How It All Went Down - Part 3

We arrived at the hospital around 12:30, and were checked into our labor room by 1:00 or so. As nurses got Kim situated and into her bed, I stayed busy plugging cell phones and camera batteries into wall sockets. After a round of questions from the nurses, Dr. Cosentino came by. He was skinny, middle-aged balding man with a shortly trimed goatee. He introduced himself to both of us, and came across as witty, humorous, and even a little sarcastic - he was just what we needed. And it certainly didn't hurt anything in Kim's eyes that he was wearing a UT Longhorns watch. He checked Kim as we told him all that had happened so far - that Kim was past her due date and that her water had broken about two hours before.

Most women's water doesn't break first naturally, we had known that already. Usually contractions start first, then the water breaks later or it gets ruptured by the Dr. to speed things up. But however it happens, once the water breaks most people say the baby needs to be out within 24 hours. So, we were 3 hours into that timeline and Kim was still not having any contractions. She was also only 60% effaced and dilated one and a half inches. So, Dr. Cosentino told us we needed to get things going a little quicker and put Kim on an IV drip of Pitocin. And from that point on through the next several hours, things got pretty boring (from my perspective only, of course).

Kim's parents showed up and brought me some lunch (Kim was already on an ice chips only diet). Then in the early evening all of my parents and my brother showed up. Kim's friend Dey, and my brother and sister in-law showed up too. People would take shifts coming in to check on us, then go back to the waiting room. Some of us made phone calls here and there to let others know how things were progressing. Somewhere in there, someone brought me a hamburger for dinner. But mainly, we all just waited. Kim began having mild contractions a few hours in, then in a few hours more they really started hurting her. We all took turns having our hands squeezed as she tried to breathe through the pain. She decided to get an Epidural once the pain got to be too much, and there was a night and day difference then. In fact, she had one of her worst contractions right before the Epidural; and within a few minutes after it she looked at her mother with a smile on her face and said "I'm having a contraction right now."

Dr. Cosentino would come in every hour and a half or two and check Kim again, look over all of the monitors, and ask her how she was doing. Later in the night, the nurses picked up on Ada's heartrate dropping when Kim was laying on her left side or when stronger contractions would come. Dr. Cosentino and the nurses told us that might become a factor during the pushing stage, but that it was too soon to worry yet. Around 12:30 am, Dr. Cosentino said Kim was getting real close, and that he expected her to be ready to push around 1:30. But he also told us that Ada was far enough down for him to be able to feel her head and realize that she was face up instead of face down. That isn't necessarily a dangerous position, but it normally means a lot harder time pushing on the mom. We didn't let it bother us much, because he said he could probably turn her as Kim was pushing later on.

Around 1:30, our family told us bye and cleared out for us to start the pushing phase. But Dr. Cosentino and the nurses soon discovered that Ada's heart rate was now falling dangerously low during every contraction and push. She always rebounded during the breaks, but with every contraction Dr. Cosentino shook his head and looked a little more perturbed. He told us that she just didn't want to turn, even though he had tried it to the left and to the right. He also told us that he could only keep watching her heart beat dip so many times before he'd want to do a c-section. That thought was tough on us at first, we had never even really thought much about c-sections. Kim just knew she wanted to avoid one at all costs, and we both had heard about how often OB's do unnessecery c-sections. But Kim had been pushing for around 30 minutes, with no progress at all. And everyone in the room who knew about birth could tell that something just wasn't right. Dr. Cosentino said he was going to step out for a few minutes to take a phone call and to give Kim and Ada a break. He told us when he got back we'd push a little more, but that if there was no change a c-section would be necessary.

After about 10 minutes that felt like hours, he came in and got Kim to push through one more contraction. After looking at the monitors and sharing a silent look with the nurse that spoke volumes to us, he turned to us and told us Kim would need a c-section. We knew things were about to get much tougher on us all, but we trusted our Dr. and couldn't imagine doing any harm to Ada just so we could spend less money or be able to say that Kim had her vaginally. We nodded our approval and Dr. Cosentino said "Ok then, let's go get your daughter out."