He's arrived!

Oakes Davis Guyer

Born Tuesday, September 29, 2009 at 2:18pm

Weighing 8lb, 2oz. and 21.5 inches long

So I'm a bit late on updating this, but as you all know much has happened in the past two weeks to keep us rather busy. I thought I'd go ahead and post Oakes' birth story here and a few really cute photos of my boy.

I woke up on Monday, September 28th having some mild contractions, about 10 minutes apart as well as some blood tinged mucous in the morning. I went ahead into school and kept track of them all day - they never seemed to get stronger or closer together. We had a doctor's appointment that afternoon at 4:30 and I was 1.5cm dilated, 75% effaced, and at station 0. Oakes's heartrate was 168bpm. As we left the office, we also noticed that I had lost my mucous plug during the physical exam. We went home that afternoon and called our doula, Cheryl, to update her - she advised me to "be prepared not to go to school tomorrow."

So that evening, we went on a "last date" to get some TCBY and then headed to Earthfare to get massage oil and some energy drinks to bring to the hospital for labor. At 12:30am, I woke up to use the restroom and noticed that my contractions were a lot stronger. I began tracking them using a "Contraction Counter" application on our Ipod - I was dozing off between contractions, but waking to press start and stop. Evan rolled over and looked at the contraction history and noticed that my contractions were now 4 minutes apart and lasting about a minute. We decided to go ahead and called Cheryl and our doctor, and to head to the hospital. Evan took care of the dogs and packed the car, and it was about 1:30a.m. before we left our house.

We showed up at the ER and were admitted to a pre-delivery area for examination. It was here that we discovered I was only 2cm dilated - the hospital requires you to be 4cm before admittance. After discussing our options, we decided that we were going to walk around the hospital for an hour to see if things progressed as my contractions were getting much stronger at this point. I began to get dressed and after leaning over the bed for a contraction, I heard/felt a "pop" at the end of the contraction. As I stood up, I realized that was the sound of my water breaking. Evan and Cheryl told our nurse while I went to the bathroom to make sure. I called Evan in as I realized that my water was not the color it should be, but rather was a greenish color. When he told the nurse, she quickly hustled me out of the bathroom and I found the four of us back in the pre-delivery room. As Cheryl told me, I had just bought myself a ticket to L&D!

We were admitted to Labor and Delivery sometime around 3:30am and my back-up doula (LeAnne) arrived to relieve Cheryl. The labor seemed to me to progress quite fast - the contractions were getting much stronger and I felt like I was moving along quickly. Throughout all of this, we were also dealing with a nurse who had a very difficult time getting my IV line in (it took her, another nurse trying, and then them calling in the IV Team. Four pokes later, I had an IV) and also had a difficult time finding my cervix to see how much I had dilated. After two tries from two different nurses, I'd gotten a bit fed up and told them to not worry about it.

My doctor arrived around 7:30am to examine me - Evan and LeAnne both thought at this point I was at least in Transition as I'd already thrown up a bit and was beginning to feel the urge to push. To all of our dismay, I was only 4cm dilated although I was 100% effaced and at station 3. So basically Oakes was ready to make his debut, but my cervix was being very uncooperative. It was at this point that I'd decided I couldn't continue without an epidural, so the nurses ordered one for me. It was 8:50 before I finally got it and it was an amazing relief to the urge to push! I was able to sleep for about an hour and a half during this time (and I think Evan might have even gotten a minute or two of sleepeye!).

When I woke at 11:30, I asked to be rolled to my other side (one of my legs was asleep). Apparently, this was not a good position as Oakes' heartrate dropped to below 80bpm and the nurses quickly showed up and flipped me back over. At this point, my doctor had to put a fetal scalp monitor on Oakes to monitor his heartrate and the nurses and doctors began a bit of pre-preparation for delivery.

I'm not sure what time we actually started the delivery process, but I'm thinking the NICU team and my doctor were ready to begin around 1pm. We finally delivered at 2:18 (after pushing for about 45 minutes). Oakes was "cyanotic and floppy" when he arrived and we were under strict instructions not to try to stimulate him as he would inhale meconium when he breathed in. Evan stood with Oakes while they examined him - the NICU team intubated Oakes and found copious thick meconium below his cords. He was dried and stimulated and had a good respiratory effort at this point but they decided to go ahead and bring him up to NICU for further evaluation, where Evan accompanied them.

After the afterbirth was delivered, my doctor ran some tests on my placenta and the cord and he told me the meconium had happened prior to my water breaking (possibly a day or days earlier) due to some sort of stress in the womb. Basically, it reassured us that there was nothing we could have done differently during delivery to have helped the situation.

Oakes stayed on the main NICU floor Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday night. He had a C-Pap on for breathing help on Tuesday and then was changed to a nasal canula on Wednesday. He was never on oxygen, but these just helped him breathe room air a bit easier. On Thursday he had no breathing assistance and was moved to an open crib - I was also able to breastfeed him that afternoon for the first time as well. By Saturday, they were cutting back his proteins and lipids and he was completely off of them by Monday, which meant that he no longer had the wires coming out of his head, though they still kept the "spout" for his antibiotics. This made a huge difference in holding him! :)

I was discharged on Thursday and was able to use a "Sleep Room" for Thursday and Friday night. This allowed me to breastfeed him on demand and be with him as much as possible. On Saturday afternoon, we were all moved to a "Transition Room" where Evan and I could sleep in the same room as Oakes and care for him 24 hours a day. After a night in this room (the monitors are connected to all 9 transition rooms, so if a baby's heartrate or breathing rate was abnormal, all the rooms beeped) we decided that we couldn't do another night there. We were both exhausted from the beeping, the broken chair one of us had to sleep on, and the fact that we could only hold our baby in a 4 square foot area in front of his crib as he was still attached to wires and monitors. This was easily the hardest decision I've ever had to make, but I knew that I would be no good to him if I was exhausted. I called Mom and asked her to come up and help as I felt completely overwhelmed and like I had no control over any of this. Mom arrived Sunday night - we all slept at the house that night, and then on Monday and Tuesday mom and I spent the entire day at the hospital while Evan went to work.

Oakes was released on Tuesday afternoon. It turns out he had no infections and was sent home very healthy. He's on a liquid multi-vitamin now and is doing well aside from some major gas pains he has. :) He's still also learning that sleep is a good thing (especially at night!) but we're having a ton of fun playing with him and cuddling him and just staring at him. We're truly in love!