The Petty's

I figure I should probably update on Gil and me. We are both doing really well. Gil is no longer on his oxygen or monitors, which makes both of us very happy...as well as Will. I am recovery nicely from the c section. It really wasn't as bad as everyone has told me. I really only hurt for a few days, mostly because of the sutures. I do have a nice scar right now...the doctor says it should fade to white after a little while though.

Since most people want to know what happened I will tell you the labor story...

I started having contractions around 7 on the 2nd of April. My contractions started out twenty minutes apart for about an hour and then for another hour then were ten. After that they were about 5 minutes apart. We waited until 1 am to go to the hospital just to be sure, by that time they were 3-4 minutes apart. After we get checked in to the hospital they check to see how dilated I am... only 1 cm...ugh. Guess what I was when the doctor came to check on me at 7:30? Still a 1! He breaks my water hoping to move labor along, which it does for about an hour and then the contractions slow down. They decide to put me on pitocin to help the contractions get stronger, which they do. After a little while I decide to get an epideral because the pain sucks only to find out that the anesthesiologist was in the middle of surgery and wouldn't be able to come for an hour. Can I just say how hard it is to hold completely still getting and epi while you're having a really bad contraction? Poor Will was holding my hand the whole time and probably didn't enjoy it either.

This is where it gets fun. My blood pressure starts to drop which makes the baby's heart rate drop. With every contraction his heart rate would get lower, so they take me off the pitocin while they stabilize both of us....so the labor gets slowed down. They had to give me some drug that will increase my blood pressure. That was a weird feeling. So after a few hours they finally get us under control enough to start the pitocin again. By this time I am only dilated to a 3 and it's about 3 in the afternoon. By 6 I am at a 6...by 9 I was still a 6 and the baby's heart rate was still dropping with every contraction which were about a minute and a half apart. The doctor comes in and we decide to do a c section. Gil was born at 9:16.

I think Will was fascinated by the c section. He watched it the whole time and the doctors were explaining everything to him and then were showing him all my organs that he could see. He thought it was crazy that I couldn't feel a thing. It was kind of weird not being able to feel what they were doing but the whole time hearing what they were doing. The only thing I could feel was when they took Gil out.

Minutes after the c section was over I passed out (from not sleeping for two days). The doctor thought it was funny. During that time Will was off giving the baby a bath and showing my parents the baby and moving stuff to my room. After getting settled in the room we got to spend some time with Gil before sending him off to the nursery so we could get some sleep. A few hours later we were awakened by a nurse telling us they were taking him to the NICU...not a plesent way to be woken up at all. He was have trouble with his oxygen levels....then they thought he might have an infection (which he did not).

I got released from the hospital on Monday and since Gil still could not come home with us I stayed at the hospital another night on hotel stay. Luckily the next day the doctor said we could take him home, but that he'd still have to be hooked to his oxygen and monitors. Not so cool, but at least he could come home. On Thursday we went back to see the doctor and we were finally able to take him off the oxygen and monitors. Yay! Now we are both doing great!