On Dec. 16, 2013 at 7:12pm, Caroline Trinh MacLeod came flying out. Literally!
So I’m not sure if Caroline was upset about the doctor inducing labor or if she was tired of me telling her to get out the last 2 weeks but she wasted no time getting out.
So we checked into the hospital Sunday, Dec. 15th at 4pm. It took a while to get all situated. Mostly because it took 2 hours to get an IV in my arm. 🙁 My poor little veins. I think we broke the spirit of one of the veteran nurses. She apparently is the go to person when nurses struggle drawing blood or putting in an IV. It took calling an anesthesiologist and using a local numbing agent to get the IV in.
They started the drugs to thin the cervix. Time to wait 12 hours. Yay. So the monitors detected that I was already having small contractions on my own. I was also 2 cm dilated. Progress! So by morning the drugs did their job and it was time to start the Pitocin. So around 8am, they started adding it to my IV in a low dose. Things went fairly well. Dilation proceeded faster than the nurse expected. But I quickly started feeling the contractions. 🙁 Nurse asked if I wanted IV pain meds (which you can only get 3 doses and the effects lessen each time) or just go ahead with Epidural? I was a bit worried about the epidural since they say it slows down dilation, so you should wait as long as you could.
Well, I’m weak so I took the epidural at only 3 cm dilated! Pain was 100% gone and dilation continued to proceed at good rate. Around 5pm, I was at a really good place. Around 6pm, I started to feel pain again…well, the pressure of the baby. So for the last hour, I just had to deal with the pressure. Epidurals apparently can’t fix that. The most uncomfortable thing was the catheter. It bothered me to no end. Eventually it was just taken out and they emptied my bladder as needed.
I was getting to the point in which I could not stop myself from pushing. I told Brian to call the nurse/Doc. He wanted to wait, but it was a good thing he did because once they came in, it was time. But they did not work fast enough. They got me up in stirrups and the second half of bed off but at that point I was pushing. Push on first contraction was good. Dr. said one more good one and the head will be out. I gave her one good one alright. All I remember was the nurses screaming, weird things moving down there and Dr. says, “I got her.” Apparently not just her head came out. She came flying out, hit the Dr. in the stomach and she was able to catch the baby. So that is how Caroline Trinh came into this world.
oh my…amazing Kim!