The story of you

As many mothers start to mingle, merge, and then completely mesh the birth stories of their children, I figured I better record Hudson’s while it is still the only one I have to tell. Ignore this post if you have something else anything else you should be doing. This is for Little Man’s benefit and for my continually failing memory reserves.
Following the Great Flood of 06-07-08 that destroyed much property in Southern Indiana, my hospital absorbed Columbus Regional Hospital for the months required for clean up and rebuilding. The maternity ward went from an average of 40 births a month to 75 births a week. On the morning of my induction (a Tuesday) I had to call at 5:30 a.m. just to see if there was space for us.
We checked in to our room (#1) and some nurses from CRH gave me my IVs. Twice. They had no clue how to do this most basic task and within 25 minutes of my arrivial I was in tears and had an IV stuck in the joint at my left wrist. Josh was very stressed and we were talking about it all and I was about 10 seconds away from asking for some help when an angel walked in. She was a veteran nurse of my hospital and told me –for whatever reason—she was now my gal. Immediately she saw my ridiculous IV and begged me to fix it. I relented and was very grateful as she put it where it should be and without any pain.
I received doses of Cytotec, a pill administered by doctors for off-label use in order to induce labor. I only had to lie down for short periods of time and spent most of the morning walking the halls, pushing my little IV trolley with my Josh, my mom, and my dad, who had all arrived. Those are some sweet memories.
After a couple of doses and Josh’s return from lunch at the local Mexican restaurant with his parents, I was walking through some pretty mild contractions and was confident I was leaking. Stopping at the nurses’ station, I was told this was impossible and I would know it if my water broke. So I went back to my room, sat down on a chair to wait out some intense cramping. All of a sudden I wet the whole chair and Josh ran out of the room to get the nurse. My dad enters my room handing me the phone with my sister on the other end and I am not sure exactly what I said to her, but it was the first of many moments where everything was completely a blur! (Sorry, Sister!) The nurse came in laughing and said, “Well, you are having this baby today!” This was around noon. And this was a lie.
Over the next several hours I progressed slowly but painfully. At one point I was given a dose of Nubain and took a brief siesta on the clouds. Being able to just relax and not feel pain for those precious 60 minutes did help move me along quite quickly. My dad and Janet had to leave and Ed had arrived. As we moved towards dinner hour the anesthesiologist came in and gave me my epidural, which was fine. I was still kicking my legs and feeling my toes.
Things started to slow down at that point, and while I was still having contractions, “I was not progressing.” At one point I leaned forward in the bed to find out that the mattress behind my back was SOAKED. Turns out my epi-drip was going not into me, but into my mattress. A very sheepish anesthesiologist returned and fixed me right up, but became the laughing stock of all the nursing staff.
At 1 a.m. my doctor came in and said the word c-section to me. I knew this was not working, but at our request he gave us some more time. Close to 3 a.m. we relented to the surgery and it seems to me the minute we said, “GO” it was all over. Within seconds Josh was in scrubs, I was being moved into a freezing operating room (#2). In walks Mr. Anesthesiologt and we had an awkward laugh as he prepared me for surgery and I threatened his life if he repeated his blunder from earlier. (That was a fun bill to pay.)
Hudson Charles was born at 3:15 a.m. with an APGAR score of 9. Doc D told the crew to let Josh tell me we had “a boy” to which I said, “You have a son.” Mom and Ed were staying at the Hospital hotel and Dale and Kathy who had went back to our house were waiting to meet Little Man in the pre-dawn hours of August 13, 2008.
We were moved to another very tiny room (#3) as the entire post-partum floor was packed. But then another sweet treat happened and a room opened up. A huge, handicapped accessible room which was our new home (#4) for the next 3 days.

(Hope no one bothered to read all that, but I am happy with all the brain space I just opened up!)