Dresden! The birth.

I promise to post this blog no matter where it ends. I think I have about half an hour before my little man wakes up, and there's so much to say.

First! I gave birth to Dresden Luther Merritt at 3:27pm on July 15, 2011. He weighed 7lbs 6oz and was 19.5in long. He's perfect. I keep looking at him and thinking to myself, "Who knew I could make something so GOOD?"

Here's how it started. I'd been feeling so ill for about a week and a half, and after four straight nights of sleeplessness and intense nausea, I fell apart and made Dallas come home from work to be with me--something I swore I would only do if my contractions were regular or if my water broke. He came home and we went to the hospital for the second time this week. We checked in at about 9am on Thursday, and spent the day being pumped full of fluids and...I can't remember what else they did. My doctor (I'll get to her!) had appointments all day and couldn't see us until that evening, around 7pm I guess. Anyhow, she said my blood work came back slightly off that morning and had continued to decline throughout the day. I'm not sure about the specifics, but I think my platelets were low and my liver functions were high. She said it looked to her like I was developing HELPP syndrome, which I will eventually have time to look into? Maybe? She said it was basically a variation of preeclampsia and that she strongly recommended inducing. Just last week, she had insisted that everything was going well and that she didn't see any reason to think I wouldn't carry to full term or beyond and that she wouldn't support an induction until I passed the 41st week. I knew how she felt about inductions and I trusted she wouldn't arbitrarily decide it was time for my baby to be born. So I was induced.

The plan was for to insert a cervix softener to prepare my body for birth and then begin Pitocin on Friday morning, hoping to give birth sometime in the wee hours of Saturday morning. But my body and the Cervidil had other plans. I could feel my contractions start to change VERY soon, and four hours after the decision to induce was made, my water broke and I was 3cm. By 8am on Friday morning, I was 8cm. BUT THEN! I stalled. I sat at 8cm for hours, coming very close to a c-section two or three times. Dresden's heart rate was showing signs of distress. Poor Dallas went to get a few things from the apartment and came back to my room to find me like this:

Glamorous, right? Don't I make a lovely laboring woman? He was overwhelmed at the idea of a c-section and having to choose between letting the nurses take away our baby or leaving my side on the operating table.

But Dresden consistently recovered well, and I was able to deliver vaginally. I was fully dilated by 1:00 and started pushing shortly after that.

There are so many specifics I want to eventually get to, but now is not the time. I mostly wanted to explain something that I've been needing to say ever since this moment. Giving birth is traumatic. Dresden recovered fairly quickly, and of the four babies born that day, he was the only one who didn't have to go to the NICU. But when he was born? My heart shattered, and I'm still working on reassembling it. He was blue and limp and silent and the cord was around his neck. My doctor took him out and put him on "the landing pad" on my chest. I know it was only for a second, but I think that second has been the worst moment of my whole life. It took SO LONG for them to get him pinked up and responsive. His one minute APGAR was a 3 (out of 10). By five minutes, it had gone up to a 9, so I know they fixed him up quickly, but those first seconds and the minutes that followed? I can't think about it without getting hysterical.

We are so, so lucky.

I'll post again eventually. So much to say. And no time for editing.