Shen Family Adventures: Eli's "Birth Day"

It's been three weeks since that eventful day that Peter and I will never forget.

I had my last prenatal checkup on 1/12, Tueday, a day after Eli's official due date. The doctor told me that I was not quite 2cm dilated and 75% effaced - not much progress from my prior visit. The doctor briefly discussed with me the option of getting induced the following Monday. However, she said she wouldn't be surprised if Eli comes on his own before then as first-time mom typically doesn't have much progress in labor until the baby is about to come. I had my doubts. That very same night, Peter and I watched Robin Hood and I fell asleep in the middle of it, as usual. Half a hour later, about 10:30pm, I woke up to this lower-abdominal pain, similar to menstrual pain. Little did I know at that time that short and sweet nap would be my last deep, care-free sleep for a very long time! Peter and I stayed up till 2am timing my contractions, which were about 20 minutes apart, excited about the prospect of meeting our baby the next day. I woke up again at 4am due to the contraction pain. Then, my contractions became 15 minutes apart. Around 5:30am, my contractions went away for a couple hours. I can't tell you how bummed I was! I was so ready to pop Eli out. Luckily, the contractions became regular again around 9:30am. Around 1pm, my contractions became 5 minutes apart, which is the threshold for admission into labor and delivery. We patiently waited half a hour, making sure that it was the real deal before we headed to the hospital. But then as soon as we got into the car, my contraction stopped again. What in the world?! When we got to the labor and delivery, I didn't expect that they would keep us. When the nurse announced that they were going to officially admit us into the labor and delivery room after a couple hours of evaluation, I was so excited that I started crying. (Ok, maybe it was the contractions talking!)

I have to say that one of the hardest thing about giving birth is no food or drink during labor! I wish I ate more before we headed over to the hospital!! I was so hungry that I begged Peter to sneaked in some chocolate for me and he bluntly refused!!! Peter going to Wendy's to grab some dinner definitely didn't help >_< the anesthesiologist (the miracle worker as I called him) came in and gave me the epidural. Getting epidural was probably the most painful part of the labor. While the doctor was injecting drugs into my spine, my right legs got "electrocuted" twice and flew out of whack. After epidural, it was heaven. I was able to read and enjoy some college basketball with Peter. While Peter was out running "a couple errands", the doctor came in and broke my water to speed things up a bit. After they broke my water, the doctor and the nurses thought there was a good chance that we would have the baby before midnight. However, Peter really didn't like the idea of Eli having his birthday on the 13th because Friday the 13th and all. (Are you kidding me? Never knew that Peter was that superstitious...) Well, he got his wish alright. The nurse (Becky) came in to flip me (so that the pain medication could flow evenly between my two legs) and noticed that the baby's heart rate dropped from 150 to 60. She somewhat panicked and started doing bunch of things and paging people without explaining to us what was going on. All of a sudden, 5 or 6 nurses rushed in and gave me a shot on the arm. Turned out that one of my contractions lasted two minutes long and since my water already broke, my uterus was suffocating Eli. The shot they gave me was to relax my uterus. I think that slowed the progress of my labor quite a bit. I wasn't fully dilated until close to 2am. Then I pushed for close to 2 hours. I can't imagine going through all these without Peter. I was all worried that he would pass out for the blood and all, but he did quite well. In fact, he coached me through the whole pushing process. What can I say..I've got the best hubby ever! As soon as Eli came out (3:59am), they put him right on top of my chest so I could hold him. I was so overcome with emotions that I totally did not see Peter cutting Eli's umbilical cord! After the nurses cleaned him up, I held Eli skin to skin for a couple hours. During that period, I sweated like nuts. I thought they had the heater all the way up. Turned out that Eli was running a fever! Our nurse acted promptly and sent him straight to the nursery for observation. They were worried that he had contracted group-b strep bacteria from the birth canal.

I didn't get to see him again until about 8am that morning. (Felt like a life time..) Man, during those few hours, that little guy went through a ton of ordeal! They first put in an IV line on the back of his hand, but then he pulled it out!! So the nurses had no option but to start the IV on his head. Yes, ON HIS HEAD. Unfortunately, for some reason, the IV wasn't flowing on that side so they had to poke him on the other side of his head. To make it worse, the doctor did a spinal tab on him to extract some spinal fluid for a culture sample. They wanted to make sure that he didn't get meningitis if he did contract group-b strep bacteria on his way out. It broke my heart that Eli had to go through these all by himself. Peter and I were totally unaware of any of these until after the fact. Sniff sniff...