Cayde 5

June 19th 6:00pm

By now we knew we were going to have a baby pretty quick. (In the next day or so.) The doctors were monitoring both baby and I very closely and felt with some prep I may be able to deliver naturally. The first step was to start Pitocin as a sort of stress test and see if baby was strong enough to handle the contractions. This went very well. He did great so they turned the Pitocin off. It was just a test after all.

They had planned to then start the little pills that they put on your cervix to help you dilate. (I was already dilated to a 1, had been 50% effaced for weeks so if they could just help me along a bit, we should have been well on our way to delivering a tiny little baby.) For some reason they opted against the cervix pill deal which did not make me one bit sad. They said that could be a pretty long process and I was already with the crazy vision and muscle spasms racking my neck and back as well as the pre-eclampsia death headache. So anything (well, most anything) to move things along was appreciated. The cervix pill thing could have been a 24 hour process (as they would put an itty bitty pill in every 4 hours for up to 24 hours to "see" if it would do something.) A time frame I was not looking forward to. And really just seemed a bit too sketchy for me. The only positive there however was if it took a whole day that's one more day that little baby was in and one more day he was mostly safe. But even that wasn't a for-sure, so it felt like a coin toss.

Anyway, they decided against that. The only reason we kind of got was they didn't think it was safe to wait that long. (There were quite a few "not-safe's" floating around. A bit unnerving really.)

So they opted for the balloon torture procedure. That's right...balloon torture procedure. I was obviously in a delusional state to have let them do this to me. And they were tricky. They didn't use the scientific name of "Balloon Torture Procedure." No. They somehow made it sound like an ordinary walk in the park. Jerks.

Here's how it went down.

Nurse with sticky sweet voice: "Well we are going to take a catheter like the one you already have in place (This felt awful going in but then was fine.) and we will put it up through your cervix with a deflated balloon on the end.We will blow it up a bit and let gravity do it's magic." Well that doesn't sound so bad does it? Keep in mind my pain level was HUGE to begin with so not sure I could have totally processed the info anyway.

Before going any further. If anyone offers this lovely little procedure to you or your loved one, I suggest you run for the hills. Or kindly ask them to demonstrate it on a real person first. However you choose to handle this, DO NOT ALLOW THEM TO DO IT ON YOU! (Or a loved one if she is too messed up to know what's going on.) Seriously. If I have told you about this and you ever come back and say it happened to you..*shaking head*...just consider yourself warned.

OK, so catheter inserted THROUGH cervix. VERY NOT COMFORTABLE. Balloon blown up. Ow! Now I could not see any of this contraption but apparently it was hooked to a kite string and hung over the side of the bed with some weight on it so that gravity could "do it's magic." I didn't time it but it was at least an hour and less than two and felt like a massive contraction that lasted the entire length. Wayne was trying to sleep. I was breathing and trying to pretend it was passing more quickly than it was. Finally the "magic" started to happen." (Seriously you know a man who would never have to feel this came up with this stupid idea.) Magic? Jerks. The blown up balloon with the help of gravity started to make it's way through my cervix. I already felt like I had been having a massive 1-2 hour contraction with no relief...this pain was unbearable...It took about 3-5 minutes for the balloon to make it's way and I wanted to die. I thought I was dying. I probably would have chosen to die had I been given the option. Finally it came out and the pain was replaced with a shaky remembrance of the unnatural occurrence.

Wayne was rudely woken by my screaming which scared the tar out of him. I didn't even scream during 8 hours of hard labor with Allori. Wayne was horrified when he saw the torture contraction that had just escaped my body.

The nurse, or a doctor... I really don't know. Everything was sort of white and crazy by then, checked me and I was then dilated to a 3. Seriously? Three? Had I been a tiny bit more lucid, i may have punched someone. (Again consider yourself warned and do not EVER allow a balloon to be inserted where it is not welcome.)

They turned the Pitocin back on to start contractions again. (I requested an epidural at this point as I was really at my pain tolerance level.) They turned the Pitocin up, and up and up. There were very few if any contractions. They broke my water. No turning back then. The Pitocin went up, up more and still not any real contrations. Hours passed. Pitocin was turned up more and nothing. They checked me again and baby's little arm was covering his head, he was coming out arm first.

The doctor called for an emergency c-section. I burst into tears. It was obvious that's where we were headed but it still upset me. (I don't really know why.)

The prep was done incredibly fast, Wayne was given his scrubbs which he looked very nice in and I was taken to the operating room where on the way they asked if I wanted my tubes tied. This was humorous and odd to me. I was 26 weeks pregnant and thought until a few hours ago that I still had lots of time to make decisions and preparations. I declined as Wayne and I had not talked about it. We are done having kids but I still felt that was a decision that we needed to talk about.

The c-section went very quickly. I was prepped super fast and they were nearly starting after having to fix and fix and alter the epidural. I could "feel" much more than they thought I should be able to. The anesthesiologist said she was probably going to have to just put me out if her last effort didn't work. It did. They were starting...I asked where my husband was. oops! They brought him in and everything went very quickly from there.

Jonathan "Cayde" Pehrson was born June 20th at 1:52 pm. (He was due Sep 2oth.)
He weighed 1 lb 11 oz and measured 13.5 inches long.
He let us hear one tiny cry before they whisked him away.
It was the most beautiful and welcomed sound ever.