seconds?  Maybe less?  I felt like I could hold him forever, but I was also mindful that he needed to get to surgery right away.

I breathed a huge sigh of relief.  I was confident that if Ethan was so healthy at birth, he would surely make it through his surgery.  After that we can navigate the bumpy road ahead.

So Jeff, Ethan and his team of 11 doctors and nurses walked though a gauntlet of 20 family members lining the halls, headed to surgery.  They were all hoping to catch a glimpse of our precious baby boy.  (Dr. M later said that he'd never seen anything like that before.)  Here is a video of Ethan going to surgery.

Ethan was so loved!

Meanwhile, they finished stitching me up in the OR and took me back to my room to recover.  I wanted my mom and sisters with me in my room for recovery, but my nurse knew better.  She asked that I be left alone for a little while until I was more rested.  I remember my nurse, Kim, taking notes on the computer in my chart and asking me questions about how I was feeling.  I remember being exhausted and wanted to do nothing more than sleep, but I couldn't because I was freezing and shivering and shaking so bad.  (A side-effect from the anastesia, I guess.)

After "dropping off" Ethan at the cath lab for his procedure, Jeff came back to my room to change out of his "slim-fit" scrubs (as his brother called them).  We talked about how healthy Ethan was and how we were not worried about him at all.  We knew he would be fine and that he would make it through his surgery.

Then Jeff left to make his way back to the cath lab waiting room.  I tried to get more rest and hoped to see some of my family members soon.