Introducing Baby Thomas

We are happy to announce that baby Thomas James Gardiner was born on September 25th at (officially) 12:42 p.m.  He weighed 6 pounds, 15 ounces and was 20 inches long.  He is healthy and doing great, and we are so happy he is finally here!

Here are a few details about his birth and some pictures.  Note:  don't keep reading if you don't want to know about medical procedures or other birth descriptions.

I had a checkup with the doctor on Monday afternoon.  I had a feeling that something might happen because I noticed my swelling had been kind of bad.  It turns out my blood pressure was high.  It wasn't horrible, but since I had pre-eclampsia with Grant, the high bp combined with the swelling and a few other indicators made the doctor want to get him out.  So I was scheduled for an induction the next morning, at 38 weeks pregnant.

We arrived at the hospital at 5:30 a.m. Thankfully a friend of ours was willing to let us drop off Grant at 5a.m. Talk about early!  So we get to the hospital and get settled in, and finally we started to get hooked up to the IV and get pitocin around 8 a.m. I started feeling the contractions pretty quickly and I was really debating on when to request the epidural.  I had considered trying to go without one if I went into labor naturally, but I knew if I had an induction I was going to get an epidural due to the intensity and rapidness of the pitocin contractions.

I was feeling the contractions pretty intensely around 9 a.m., and I think we requested the epidural about 9:30 a.m.  The anesthesiologist got there around 10 a.m. and started the procedure.  She had to try several times to get it in the right place and it seemed liked it was taking forever.  It was hard because I was supposed to sit in a certain position and stay still, but I was still having intense contractions.  She was trying to test if things were in the right place, and suddenly I felt a sharp pain and tingling in my leg, and my leg jerked forward.  It was a weird feeling and they waited to see if it would go away or whether they needed to fix the placement again.  I guess it was pressing up against a nerve.  It happened two more times and I started to get upset.

At that point James started to feel lightheaded and dizzy.  They anesthesiologist and nurse told him to sit on the floor against the wall.  I was trying to stay calm so I couldn't look at James because I was trying to focus on staying still and breathing through my contractions while waiting to see if the leg pain/tingling would go away.  I heard a barfing noise coming from James and he ended up passing out for about 10-20 seconds (I guess he didn't really throw up, it was just a part of the reaction he had because his bp dropped suddenly).  That upset me and I started crying because I was scared, wondering if he was okay, wondering how in the world this epidural was going to turn out, and wondering if my labor was going to turn out to be a disastrous experience.  Luckily the nurse was really helpful and calming and helped me to feel better.

James was okay.  The anesthesiologist said it happens all the time and that's part of the reason why they really don't like people watching the procedure.  There is something about watching certain procedures, especially on your loved ones, when there are complications it causes a change in blood pressure and people pass out pretty frequently.

The tingling in my leg went away and I got a "test dose" of medicine in the epidural catheter.  It worked right away, but it worked a little TOO well.  I was completely and absolutely numb up to my chest area and even kind of tingly in my arms.  I did not like that at ALL and I didn't feel right.  It was freaking me out.  I started to feel nauseous also, but they gave me some medicine and I felt better.  Some of the extreme numbness wore off and I was very relieved.  The anesthesiologist came back several more times to check up on me and gave me the regular dose of epidural meds and things seemed to be fine after that (except I had a slight side effect from one of the drugs which made me really itchy, but it wasn't bad).

So all of that craziness actually took up a lot of time.  It was probably about 11:30 a.m. at this point, and I had progressed to about 5 cm.  After that I got drowsy and was able to rest and catnap for a while.  I actually felt really sleepy the rest of the labor and was very comfortable.  About an hour later the nurse came and checked me and I was complete and ready to start pushing.  She said she was going to count to 10, but when she got to 2, she told me to stop because the baby was right there!  She called the doctor and he got there pretty quickly.  They asked me to start pushing again and counted to 10 and he pretty much slid right out!  I really wasn't pushing that hard.  Two more seconds of pushing and he was completely and all the way out.

It was rather calm, actually.  That's the upside of all the epidural craziness.  It ended up being a good experience once everything balanced out because I was numb in the birth canal but had some feeling in other places which made it easy to control what I was doing.  Once Thomas was out he wasn't really crying and the doctor was clearing out his airway carefully and calmly, and he let out a few little whimpers.  He was actually pretty quiet even as he was laid down on top of me and while he was getting cleaned up afterwards. Just little cries, not much screaming or anything.

I had a small tear so I got stitched up.  It took a while because there was a student midwife that my doctor was helping learn how to do stitches in a particular way.  I didn't mind though, because my doctor was very involved with everything and made me feel comfortable.

Thomas nursed right away and it was such a happy moment realizing that he was here with us and apart of our family.  His eyes were wide open and he was looking around as if he was wondering where he was and what was going on.  He has a very sweet disposition.

When Grant came to meet baby Thomas, he noticed the hospital bassinet and said, "hey, a baby!"  We told him it was baby Thomas and he wanted to see him right away.  He sat next to James and checked out Thomas.  He kept looking at him, smiling at him, touching his hands, and patting him softly on the head.  He also got concerned whenever he heard Thomas make a noise.  He would quickly look at us and say, "Baby Thomas cryin'!" or "baby okay?"  It was cute to see him get excited about seeing Thomas and being involved with him.  We asked him if baby Thomas could come live with us, and he said "yes!" So we will see what happens when we actually bring him home (most likely tomorrow).  That will be the real test!  :)