Caleb's Birth Story

Monday night (2/23) at about 11:30 I thought my water broke. It was a continual leaking and definitely not controllable! I called the OB and he told me to head on in to the hospital. On the way, I started to feel very light contractions. I was admitted to a room at about 12:30am. At that point, I was 100% effaced and 3cm dilated. I did not want to start any pitocin, but Dr. Alvarez recommended it since I was not actively contracting. The pitocin definitely started my contractions and at the next check at 3am I was at 5cm. I asked for an epi at that point. The anesthesiologist had trouble getting it in correctly and it took several tries. I also had a contraction in the middle of getting the epi - not fun! After the epi kicked in, DH and I were able to sleep until about 7am.

By 10am I was 10cm dialated, but Caleb was still not dropped down low enough to push. His heartbeat was unpredictable - they kept having me change positions to find one where he would have a regular heartbeat. Dr. A gave me 1 hour to passively labor and see if Caleb would move into position. At 11 am he had not moved, but we tried pushing through 3 contractions. There were no changes and his HB was still all over the board. They started to prep me for a C/S.

The OR staff was really great in calming me down - I was hysterically crying. They also coached DH on how to properly distract me from what was happening! We were discussing movies while I was being cut open. At 12:35pm DS arrived! They tried to take the baby away without telling me what the sex was - but I asked and found out we had a SON! DH went with Caleb to get weighed and cleaned up. After I left the OR I was crying and so anxious to see Caleb and my family. I got to hold him and nurse him while I was in recovery.