Hi, everyone!
Well, we went to hospital last Wed prepared to be induced. The nurses hooked me up to all the monitors and we pretty much sat around waiting until about 6-7pm. I was having a few contractions of my own during that time. Then the docs finally come in and announce that they want one more LMT before they start the induction, which meant that they would have to do another amnio. Because if the baby's lungs still weren't mature then they wouldn't feel justified in deliberately inducing my labor. They said if we didn't want to do another amnio, then (since I was already contracting a bit) we could just hang out a while longer to see if I went into labor on my own, and they wouldn't try to stop it. We asked for some time alone to discuss it and decided that we would do the amnio since we certainly didn't want the baby forced out if he wasn't ready. They started setting up the US machine and everything for the amnio, while the doc did an exam on me. To our surprise I was already dilated to a 4. Change of game plan. Wait another hour, if no change proceed with amnio, if I dilated more just start a small pitocin drip to speed things up. After an hour I was dilated past 5cm. So baby had decided that he was coming anyway. I still wasn't hurting even by then. But after they started that pitocin things really picked up and in less than 30 min my contractions were 2-3 min apart. Epidural time.
Thing went very smoothly and he was born at 12:48 am , August 16.
He appeared to be fine at first. His APGARs were 8 and 9. And then he started making these little grunting noises and wouldn't stop. I only held him for about 30 min before they took him away to the Neonatal Intensive Care. He was in respiratory distress because of immature lungs. He was getting plenty of oxygen, but he was working way too hard for it. He also had a touch of pneumonia from fluid in his lungs. He had to be intubated and given IV anitbiotics and fluid. He has continued to improve though, and last night we were told that if he got the tube out himself they would just leave it out because he was doing so well. I called this morning as soon as I got up and he did get his tube out, and he is doing very well. They will be taking his other lines and IV's out sometime today if he continues to do well, and hopefully we can bring him home tomorrow.
He is now officially Michael Ethan. He weighed 7lbs4oz and was 19 inches long. At almost 3.5 weeks early, I don't want to think about what he would have weighed at term.
Since his dad is Michael too, we've been calling him Mick or Mickey. I feel awkward saying Ethan.
I have no idea how to post photos, but if someone can do Pics-for-Dummies for me I'll give it a try.
God bless you all...
Sandy
