After a night of little sleep and lots of contractions, the nurse hung another bag of pitocin on my IV pole about 6:00 Thursday morning. Contractions intensified pretty quickly, and we began anticipating the arrival of Mr. Hudson sometime that day. Doctors in my practice take 24 hour call shifts, so the doctor from day #1 headed home about 7:30 and a new doctor arrived. He came to see us about 9:00 and checked to see if we were making any progress. 26 hours into labor, the answer was a resounding “no.” The doctor looked at my chart, reminded me that I had given birth to a big baby before and that he was confident I was going to be able to deliver this one.

Throughout the day, contractions steadily increased, but progress remained hard to come by. By about 1:00, my body and spirit were both right weary. I was hurting and exhausted…and no closer to a baby than I’d been 32 hours before. Up to that point, we had been moving without any kind of pain medications. The medical folks were nervous that pain meds might actually stop contractions because no one knew if my body had not really taken over the labor from the drugs, and I wasn’t willing to risk trekking backwards. However, realizing the deterioration of my physical and emotional state-of-well-being, the nurse and my husband decided it was time to to seriously talk about some relief. The nurse injected some Nubian into my IV and within a few minutes I was beginning to feel better and to get quite sleepy. I dozed on an off for an hour or so while contractions continued, not being impeded by medicine at all. Suddenly I felt and heard a pop that I could not quite identify…until I realized that my water had finally broken. Within about 5 hours, I progressed to being fully dilated, and the doctor finally decided it was time to push. The next two hours were, well…fruitless. The doctor could see Hudson’s head, and he could tell that there was room for his head to move through the birth canal. He believed Hudson to be face up, another reason labor had been so “fun.” What no one could figure out was why he was not moving down at all. At one point, there was some talk about turning down the amount of medicine I was getting through the epidural so I could better feel when to push. Thankfully, the doctor decided I was pushing correctly and that wouldn’t be necessary. Finally, an hour and fifty minutes after beginning that stage of the process, the doctor explained it was time to make some decisions. He feared that, though Hudson’s head would fit through the birth canal, he might have super-broad shoulders that were getting “stuck” and would not move through. He explained that one of the worst delivery complications is to deliver the head of a baby whose shoulders are then stuck. Believing this outcome to be a very real possibility, he felt it was time to prep for a c-section. Exhausted and frustrated, but realizing there wasn’t a real great choice, Jerry and I agreed.

In a very short time, we were in the operating room and surgery began. I don’t remember a lot about the surgery itself…not because I was asleep or even that out of it, but because the anesthesia made me quite sick. The nurse anesthetist gave me something for the nausea, and I concentrated real hard on not throwing up (what, I don’t know…since at that point I had only eaten one meal in 48 hours). I do remember hearing the doctor’s first words as Hudson was finally pulled from my body, “man, this little fella’s going to have quite a headache, but he’s a fighter.” Quickly a team of nurses began to suction fluid and assess our little boy, but I heard him cry. As the doctor worked to sew me up, I heard the sweet sounds of a newborn not far away. Unlike when giving birth to Maddie, I wasn’t able to hold him right away, which was hard, but I knew we were going to be okay.

Apparently, Hudson was positioned “brow-first.” He was neither exactly face up nor face down, but he was turned with his face toward my pelvis. For the two hours I pushed, I pushed his face against my bone. Not only was his head bruised pretty badly, but there was the indention of my bone across his mouth. In fact, his mouth was so swollen that the nurses were initially concerned that his palate might not be closed. They called Jerry over to explain these concerns and to let him know that they had given him some oxygen because he was grunting and not really crying. However, his oxygen saturation stayed at 99-100%, so it was pretty quickly determined that the grunting was not an issue (after all, he had been through 40 hours of labor and a c-section too…he was exhausted himself). Jerry was able to take him to the nursery as the doctor finished up in the operating room.

A few hours, a little morphine and a sweet newborn snuggle later, all was well. Everyone was healthy, happy and falling more deeply in love every second.

…one final chapter coming soon…

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