Welcome Wyatt James Cornum!

August 15th at 4:47 am ~ 7lbs 14.5 oz ~ 20 inches long

There's quite a story to this (isn't there always?), so I'm going to break it down into abbreviated steps:

1) Woke up to contractions Thursday morning at about 2:30 am. Were between 15 and 30 minutes apart, and mildly uncomfortable all day. Not really sure if true early labor.

2) By 11 pm were consitantly at 7 minutes apart and a little stronger, timed them until 3 am when I called the OB Ward and was told you can be comfortable at home or here - your choice. We waited until 6am to head in as they kept getting stronger.

3) Admitted and hooked up to a moniter that showed I was indeed having contractions 5 to 7 minutes apart, 2 cm dialated and 100% effaced. My doctor who's leaving is out of town until the 20th (when he planned on inducing me) so the midwife left in charge of his patients checked me out. I didn't change in dilation between 6 and 10am so there was some questions to whether I was in true early labor - but they were still strong and regular. Told to go home with a sleeping pill and when I woke up they would be gone. I was VERY sceptical, but hey - what do I know? So I went home. Big mistake. The damn midwife should have had a doctor look at me - or perhaps paid attention to the fact I was in pain. Contractions continued, getting stronger through the night - so basically I'm going on night 3 of no sleep and combined with the pain I'm getting stressed out.

4) Total wreck by Friday morning, refusing to go in only to be sent home again, in a ton of pain but still only 5 to 7 minutes apart. Nate talks me into heading out at 11 am, whereas I inform the admitting nurse I'm not leaving this place again (they teased me about it all day yesterday). Now here comes the Midwife's BIG mistake in play:

5) I'm hooked to the monitors only to be informed I have dangerously high blood pressure, the babies heartbeat is sky high, but dropping dangerously low with each contraction and taking a long time to recover. I'm still only at 2cm! But so stressed out from the last 30 unnecisary hours of contractions...the doctor on call makes the decision from the phone to get me leveled out and get me going. He then comes in and tells me because of the babies heartrate dips and slow recovery we need to think about a C-Section. I really wanted to deliver so asked him what would change his mind, and he said if the baby leveled out soon and stayed there. And that's exactly what happened.

6) Hooked to Picosin to jumpstart my dilation, water breaks on it's own at 3cm where I jump to a 5 quickly. Get an epidural which rocked. Moved to an 8 in a few hours. Epidural quits, next dose doesn't work, about ready to die after 2 hours, get a dose of lidocain, works immediatly, dilate to a 9...9...9...9...losing the pain meds, get a new dose and told to take a nap - only at 9.5cm. Almost there! Stuck at 9.5...still stuck...still stuck 4 hours later. Doctor comes in and decided we probably need to do a C-Section as the baby is starting to stress again, not bad but I should have moved forward 5 hours ago. He asks if I have the control to push - I do, he decides I'm going to deliver and he's going to move the last little bit of cervix over by hand. We start, pressure, and the baby stops. Try again, no go. Doctor doesn't know why but decides we're all tired of this and goes to tell the staff to ready the OR.

7) He no more than walks out the door and we lose the babies heartbeat completely. The nurses are turning me back and forth, calling for the doctor, prepping me for emergency surgery, pushing the baby up further - it was choas. They had me in the OR in less than 3 minutes and the heartbeat was back to normal.

8) Short umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. In short, when we went to deliver we were hanging him.

9) Baby bounced back great with a stress test score of 8.5/10. Hung out with dad until mom was recovered and then latched right on for his first feeding. Everything's been fine since!

10) I'm also bouncing back and should be let go tomorrow! So I got to experiece a full labor and c-section! Lucky me! I'm assuming I can blame the midwife who blew me off as another's patient for much of the occurances. I loved the doctor who was on call, and I was treated wonderfully. He, however, no longer works here full time but only covers 2 weekends a month as he works full time for the Mayo Clinic. I get to follow up with my regular doctor before he leaves for good. My RN through this all came to visit today and was pretty disappointed to hear what had happened but was so glad I ended up in good hands.