Part I: The long road home

Our son is home! It seemed like a long road, but in retrospect we had it much easier than many others families do. Nevertheless, we are thrilled that our family is under one roof again learning how to function on a day to day basis together. I've been told by more than 1 person that I need to document Hudson's journey in the NICU now so that I don't forget any of the details later. So here is my perspective on his first 10 days which will be broken up into several parts to keep your attention.

8.29.09
16:40 - my water breaks while we are sitting on the porch of our lake house at Grand Lake. We are totally unprepared at this point for labor and the whole family begins running around like fools trying to gather our things and get out the door.

17:00-18:15 - on the road to the hospital from Grand to Tulsa we start calling everyone to let them know we are having a baby tonight! It takes a little over an hour to get to the hospital. The contractions didn't start until after we got on the road and by the time we arrive at the hospital they are about 5 minutes apart but not too painful.

18:20-20:00 - check in at St. John L&D and they send me to triage to verify that my water is broken. The nurse quickly realizes that I am not lying and tells me that I am dilated somewhere between 3-4. I get checked into my room and start preparing for the epidural. I ask the nurses about 50 times to assure me that I WILL get the epidural. Minor setback is that the anesthesiologist is in emergency surgery and we have to page the one on-call.

20:30 - Epidural is in and Courtney is happy! With Jordyn I got nauseous and couldn't feel any contractions but with Hudson there was no nausea but I could feel the contractions. Funny how different each baby can be.

21:00 - Until this point I am progressing rather quickly. In order to continue progressing (and because sometimes the epidural can slow things down) the doctor wants to administer Pitocin.

From 21:45 to 22:15 - I dilate from a 7 to a 10 in these 30 minutes! Hudson is ready to arrive and the doctor on call isn't even there yet! Doctor gets called and now it is a waiting game again.

22:57 - Hudson James arrives at 6 lbs 8 oz and 19 3/4 inches long. He is gorgeous and we are in love immediately!




8.30.09
12:30 am - Immediately following his delivery, we were cuddling with him and showing him to family. The nurses noticed that he was "grunting" and asked to take him to the special care nursery. They prepared to move me to my post-labor and delivery room.

1:30-2:30 - For this hour the special care nursery was trying to get vitals and blood work done to assess his condition. The nurses in that unit were having trouble with his veins collapsing so a NICU nurse was paged to come down and help. We were told that it could be awhile before they knew anything and that we should try to get some sleep. After we visited him in the nursery we crashed for a couple of hours. We had no idea what we would wake up to the next morning.

To be continued......