Finally...Will

Okay, again after Olivia, I knew there was at least another baby to come.  So I watied to get pregnant - and waited - and waited - and then 18 months later - I was - but I miscarried at about 10 weeks (perhaps I'll post about that sometime).

So next followed a trip to a specialist (6 months later) who gave me a "magic pill" - Clomid.  I say "magic" because it worked and I got pregnant after only 2 months of using it.  James says "awful" because it made me crazy!!!  Really - crazy.  But worth it for me.

So pregnant again - same midwives, older body.  Pregnancy after 35 - much different than at 25!

This time things went as normal.  I knew the baby was a boy - and the ultrasound confirmed it.

The hardest part of this pregnancy:  choosing a name!  I had a list of my top 5, and James had a list of his top 5.  And not a name matched.  And it wasn't even like "Okay, I don't like 1 or 5, but I could do 2, 3 or 4"  it was like "I hate ALL of your names and I don't think ANYONE would EVER even TOLERATE these!!!"

So - a definate problem.  Until one night at dinner James suggested that we just name the baby after our 2 dads!  YAY - because Will was my #1 choice!!!  I WON!!!

Anyway - Will's due date was July 8th.  We were hoping that he would come a day early because then his birthday would have been 7-7-07.  Nice, huh?  But nope.  July 7th came and went.  So did July 8th and 9th and 10th.  I had never been this late!  It was horrific!

-Oh, a side note about this due date-it shows how much I wanted this baby - I didn't even care that I would have to share my birth month with him!!

Since I was overdue, I decided to try acupuncture.  I made my appointment for the first available opening - it was Tuesday in the late afternoon.  On the phone, they asked if I would rather wait until morning so that I could go into labour in the day instead of the night.  Since I figured it probably wouldn't work anyway, I opted not to wait any longer.

In retrospect, perhaps not the greatest idea.

Much to my surprise, it worked!  I started having contractions right in his office.  They continued all evening, and by the middle of the night, I was in full-on labour.  The midwife was over.  The house was cleaned (yes, a pre-requisite for all of my births), the kids were all settled in the basement rooms asleep. 

Hours passed, and although I was dilating, the baby wasn't dropping.  Finally, when my water broke I figured that now the baby would start to drop and things would finish up.  But not so much.  Contractions continued, and I kept dilating until I was almost a 10, but the baby was still high.  He'd only moved enough to start to rest on the back of my cervix.  In about an hour I went from almost a 10 back to a 4 - yes that's right - I WENT BACKWARDS!!!

Around that time I knew that something was up, and that I needed to head into the hospital.  We discussed the swelling of my cervix and decided that a hospital trip with an epidual was needed to calm down the swelling and to re-asses the labour.  My midwives phoned around for availablity at the various hospitals in town.  Here were our options:

1.  Close hospital - 5 min drive - up to an hour wait for epidural
2.  Farther hospital - 20 min drive - immediate pain relief.

Guess where we headed?  By this time the kids were up and wondering why there wasn't a baby yet (as was I).  We left them at home, and called our neighbour to fill her in on the happenings.  We also called my dad and he started the drive down to our house.  Then we took off.  Let me tell you - that drive was NOT pleasant for me or James (although, I'm willing to lay money on the fact that it was worse for me). 

Once at the hospital, the wonderful epidural lady came and worked her magic.  It was delightful.  At one point I told my midwives that I didn't think I was having any more contractions.  They assured me that I was, but that I just couldn't feel a thing.  So nice.  So there we were, just lying in bed waiting for this baby to move.  I could tell that he wasn't stuck like Sam had been, but that something was stopping him from descending.  So we waited for something to change.

Here's what we found out later -  the cord was wrapped around Will's body like a harness.  It was acting like a bungee cord - everytime he would get pushed into the birth canal, the cord would pull him right back up into the uterus. 

During this time, both Will and I were doing fine, but a few hours later, things started to decline - he was getting tired obviously, and his heart rate was dropping.  It kept coming back up, but it was time to head into surgery for another C-section.

What I didn't find out until later, was that just when I got on the table and the anesthesiologist was hooking me all up - Will's heartrate dropped and didn't come back up.  This C-section had now become an emergency. 

This is what I did know:  The surgeon asked if the epidural was good to go, the anesthesiologist said not yet, and then the surgeon said "We can't wait, we have to give her a local and start".  I didn't really like the sound of that.  The anesthesiologist told me not to worry because she had given me a "macho dose" and it should kick in right away.  Which it did.  And it was macho - I couldn't feel or move anything from my neck down for HOURS!

So, back to the surgery, it went well, and Will was born completely healthy. 

William Robert after our 2 dads, July 11, around 10:30am I think...