Baby M has arrived! Actually he arrived 12 days ago, but between his hourly feedings (the little piggy) and my husband's new found love of Facebook, I haven't had a chance until now to get on the computer and update the blog.
We checked into St. John's Hospital around 3pm at 5 cm dilated. It took 3 hours for me to go from 5 to 6 cm and that's when I decided to get the epidural. I was never one of those “if I have an epidural I'll have failed as a woman” women, but I thought I would give going natural a try and see how it went. I was anticipating 9 more hours of increasingly intense pain and decided that it was not for me. Once the epidural was in I dilated the next 3 cm in 30 minutes, so it's not always true that an epidural will slow down your labor. But thank goodness I got the epidural because I definitely would not have wanted to feel the next 5 hours. I felt a gush shortly after getting the epidural which I thought was my water breaking, but was actually a gush of blood from an internal tear.
As with most hospital births, the baby's heart rate was being monitored and it had been up and down throughout my labor. As we got close to pushing his heart rate dropped precipitously. The atmosphere in the delivery room started getting frantic. My OB was calling for assistance, new people were coming into the room and I was fixated on the number on the monitor. After a few pushes and the heart rate dipping into the 70s my OB decided to use the vacuum to pull baby M out. The cord was wrapped so tightly around his neck that it needed to be cut before he was all the way out.
Thankfully both baby M and I are fine. He scored an impressive 9 on his Apgar test and after a brief weight loss he is above his birth weight. I ended up with some nasty tearing called a sulcus tear and my nether regions are still kind of a mess, but after a very rough first week I am moving around and even taking walks with the stroller through our neighborhood.
So after a harrowing entrance baby M is here and I am officially an LA Mom.
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