Just take some Tylenol...

(This will be edited/corrected/updated later; but for now...)

So, because I get tired of posting everything to Facebook (I don't want to be one of those people), I decided to start another blog that will probably be rarely updated. Regardless, here is a quick timeline of how things went down... Keep in mind that this is to help me remember how things went down and so Natalie can help me add to it.

Sunday - March 18, 2012 (exactly 36 weeks gestation)

0900: All is well.
1630: Dinner at Grandma Hukill's house... even better.
2300: Natalie starts to have some light contractions, but she's had them before. Possibly due to... nevermind.
2330: Off to bed, Natalie is just dealing with the contractions.

Monday - March 19, 2012

0500: Natalie wakes me up and says she's in a lot of pain from contractions and that she's been up all night with them. I told her to take a bath and some Tylenol to see if it would help (so caring, I know), but she says she's already tried it and it isn't helping. She lays down on the couch and I go back to bed for a few minutes.
0515: I finally get up and we head to the hospital, hoping they'll take 20 minutes and give her something to stop the contractions. We had been in the week before for some bleeding and light contractions, but they didn't offer much help and sent us home.
0530ish: We get checked in to Labor & Delivery and they put Natalie in a bed. The nurse checks her cervix and she's already at 4 1/2 cm. She says something like "Well it looks like he's coming today, you're in labor."
0630: She's put in a delivery room and gets hooked up to everything. We're pretty freaked out at this point. For the record, she says her contractions are more painful than her kidney stones.
0830: She's at 7 1/2 cm and gets her epidural started. I've been sitting there like an idiot just watching the contraction/heart rate monitor, not knowing what else to do. The pain goes away pretty quickly, and she can still move her legs just fine (rare, apparently?).
0900: Her doctor comes in and breaks her water, and says that he'll probably be here by noon.
0920: I drive home to get her baby bag and get cleaned up a little. Who says I can't look good, even if she's in a hospital gown and in pain?
1010: I get back to the hospital to find things unchanged, except I don't stink anymore and I can finally relax knowing that I've got all our stuff so we can settle in.
1100: Her epidural is wearing off, especially on the left side. Contractions are painful and she can't get enough drugs to make it go away. She gets checked again and she's at 9cm and the nurse says she can feel his head. The nurses are bringing in different carts for who-knows-what.
1130: The anesthesiologist comes back in and shoots her up with another does of "the good stuff". The pain goes away quickly again.
1145 - 1220: The nurses come in and get her to start pushing, and as she pushes a few more people file into the room (probably 6 people besides Natalie and me). After the first round of pushing I can see the hair on his head... which means I lost a $100 bet with Natalie. After 2 more rounds of pushing, the doctor shows up and has her two more times, and after the second time he flops the baby (henceforth known as "Cohen") on top of a towel sitting on Natalie's stomach.
1220-1245: Things don't go exactly the way the doctor had said they would... bastard. Cohen is making some little noises, but not the crying they're expecting. They haul him off to the closet in the back of the room where they clean him off and try to get him crying/breathing. I'm trying to listen to what everyone is saying, but I can't tell what's going on. The doctor is still sitting there getting everything cleaned up and kind of chatting like nothing is going on. I don't even remember hearing anything odd at the back of the room where Cohen is, but all of a sudden about 8 more nurses flood in with a couple machines and some other things. They aren't freaking out or seeming rushed, but we knew things weren't going as planned (however, once I saw the dude with the nappy ponytail giving directions and sounding calm, I figured things weren't dire). There are 5 nurses crammed in the small closet around Cohen, and 3 other nurses are trying to explain what's going on and trying to make us feel better... it doesn't help. They say he's having a hard time breathing and keeping his heart rate up, so they have to give him some oxygen to help out. I can still hear the other nurses saying stuff like, "No, his heart rate just crashed when I turned it down" or some crap like that, but they're still fairly calm.
1245: They tell us that they're going to take Cohen to the NICU and that they'll do some tests and blah, blah, blah... Natalie will get to hold him for a second before he goes, but it was literally less than 30 seconds. They get him weighed and measured before they go: 4 lbs 4 oz and 17 inches long.
1300: I follow part of the herd to the NICU while they hold an oxygen mask over his face. We get in there and they keep working on him, but nothing is really helping and they have to keep holding the mask on. They say the NICU doctor is in a meeting, but he'll be out in a little bit to check him out... I'm thinking, "Seriously, this guy can't leave a meeting to come do his job?" (But still another indication to me that things must not be that bad) The nurses are really nice and are doing their best to explain what's going on, and they were really trying to encourage me to get up close and touch Cohen and all that. I just wanted to stay out of the way so they could do their jobs and get him better.
1315: The doctor shows up and does a pretty thorough examination. Aside from his respiratory problems and his low weight, everything seems intact. As long as he has the oxygen mask on, he's doing ok. He also explains that Cohen's problem is that his lungs are having a hard time fully expanding and getting the surfactant and everything out of the way, so the oxygen saturation in his blood is low. When it gets too low, it causes his heart rate to freak out, too. He says something about the saturation being in the 70s or 80s, but it needs to be in the 90s or at 100. .

Ok, no more timeline...

I go back to talk to Natalie about everything and make sure she's ok. We're both pretty upset, but things have calmed down and we're able to talk about what's going on. I go back and forth between the NICU and the delivery room a couple times to check on things with my dad, and the nurses are still being really nice and helpful, but one of them called Cohen "dainty"... I promptly corrected her and said the right word is "lean". Cohen will never live down his "dainty" figure at birth.

Thinking about it now, it seems like it all happened really fast. It probably didn't happen as fast as I remember, but Natalie was taken to a room upstairs while Cohen was being evaluated some more. Once she got in there and was semi-settled, we put her in a wheelchair and went back downstairs to see Cohen. He was in a new room inside an incubator, and he was hooked up to an EKG, thermometer, oxygen to his nose, blood pressure cuff on his leg, tube down his throat, and another cuff for measuring oxygen saturation. He was a pretty sad sight, but he still looked cute.

Natalie held him for a little while and he seemed to be acting like my idea of a typical newborn, making little noises and twitching around a little.


To be continued...