Kristy elevated the alert status from Yellow to Red, so we drove to the hospital and I dropped her off at the entrance and parked. It was around 2:30-ish PM and I found a parking spot fairly close and grabbed the bare essentials, our cameras and headed inside.
By the time I got in she was already in a Triage room getting checked out. I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to just go into Triage and start looking around until I found her, so I asked they told me to just head straight back. She was in room five, except that she wasn’t in room five, her coat was, she was in the bathroom. After she got out they outfitted her with the baby heart rate monitor and the contraction monitor. She was having some pretty serious contractions; they looked like mountains on the graph print out. The nurse came in looked at the graph and said they were pretty regular, spaced apart by about two and a half minutes in time. Then they checked her and she was 7cm dilated and they seemed to move a little quicker after that.
Since Joy was galavanting around Bend, we had Caroline the midwife on duty taking care of us. Cheryl was the nurse that took care of us. Cheryl had actually just worked her shift but they asked if anyone could stay and help out and since she overheard that Kristy was 7cm dilated she said she would stay but only if she was assigned to Kristy. She had already delivered a baby earlier in the day and I think she really wanted to deliver one more the same day.
Cheryl asked Kristy if she could walk to her room or if she needed a wheel chair. Kristy said no, she could walk and joked with me about needing a wheel chair, why would she need one, she had been doing everything else normal the past two weeks at around 5cm, what is 7cm. So we made our way into room 137 and I stayed with her until her mother and Nana (Grandma from Florida) arrived. After they got there I ran out and pack muled in all our stuff. Let’s see, there were gift baskets from her Aunt in Florida, our main camera bag, a portable HP photosmart printer, Kristy’s laptop bag, my laptop bag, my work backpack, her overnight bag, a blanket for me and a bag with croissants, oranges and my pajamas.
Then we just had to sit and wait. Eventually her contractions started getting harder and harder, she was doing great, just breathing right through them. Kristy’s Mom was really helpful too; she was rubbing pressure points on Kristy’s hands and feet to help reduce the pain. She was also helping coach, reminding Kristy to breath and letting me focus on being near Kristy which I think really helps Kristy emotionally and psychologically. The expression on her face was similar to the one she has when she is thinking really hard, like when we are playing scrabble and she is about to throw down some serious points with a triple word score, a double letter score and the use of the letters “Q” and “Z” (For example Quizzers with the second “Z” as a blank) and she gets the super Scrabble bonus for using all eight of her letters. Kristy was hardly breaking a sweat and then Caroline, Cheryl, Her Nana, Her Mom and I all convinced her to break her water.
Now theoretically, breaking her water should have acted like a suction cup, pulling the baby’s head straight down into position and she should have given birth shortly after. This is what happened with Carter so the logic was sound and previously proven, but every baby is different. It seems that this baby was turned so that her head was sideways, 90 degrees from where it should have been and this slowed things down. After Caroline broke Kristy’s water Kristy handle the first contraction with ease, then the second and the third she started to notice something. The fourth was a little harder and the fifth described in her own words “Frack!”. Now for those of you who aren’t dorks and don’t watch Battlestar Galatica, Frack is the made up word used on the show to replace a more common profane word commonly used in English that also has four letters and begins with “F” and ends with “K”. I keyed in on her using this word because we use it with some friends that watch the show and not too long ago I saw a bunch of people talking about this word on the VH1 show best week ever. This was followed by another show I saw with a bunch of famous celebrities talking about how this relatively new remake show of the original 1970’s show already has a huge fan base and is affecting pop culture. So with all these stars and planets aligned, as soon as she muttered the word I knew it had to find its way into the blog. Okay, that’s taken care of.
Now the pain was cranking up and Kristy couldn’t bear it any longer, she wanted an epidural and since I’m not that one who has to pass something the size of a bowling ball out of something the size of straw, I fully supported her decision and request. It seemed like everyone else really wanted her to not have it and I understand because there is a lot of risks. I kind of had some second thoughts when they started reading them to her. Like possible headaches for a week afterwards, possible permanent paralysis and permanent nerve damage just to name a few. Brian, the anesthesiologist had to read her all of these risks and he had to be sure she was listening so he paused during a contraction and Kristy was getting mad, she said “I can hear you, keep going!”. Later she told me that made her mad that he paused because it was one more contraction that she had to suffer through. Evidently you need to be well hydrated before having an epidural so they required an entire bag via Intravenous Therapy (IV) be in Kristy before they gave her the goods. This seemed like a stall tactic that was being employed to postpone the epidural in the hopes that Kristy would give birth before she got it.
Eventually Brian placed the epidural, at which time Kristy had to remain completely still on the edge of the bed while contracting and nearly fully dilated. Cheryl asked Kristy how she felt and Kristy said that her legs felt warm, to which Cheryl replied, that is the correct answer. Kristy kept saying how weird it was that she couldn’t feel her legs, then she said that there was still pain in her left leg in a small area. Cheryl said that it was called a “window” and sometimes you get a window for various reasons, but she would call Brian back in. Brian came in and gave Kristy a second dose and rolled her over so she was leaning on her left side, right side up in the air. This would help the gravity force the dose into her left side where the window was. It started getting better but still wasn’t working completely, so Brian gave her one more dose and hooked her up to the little plastic box that is all locked up and has a timer and a mechanism to release a set dose of the pain killer every so often. Brian mentioned that he thought he had hit a blood vessel on the way in, which is one of the risks from the sheet he had to read off, so he pulled the line back a bit. He said that it was so close that he thought it would work, but you never know with these things. Then he was all frustrated and pulled it out and waited to bit while we discussed putting in another line, then Kristy said it worked, she didn’t feel a thing anymore. Brian said, okay, well we can’t put another one in now, so you probably have about 30 minutes or so before the medication wears off and you start feeling again.
At this point Kristy didn’t even know when she was having a contraction, we had to tell her and she didn’t really feel a need to push, so Cheryl had to check her and when she was fully dilated and ready to go, we started forecasting contractions and when she should push. It turns out Kristy was too good at pushing and she had to stop and wait out a couple of contractions while I ran outside our room and called her Dad so her Nana could make it back for the birth. Her Dad, Nana and Sister had gone to get something to eat in the hospital cafeteria. And she also had to stop so Cheryl could go find our midwife to deliver the baby. Of course no experience is complete without something like, our midwife was already in another room delivering another baby at the same time, that’s right, simultaneous deliveries. So we had another doctor come in and she spent about thirty seconds getting acquainted with us and getting dressed and off she went to delivering. I missed her name, but she was really nice and she seemed familiar, she even asked if we had met before, but then Kristy, the doctor and I all said “I don’t think so” at the same time.
A few pushes later our baby girl was here! Now I had to act kind of quickly because I was videoing and then I had to also take still pictures with our other camera and I had to also maneuver around so I could get into position to cut the cord. Kennedy was a little bit different than Carter, she wasn’t crying right out of the gate, she needed some suction from her nostrils and mouth and then she introduced us to her crying / lung capacity that is every bit as capable as Carter’s was. And when I cut the cord with Carter it was quick and clean, but when I cut the Kennedy’s cord I got sprayed with blood, like when someone across the table bites into a piece of citrus, maybe a juicy orange and then you get sprayed with all the juices and it’s burning in one of your eyes and on your nose and forehead. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, your day is coming because this has happened to me more than once in my short lifetime. Kennedy scored an 8 on her APGAR and she had her bath later when I actually ran to get some food. This time instead of Kristy’s mom dialing like thirty people in thirty seconds she just she got right next to Kristy and her Nana was right behind her and I got some sweet pictures of four generations of a family of strong women. I even got some synchronized tear wiping by Kristy’s mom and Nana, they are totally ready for the 2008 Emotion Olympics.
The best part was out in the hall Carter could hear Kennedy’s heart beat on the monitor and when she started crying inside the room with us, Carter heard her outside the door and he starting yelling “Baby Sissy, Baby Sissy!”. And ever since that moment he always needs to know where she is in whatever room we are all in. He is always gentle and he only says goodbye and goodnight to “Baby Kenndy” now, Mommy and Daddy are old news. Now we have two kids, let the fun begin!
Friday, April 11, 2008
March 28th 2008
Driving down the hill (Brady Road) to get to the 192nd street exit on highway 14 we were following a really slow truck that was annoying me. They had their breaks on the entire way down the hill and I was thinking, you need to apply them every so often, not constantly or you’ll warp your rotors. I noticed that he also had a busted passenger side mirror and told Kristy to look and I was just about to call him an idiot out loud when Kristy said “Maybe he hit a bridge too!” and totally humbled me. It humbled me because a few weeks back I gently tapped Kristy’s Volvo XC 90 on the side of a bridge breaking the turn signal lens. So I didn’t call him an idiot.
Collette was working the desk as usual. “Hello, how are you? Oh, about ready to be done! Do you want the big receipt or the small receipt?” Then she got on the phone, “I thought I was getting Arthritis, okay, send me the info on the one that is just like mine, not some other one, the one that is just like mine.” And I figured out that she was talking about her chair and so she must have been having some ergonomic issues. Waiting for appointments goes by so much quicker when Collette is the administrative assistant checking you in, too bad she couldn’t check you in for every appointment that required you to wait to be seen, like the dentist and getting your tires changed, et cetera.
Well it’s the middle of Oregon State’s Spring Break and one of my co-workers Bryan and his family is in Hawaii. It is snowing here in the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan area. Bryan should be jet setting around Maui with a personalized google map we made for him, complete with beach reviews, number of parking spaces and best times of day to visit, but he forgot to print it out and hasn’t been able to download it yet to his laptop. If only he had an iphone, then he could bring it up anyplace, anytime. How did we ever live without those things. Well, hope he is enjoying Hawaii, Kristy and I really miss Hawaii. We are still trying to figure out a way to go back to Maui for two or three days in May and catch a Jason Mraz concert while we are there.
I was suddenly snapped out of these thoughts by Collette’s voice. “Thank You! I appreciate you and have a blessed day!” I had forgotten that she said that to folks, but then I started thinking about how much more pleasant things might be if we all had a similar attitude towards other people, including strangers.
The nurse called Kristy’s name so we went back to weigh in. Kristy and I both noticed Collette walking around the nurses’ stations collecting two dollars from different nurses here and there. So was saying “Jeans on Friday, if you were up pay up!” We asked our nurse about it when she brought us to our room and she said that if they want they can wear Jeans on Fridays but they have to pay two dollars to the social committee to support social stuff like Jeans on Fridays. Our nurse was wearing scrubs, not because she didn’t want to pay the two dollars, but because she said that scrubs are like pajamas, they are way more comfortable to work in than Jeans, which is exactly what Kristy said she was thinking.
Well, Joy didn’t think we would make it this far but she said she’d check Kristy’s Cervix again (Ladies remember the leg lift fist under back/butt trick). This time she was 4-5cm dilated, so a little progress and also a little more effaced. The head position was at minus two and if you don’t know what that means than google and Wikipedia are great tools and since you are reading this blog you have access to them and I suggest you try them out.
The baby’s heart rate was in the 140’s as it should be. Joy asked who had Carter and we told her she was visiting with Kristy’s parents. Then we started going over Joy’s schedule to see if we could plan around it, like if we walked a few miles maybe we could induce labor on the days that she worked. Let’s see, on tomorrow night (Saturday), on Monday, on call Wednesday and maybe Thursday, but in Bend, Oregon next weekend for a big conference. She also told Kristy that as soon as she was 39 weeks, which was next Thursday, we could call her and schedule an induction, but Joy didn’t think we’d make it that long.
As we were leaving she said “Think Saturday and Think Monday”. So we are still on Yellow Alert. Who knows, maybe the next blog will be the hospital blog?
Collette was working the desk as usual. “Hello, how are you? Oh, about ready to be done! Do you want the big receipt or the small receipt?” Then she got on the phone, “I thought I was getting Arthritis, okay, send me the info on the one that is just like mine, not some other one, the one that is just like mine.” And I figured out that she was talking about her chair and so she must have been having some ergonomic issues. Waiting for appointments goes by so much quicker when Collette is the administrative assistant checking you in, too bad she couldn’t check you in for every appointment that required you to wait to be seen, like the dentist and getting your tires changed, et cetera.
Well it’s the middle of Oregon State’s Spring Break and one of my co-workers Bryan and his family is in Hawaii. It is snowing here in the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan area. Bryan should be jet setting around Maui with a personalized google map we made for him, complete with beach reviews, number of parking spaces and best times of day to visit, but he forgot to print it out and hasn’t been able to download it yet to his laptop. If only he had an iphone, then he could bring it up anyplace, anytime. How did we ever live without those things. Well, hope he is enjoying Hawaii, Kristy and I really miss Hawaii. We are still trying to figure out a way to go back to Maui for two or three days in May and catch a Jason Mraz concert while we are there.
I was suddenly snapped out of these thoughts by Collette’s voice. “Thank You! I appreciate you and have a blessed day!” I had forgotten that she said that to folks, but then I started thinking about how much more pleasant things might be if we all had a similar attitude towards other people, including strangers.
The nurse called Kristy’s name so we went back to weigh in. Kristy and I both noticed Collette walking around the nurses’ stations collecting two dollars from different nurses here and there. So was saying “Jeans on Friday, if you were up pay up!” We asked our nurse about it when she brought us to our room and she said that if they want they can wear Jeans on Fridays but they have to pay two dollars to the social committee to support social stuff like Jeans on Fridays. Our nurse was wearing scrubs, not because she didn’t want to pay the two dollars, but because she said that scrubs are like pajamas, they are way more comfortable to work in than Jeans, which is exactly what Kristy said she was thinking.
Well, Joy didn’t think we would make it this far but she said she’d check Kristy’s Cervix again (Ladies remember the leg lift fist under back/butt trick). This time she was 4-5cm dilated, so a little progress and also a little more effaced. The head position was at minus two and if you don’t know what that means than google and Wikipedia are great tools and since you are reading this blog you have access to them and I suggest you try them out.
The baby’s heart rate was in the 140’s as it should be. Joy asked who had Carter and we told her she was visiting with Kristy’s parents. Then we started going over Joy’s schedule to see if we could plan around it, like if we walked a few miles maybe we could induce labor on the days that she worked. Let’s see, on tomorrow night (Saturday), on Monday, on call Wednesday and maybe Thursday, but in Bend, Oregon next weekend for a big conference. She also told Kristy that as soon as she was 39 weeks, which was next Thursday, we could call her and schedule an induction, but Joy didn’t think we’d make it that long.
As we were leaving she said “Think Saturday and Think Monday”. So we are still on Yellow Alert. Who knows, maybe the next blog will be the hospital blog?
March 19th 2008
The morning didn’t start off well for us in terms of going to another appointment. Carter needed to go to the bathroom but he was all stopped up and so “Tummy, Hurts!” was how he put it. His stomach ache set his mood and so it set the tone for what we were expecting at the Doctor’s office.
The plan was the same as the previous appointment, I would drive my car to work and Kristy would follow me and we’d drop my car off and go from work. The only problem was that my car battery was dead. So the plan was modified to go to the appointment and then go to get a new battery right after the appointment, then go home and install the new battery and then go to work. The dead car battery was just another small, unplanned inconvenience to add to the morning’s already rocky start.
We arrived at the Doctor’s office with no additional incidents and went straight in to see our favorite personality in the office, Collette. She checked Kristy in and reminder her to get her brown paper bag. Then she was talking to someone on the phone and said “You are now free to fly”. I didn’t get to listen to her always entertaining words after that because I was distracted by Carter.
Carter wanted to get in and out of the “Hooge (Huge) Chairs” and whenever he got up in the chairs facing the east windows he would point out the window and say “See the cars go Bye Bye? Hi Cars!”. Then he put his John Deere wheel loader in my pocket, his backhoe in his pocket and he kept playing with his Dig Dig (Excavator) on the chairs.
My mind was also preoccupied with thoughts about a sign I had read on the way into the building. The sign said that as of some date that I don’t recall, no smoking would be allowed on the campus to comply with a new Washington law that prohibited smoking on medical campuses.
Kristy noticed that Collette had a new iphone, which awe struck both of us. Then I heard her mumbling “I’ll have a fit” while looking at a small device in the palm of her hand with a frustrating glare. Then before we knew it a nurse was calling out Kristy’s name.
We went back and weighed in and then went to our room. Kristy had her blood pressure taken and Carter started chomping on “Fish Mama!” which is gold fish crackers for those of you who don’t have small children and aren’t familiar with this standard issue weapon in child soothing and containment. The goldfish cracker in all its various forms, baby goldfish, regular goldfish and colored goldfish, made by Pepperidge Farm is like the AK-47 assault rifle that every bad guy has in every action movie, it’s standard issue and you see these crackers in the seats of friends mini vans and left behind in shopping carts in every store. And I myself can eat a few hundred in one sitting if I’m not careful, so these little bite size crackers are powerful tools to parents with young children. Sorry for the digression but I felt it important for any potential future parents that might be reading this blog to commit this point to memory.
This was the first of our all booked out appointments and this time we were given the rest of our remaining pamphlets telling us all about our pregnancy. This was looking to be another quick in and out appointment. Kristy just needed to have her Cervix checked and we’d be done. A note for any ladies that are reading, when you have your Cervix checked, you should take your hands and put them on your low back, right near your butt and make them into fists, the same way you would if you were at the gym and going to do a leg lift. This gets you into better position for being checked and helps make it a less painful experience. Joy taught Kristy this trick and judging from the expressions on Kristy’s face and amount of discussion around how painful the checks were afterwards, I have to say this works. If you don’t believe me, just lean back and get checked and then try it the next time and then don’t try it the next time and eventually you’ll figure out if I’m crazy or if I’ve passed on valuable information to you.
Anyways, back to our appointment. So Kristy got checked and she was 3-4cm dilated, yes, 3-4cm! She was also about 50% effaced (thinned out for those of you that didn’t read my Carter blogs). Joy thinks our baby girl will be making her debut into the world sometime next week.
This means that I’ll be on “Yellow Alert”. According to Star Trek terminology a yellow alert is a Star Fleet vessel with a ship wide state of increased preparedness for possible crisis situations. Shields and deflectors are brought to full power but the weapon systems remain off until a “Red Alert” is issued. What can I say; one of my fondest memories of being a kid is discovering Star Trek re-runs when I was six and watching them on TV every night at 6:30pm.
We did get an Ultrasound on one of the small portable office units. We had never had one of these done before and the machine was really pretty cool. It was a small laptop looking device and it actually had decent resolution. We could see the fluid sacks and a full bladder and everything looked good. So, we were basically done with this appointment. I made a comment about how it would be cool to have one of those little laptop units and Kristy called me Tom Cruise which really hurt my feelings. Will the next blog be a hospital blog?
The plan was the same as the previous appointment, I would drive my car to work and Kristy would follow me and we’d drop my car off and go from work. The only problem was that my car battery was dead. So the plan was modified to go to the appointment and then go to get a new battery right after the appointment, then go home and install the new battery and then go to work. The dead car battery was just another small, unplanned inconvenience to add to the morning’s already rocky start.
We arrived at the Doctor’s office with no additional incidents and went straight in to see our favorite personality in the office, Collette. She checked Kristy in and reminder her to get her brown paper bag. Then she was talking to someone on the phone and said “You are now free to fly”. I didn’t get to listen to her always entertaining words after that because I was distracted by Carter.
Carter wanted to get in and out of the “Hooge (Huge) Chairs” and whenever he got up in the chairs facing the east windows he would point out the window and say “See the cars go Bye Bye? Hi Cars!”. Then he put his John Deere wheel loader in my pocket, his backhoe in his pocket and he kept playing with his Dig Dig (Excavator) on the chairs.
My mind was also preoccupied with thoughts about a sign I had read on the way into the building. The sign said that as of some date that I don’t recall, no smoking would be allowed on the campus to comply with a new Washington law that prohibited smoking on medical campuses.
Kristy noticed that Collette had a new iphone, which awe struck both of us. Then I heard her mumbling “I’ll have a fit” while looking at a small device in the palm of her hand with a frustrating glare. Then before we knew it a nurse was calling out Kristy’s name.
We went back and weighed in and then went to our room. Kristy had her blood pressure taken and Carter started chomping on “Fish Mama!” which is gold fish crackers for those of you who don’t have small children and aren’t familiar with this standard issue weapon in child soothing and containment. The goldfish cracker in all its various forms, baby goldfish, regular goldfish and colored goldfish, made by Pepperidge Farm is like the AK-47 assault rifle that every bad guy has in every action movie, it’s standard issue and you see these crackers in the seats of friends mini vans and left behind in shopping carts in every store. And I myself can eat a few hundred in one sitting if I’m not careful, so these little bite size crackers are powerful tools to parents with young children. Sorry for the digression but I felt it important for any potential future parents that might be reading this blog to commit this point to memory.
This was the first of our all booked out appointments and this time we were given the rest of our remaining pamphlets telling us all about our pregnancy. This was looking to be another quick in and out appointment. Kristy just needed to have her Cervix checked and we’d be done. A note for any ladies that are reading, when you have your Cervix checked, you should take your hands and put them on your low back, right near your butt and make them into fists, the same way you would if you were at the gym and going to do a leg lift. This gets you into better position for being checked and helps make it a less painful experience. Joy taught Kristy this trick and judging from the expressions on Kristy’s face and amount of discussion around how painful the checks were afterwards, I have to say this works. If you don’t believe me, just lean back and get checked and then try it the next time and then don’t try it the next time and eventually you’ll figure out if I’m crazy or if I’ve passed on valuable information to you.
Anyways, back to our appointment. So Kristy got checked and she was 3-4cm dilated, yes, 3-4cm! She was also about 50% effaced (thinned out for those of you that didn’t read my Carter blogs). Joy thinks our baby girl will be making her debut into the world sometime next week.
This means that I’ll be on “Yellow Alert”. According to Star Trek terminology a yellow alert is a Star Fleet vessel with a ship wide state of increased preparedness for possible crisis situations. Shields and deflectors are brought to full power but the weapon systems remain off until a “Red Alert” is issued. What can I say; one of my fondest memories of being a kid is discovering Star Trek re-runs when I was six and watching them on TV every night at 6:30pm.
We did get an Ultrasound on one of the small portable office units. We had never had one of these done before and the machine was really pretty cool. It was a small laptop looking device and it actually had decent resolution. We could see the fluid sacks and a full bladder and everything looked good. So, we were basically done with this appointment. I made a comment about how it would be cool to have one of those little laptop units and Kristy called me Tom Cruise which really hurt my feelings. Will the next blog be a hospital blog?
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