King Louis* is Born

It has been a whirlwind of a week. I have tried to organize my thoughts about Louis' birth as best as possible (given the fact that this is the only baby book the kids-did I just say kids??-are getting), so I feel like it has to be good. We got home from the hospital Friday afternoon and I have tried on about 17 occasions to write this post. Hopefully it will happen before Louis is one.

The week before Louis' birthday was a little crazy because I was sick, sick, sick with the cold from hell that never went away. S was going to come over and take pictures of us as a family of three on Saturday (because I have none of my enormous pregnant belly), but I literally felt like a big, giant pile of crap so we didn't do it. I was actually paranoid we would get to the hospital only to have them turn us away because I was too ill. I was pretty much up the entire night before with a horrible hacking cough and generalized anxiety about how close to actual chaos our lives were about to become.

We were instructed to call the hospital at 6:00 am on Monday morning to make sure that we were still on schedule. The hospital is about a half hour away. BVZ was convinced we were going to be bumped, so decided not to take a shower until we got the green light. I am not sure why I permitted him to do this. Temporary lapse in judgment, I suppose. Needless to say, they told us to be there at 7:00 and we got there about 7:20. Let's not get into the details of what went down between 6:00 and 7:20, but suffice it to say we got there, got admitted, and got taken back to the pre-op area.

This would be when BVZ decided it was appropriate to take my one and only belly shot. Um, thanks.

Our two labor and delivery nurses were awesome. Because Stanford is a teaching hospital, most of the staff come in twos-an experienced person and a resident/student. The more inexperienced person gets to attempt procedures while the experienced one looks on. Usually this is totally fine by me because I actually think residents and students are way more conscientious about wanting to do a good job, ask more questions, give more thorough exams, etc. Our newer nurse was a bit gun shy but relaxed when she saw we were pretty mellow people. It did take her 4 tries to get the catheter in my hand and holy moly it hurt.

We were scheduled to go back at 8:30, but my OB was attending a delivery down the hall that was taking a little longer than expected. Everyone was getting nervous and a little antsy, especially me (duh). They gave me an anti-nausea drug through the hand catheter and it made me sweaty and anxious and my mood went from jovial to slightly grumpy. The nurse from the other delivery kept coming back and telling our nurses, 'she's almost there, like 4 more pushes.' She must have come back and said this at least 3 times. Finally, on the third time I said, 'can someone please tell that bitch to push a little harder!' It definitely broke the tension and by about 9:10 we were finally ready to go to the OR.

Now, all of this time I had been thinking how much better a scheduled c-section would be because it would be in a calm, controlled environment and I would know what to expect. Last time, it was almost midnight, I was a hot mess, and slept through the good majority of it. Earlier this week I talked to a friend who had been through a similar experience (emergency c-section the first time, then a scheduled one the second), and she said that it surprised her how freaky the whole thing was because she was aware and cognizant of everything going on. Last time, because I had an epidural already in place, they put the anesthesia through that and I didn't even know what was going on.

This time I had to sit on the side of the bed with my back rounded while an attending and resident put in the spinal block. That was the WORST effing part of the whole thing. The first pinch felt like a bee sting, but then I could feel the needle moving around inside my back trying to get the medicine in the right place. It didn't necessarily hurt, but I felt like I might crawl out of my own skin. It didn't help that the attending was talking the resident through the whole thing, showing her how to do it. A catheter in my hand is one thing to get wrong, a spinal block in my back is a whole different story. But pretty soon, I was totally numb from the chest down and being layed out on the table.

It seemed to take FOREVER to get everything set up and the longer I lay there, the more congested I got. I was terrified that I would cough and cause the scalpel to slip so not coughing is what I focused all of my energy on. Turns out I coughed a couple of times but it didn't matter a bit because nothing moved. I was getting really anxious by this point because I couldn't breathe through my nose and I just wanted the whole thing over and done with. There was a lot of tugging and pulling and pushing and moving my insides around and then my doctor pulled him out and he immediately started screaming. She poked his head up above the curtain so we could get a glimpse of him and then he got taken to the little baby area to get checked out.


Scored an 8 and then a 9 on his Apgar's. Weighed in at 8 lbs., 4 ozs. and 20.5 inches long. He has huge feet.

I got to see him for just a minute before BVZ went with him to the nursery for a bath and a full check up.

It took a LONG time to get put back together. Like, about 45 minutes. Turns out that my cervix was still completely sealed shut and Louis' head was still wedged up high above my pubic bone (which I was surprised about because I felt like he was so low). This reaffirmed our decision to do a repeat c-section versus VBAC though, as my OB surmised that given his size he would have run into the exact same problem that Norah did and we would have ended up in the same place. I closed my eyes and tried to think happy thoughts while I was being worked on and tried my best not think about my guts getting tossed around. Finally they were done and the head of the bed was raised, which immediately solved my congestion problem and I was thankful to be able to breathe again.

Eventually I was moved to a stretcher while still in the OR, which involved the nurses 'rolling' me, since I was still paralyzed from the chest down. I made a joke about how I was like the Half Ton Man getting barrel rolled in and out of bed, which they appreciated. Turns out, the hospital was so busy that day there were no recovery rooms available, so I had to recover right there in the OR. I got the most glorious thing in the world-ice chips and worked on wiggling my toes.

I didn't get to see Louis or BVZ for another hour and a half because they got a little back logged in the nursery. Louis looked great, save for the fact that he looked tongue tied (more about that later). Finally, I got them both and we got transferred to our SHARED recovery room (again, more about that nightmare later).

And that's how it went down.

*Lots of people have asked how we are pronouncing Louis. It is pronounced like "LEWIS." One of the reasons we like the name so much is because we like all the possible permutations. I call him Louis or Louie, BVZ calls him King Louis the 16th or Lou, and Norah calls him "my baby" or "little buddy." She also has called him Funkhouser a couple of times. She has asked him a handful of times when Funkhouser is going to be born. I tell her that he has been born and his name is Louis. She then pats my stomach (which to her credit still looks like there is a 6 month old fetus in there) and asks, "then what is THIS baby's name?" Thanks kid, you do a lot for my self esteem.