Well I finally have a bit of time to myself to sit down and write about Echo’s labour and delivery! It all started on the Wednesday (11th)…

All night up every hour with regular but not overly strong or painful contractions, this went down to 10-11 min or so apart Thursday (12th) morning which then slowed after a bath to irregular but insistent. This coincided nicely with my regularly scheduled doctor’s appointment. Where my doctor did an internal exam and came to the conclusion that we would meet our baby within the next day or two but to PLEASE try and wait until Friday (13th) morning when he came onto rotation at the hospital. I had lost TWO lbs over the past week but otherwise was fine (as was baby). Just in case we made an appointment for the following week and then headed back home.

By late afternoon my contractions had gone to 6-8 min apart and increasingly more uncomfortable. Luckily She Chris had already made the decision the night before to come into town with He Chris when he left for his night shift and spend the evening at our house. So no worry about sitters… I called up Health Links, explained how I felt and it was an automatic – you are on pregnancy #4 – go in… so Ken ran out to the store to pick up some groceries to get the kids through the evening and we made up supper for them and headed out. With a stop for sandwiches at Arby’s, pop for Ken at the gas station and THEN to the hospital we still had to stand in line for a good 10 min before getting admitted to the case room on the maternity ward.

The nurse checked and put me at 3+ cm dilated but not thinned cervix so no iv yet. Instead I had to walk around the floor for an hour to see if things would progress. Sadly all THAT did was increase my contractions to 4 min apart and more painful, and according to THAT nurse almost 4 cm dilation. They still made the decision to actually admit me into labour and delivery and go from there.

Waiting for Baby

The next nurse then put in my iv (for some reason she had a few issues and now I have a lovely round and SORE bruise around the area)… for fluids and checked me herself but disagreed with the previous nurse and put me down as back to 3 cm. A little confusing. And of course the result – ANOTHER hour of walking, but this time with the iv pole in tow… and this pole had the tendency to angle off to walls and was VERY wearing to tug around. Back to the room and of course not enough change to impress the nurses so ANOTHER hour of walking, though this nurse was kind enough to close off my line so I could walk unimpeded for ANOTHER hour.

By this point my contractions were a steady 1-2 min apart and rather painful BUT not enough internal change. The doctor on rotation at the time (not my physician) was talking about sending us home (???), of course we voiced our absolute wish NOT to be sent home (after all when would we come back??), reminded him about my history (this happened LAST delivery) and was told they don’t do “casual inductions” at night when they are shorter staffed (???). Which of course was NOT what we were requesting, simply that they not send us the 30 min drive across the city.

So the doctor left us be and a couple hours later at 3:40 am (13th) they started the augmentation (not an induction). That meant restarting the IV and also administering the epidural. (which for once I did NOT cry when having!) They had not forgotten about us for hours but rather were waiting on the ward to quiet down before pushing us further on. (apparently they had two women deliver within minutes of each other – had everyone HOPPING)

At 6:50 they broke my water and then we waited… at least I TRIED to sleep but alarms on my pumps kept acting up for some reason – annoying the poor nurse to no end! Ken, on the other hand managed a nice long nap, snores and all. Amazingly enough by 8 am on the 13th I was definitely aware that I was pretty close to delivering and at this point OUR doctor was coming onto the floor! (This was after a topping up of the epidural, with the drip it didn’t matter that I had more as nothing was going to slow… and until then I could get up and go to the washroom basically on my own – the first time I have been on one and mobile, but after… no dice!)

He was quite impressed at our patient loyalty – waiting until HE was on shift to have our baby! By this time I was holding back on pushing, the nurse asked me to give a “test” push before the dr came but her head was way too close and halfway through told me to STOP! STOP?? Talk about HARD TO DO! Our doctor came in, got all dressed up, sat down, and said when you are ready go ahead… so the contraction WAITED!! Well, once it came, one little push and out she came! He spent more time dealing with the placenta than the baby!

After all that we stayed in the labour and delivery room until past noon – they simply did not have a post room to put us in! So Karyn, Mom and Mike all visited us in the delivery room.

Grandma Anna and Mike

We spent a few more hours at the hospital – Echo needed her blood checked at least 3 times due to the diabetes, and I needed to be on a drip for a while. We actually had to sign a waiver as the on rotation paediatrician disregarded our doctor’s orders that we could go home same day and left for home at the end of her shift and refused to come back to the hospital or give a verbal sign off. The resident and the nurses said they thought Echo was fine and to go ahead so we signed and got to go home around 6pm. So definitely not a horrible labour experience (though we were not fond of the doctor who almost delivered her!).

Going Home!

In the mean time the boys were with Grandma and Mike and doing everything from mini golf to gardening and Trinity was with Chris and Chris having her very first sleep over! I have to say everything felt easier with the knowledge that the other 4 kids were safe and sound and happy.

Today is the first day of our Nana and Baba visit so I do not know how much blogging I will be up to this week/weekend. Talk about a full house!!

Baba and Echo