Colton's Delivery Story Continued...

Here is the continuation of Colton's delivery story...

Saturday December 6th (36 weeks and 3 days): I woke up at around 1:30 in the morning and got up and went to the bathroom. I kind of felt like I may have had a contraction, but I ended up ignoring it and went back to bed. At 2:30 am I woke up, felt what I can only describe as a punch, heard a "pop" and the fluid started flowing. My water had broken. I quickly nudged my husband to wake him up and to get out of bed or he was gonna get wet. He jumped out of bed and went and got a bunch of towels to try to clean up some of the mess that was leaking onto our mattress. Somehow I needed to get out of bed, so hubby put some towels on the carpet so that I could walk into the bathroom without getting fluid on the carpet. I headed toward the shower and got in a rinsed off what I could. The problem was that every time I moved, more fluid came out! I put a pad on to catch what was leaking and got dressed. Nick had been running around getting everything else ready to head to the hospital. By the time we were leaving the house it was around 3:15 am. That was when the contractions really started.

We have an approximately 7 min drive to the hospital. In that time frame I probably had 2 contractions. While they weren't long and didn't hurt much, they were definitely there. We got to the hospital and got checked in. We were escorted to the labor and delivery room. When I was put on the monitor to check Colton's heart rate and my contractions, everything was great. My contractions were about 2-3 min apart. The nurse checked my cervix and we were dilated to 5 cm. The fluid kept on coming with every contraction. My contractions ended up doing something called coupling. I would have a contraction followed immediately by another contraction and then I would get a break. Toward the end, it seemed like they would come in threes. The nurses checked my cervix about every 2 hours. When they checked I would be dilated by about 1 cm more.

Toward 10 am I started getting the triplet contractions and getting more and more uncomfortable. I was doing everything I could to not cry out in pain. They were getting so bad. I just kept breathing through them and basically dancing with my hips to keep the pain away. Finally I was feeling the urge to push. When the doctor and nurse check my cervix I still had a little bit of of cervix left. It took probably another half hour for that to go away and I was able to start pushing. I only had to push for 20 minutes. Colton was born at 11:47. When he was born he pretty much shot out and Dr. K almost didn't catch him. He was put on my abdomen and Nick quickly cut Colton's cord and he was given to the awaiting NICU team.

Because of my career and knowledge, I had asked some of my colleagues to attend Colton's delivery. Under normal circumstances a 36 week delivery would not have required attendance by the NICU delivery team. I was extremely glad that I had asked them to attend. Colton was not breathing when he was born. He always had a good heart rate, but needed a breathing tube placed. We were able to see him before he was taken up to the NICU for further evaluation.

It was about 3pm when we were able to see him for the first time. Colton was on a warmer bed with a breathing tube that was hooked to a ventilator. He had IV's placed in his umbilical cord. And he wasn't moving. My precious baby was not in good shape. We were told that Dr. B, a geneticist, was going to be coming to look at him and to see what kind of tests she thought we needed to run. His blood count was running low and he may need a blood transfusion. Dr. B came in later Saturday night and gave a list of labs that she thought may be needed to figure out what was wrong. They were only able to draw two of them because of his low blood count. Colton had a transfusion on Saturday night. Colton did great the rest of the night.

Tomorrow I will try to get you updated through Tuesday. We have been trying to get into a routine with Colton's care and my pumping.