We would like to welcome our newest addition to the Elson family. He's been a long time coming, and we sure are excited to have him here! Here's the story:
We went to Matsuyama for dinner. The boys were staying the night at Mimi and Grandpa's, because Baker had her interview the next day for Vineyard Christian Middle School. It was a special evening we got to have just with Baker.
We were staying at my parent's house while we were adding onto our house. We finished dinner at 6 pm and ran back by our house to see the construction status and move a wire out of the way. The tile was a little more than halfway done, and expected to be finished tomorrow (Wednesday). Our contractor had updated us that we should have our final inspection next Friday, ready to move in on Saturday. Two days after the scheduled C-Section of Jan. 25.
When we pulled up back at my parent's house, Amy was getting out of the car to go inside when her water broke. And it broke bad.
I ran inside and grabbed our "to-go" bag and the coconut cream pie I made, and ran Baker and the pie over to Mimi and Grandpa's. We then left immediately for Kaiser South Sac. Once Amy’s water broke, the contractions started, and were consistently occurring every 4-8 minutes.
By the time we got to Kaiser, it was 8pm, but several other women had apparently beaten us there.
The doctor told us they like to wait 6-8 hours after eating before performing a C-Section, which meant we were looking at midnight. Later we found out that the other women were in worse shape than us, which put us further down in line.
The midwife came in around 8:30pm to check Amy’s cervix (which was dilated to 2cm). When she checked Amy, Amy's contractions suddenly ramped up in pain, and continued at this escalated pain with each contraction.
By 10pm, contractions were unbearable for Amy. Amy and I were extremely anxious at this point, knowing this was Amy's 4th C-Section, and the level of pain she was in experiencing didn't bode well for possible complications. The nurses seemed to be avoiding our room, as there was nothing they could do to speed things up. At one point, the nurse told us it would be another 2 hours before they were done delivering one of the other babies and the operating room would cleared out and cleaned up. That just wouldn't work for Amy. She needed some medicine to help with the pain, or slow things down, if at all possible. So they gave her 5mg of something that would “take the edge off”. It didn’t work. By 11pm, her contractions were coming every couple of minutes and were an 11 on a scale of 10. We started asking about an epidural or spinal. The spinal Doctor came in and explained our options. At this point, one of the other moms had just delivered twins, that's right, TWINS! in the operating room, and the Doctor said we would be up next... maybe 45 minutes. Could Amy wait for a spinal? NO! She was in great pain and was worried about uterine rupture. It didn't help that this morning she had a "pre-op" appointment with her OBGYN, who had mentioned a rupture as a possibility, which is why they had scheduled her C-Section so early. So much for planning!
So with her pain, and anxiety, Amy needed something now! According to the Doctor on duty, it was between an epidural or spinal. He laide out the pros and cons for each. Epidural might not be as effective or reliable, spinal wouldn’t last as long and would require two poles. This was a surprisingly hard decision, and the doctor wasn’t able to recommend one over the other. It also didn’t help that Amy was having crazy bad contractions every 3 minutes at this point. The good news, just 45 more minutes...
Then, just 30 minutes later, we heard it... "Code C" in room 210. The room next door. We didn't know what "Code C" meant, but we knew one thing, the mom next door just stole our spot in line for the operating room!!! So now the decision was made for us. The anesthesiologist would be unavailable for the next hour, so he needed to come in now and give an Epidural. A spinal would be given too close in time to Amy’s operation time, so that wasn’t feasible.
By 12:15am, the epidural was in, and Amy was finally able to at least accept that she was going to live through this experience.
Then the Doctor came in and wanted to check Amy’s cervix to see how dilated she was... the whole labor and delivery department were in emergency mode trying to constantly assess each of their moms. Amy had dilated to 7cm. It was go time! They had to scramble.
Since the operating rooms weren’t available in labor and delivery, they had to find a plan B. (one was in use, and the other wasn’t cleaned yet from the previous C-Section.) Plan B ended up being using the operating room downstairs (not labor and delivery, we heard later it was ER). So they quickly prepped Amy and took her down, (and gave me the smallest gown to wear.)
We’ll it turned out they created problems for me, as though worrying about Amy wasn't enough. The gown they gave me wasn’t big enough, and they didn’t give me any sort of instructions. So I just put it on over the clothes I was wearing. I had my long sleeve shirt and jeans were sticking out of the gown at every end. When the nurse returned, she told me my long sleeves couldn’t show under the shirt sleeve gown they gave me... so I quickly took off my long sleeve shirt and put the shirt sleeve gown back on. Then the nurse looked at me and decided the whole outfit was too small, so they went to find me a new one. I ended up with one that looked almost like a hazmat suit! I was freaking out a little, worried about Amy. I didn't like being away from her for any length of time. But now I was ready, hazmat suit, and all. They brought me down to the operating room where Amy was on the table ready to go. And was she ready... Fully dilated! I think this is the only child that she's made it to full dilation.
January 17, 12:45am - things were moving along and they were getting close to getting the baby out. But they hit a snag, this baby’s head was wedged in just like Baker was, and didn’t want to come out. They worked a little harder and finally got him out. They let me look over the curtain to see if it was a boy or girl. At 12:55am, we had a baby boy. And I cried for at least the fourth time in my life as I was able to tell Amy we had a baby boy! (So maybe I’ve cried a few more times in my life)
Here's the details:
(Name still to be determined, Amy likes Mathew Joshua Elson. I'm not too fond of it. We'll see)
8lbs 7.3 oz
19-1/2”
Postscript
next came the usual stuff, they put the baby on Amy’s chest for some skin on skin contact, they took some pictures of us with the baby, then they whisked the baby and me to the nursery for measurements, shots, eye goop and a heater (I even got to cut the umbilical cord... well, I got to cut it shorter than when they had originally cut it, which was still a first) while they sewed Amy back up. We all reconvened in the room at 2:15am.
Oh, and the doctor said Amy’s uterus had torn when they did the C-Section and that she had to spend some time sewing it back up. (A different doctor the next day explained it as a balloon that the whole thing splits open from one tiny cut. The location they generally pick for the incision is the thinnest part of the uterus) They said it was a good thing it was a C-Section so they could see it, otherwise if it was natural, it probably would have ruptured and they might not have known about it and it could have been been awhile before they figured it out and that would have been bad... so the Doctor spent a considerable amount of time lecturing/quizzing Amy about birth control and how to use it to make sure she doesn’t get pregnant again. This is in addition to the lectures I had already gotten from her OBGYN when I would go to her appointments with her.
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