At about 10am the nurses started Christine on the IV drip for the second part of the induction process. They warned again that it could take a while to work, the main nurse guessed it could be about 24 hours before it was time to give birth! About this time Christine's water broke and she was about 1 cm dialated.
It wasn't long before Christine started to feel contractions on a fairly consistent basis. They were happening fairly frequently (about every two or three minutes) and Tylenol worked for a little while, but soon Christine was wanted her blessed epidural. Especially knowing that this could go on for 24 hours or more! The nurse said that getting to 4 cm would take a while, then about a cm an hour until 10 cm, then an hour or two of pushing. So we started thinking that we could have our little boy that day!
Once she got the epidural, life was once again happy. She got that at about 1:30 and she was 4 cm dialated at the time. So we were now thinking the 9:00-10:00 time frame. But since Christine is an over-achiever, by 5:45 she was already 9 cm dialated!
It was also near this time that Christine's dad had to leave to go get her mom at the airport. Her flight was scheduled to land about 8:00, so we figured they'd get back to the hospital around 9:00. We had thought that she would make it in time, but it was starting to look tight.
By 7:30 Christine was fully dialated, but they decided to wait longer for Zach to start dropping on his own so Christine didn't have to do as much work. 8:30 came and went, 9:00, 9:30, 10:00... Finally at about 10:30, they decided it was time. Luckily, Christine's parents had made it back by around 9:30!
So at 10:42, Christine pushed for the first time. It seemed like she was doing pretty well, since about 20 minutes in, one of the nurses asked if I wanted to see Zach's head while Christine was pushing! And after just 36 minutes out Zach entered the world, with a very healthy set of lungs!
They got him cleaned up and tended to the new Mom, and before we knew it he was having his first bottle at about 12:30 am. Christine was feeling kind of bad (they had put her on magnesium to help prevent siezures from her high blood pressure and the side effects are apparently pretty bad), so they let her recover for a while before moving us to our post-partum room. We all fell asleep (Zach fell asleep in my lap) before they came in at 3:00 am to move us. By the time we made it upstairs, met with the new nurse that would be helping Christine out, fed, and changed Zach, it was a little after 4:30 before we hit the bed. Or the recliner in my case.
A pretty exhausting day, but well worth it!
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