The Sanders Family Chronicles: November 2014

Levi Joseph Sanders was born @ 10:57AM on October 23, 2014 weighing in at 7 lb 4 oz and measuring 18.5 inches long. He is such a blessing and we couldn't be happier. We were lucky to have a smooth delivery and fairly smooth hospital stay.

Luckily David documented our delivery experience in his journal so I can recap it here and have his birth story forever.

Weds. 22 Oct 2014

"Today's the day. We ate a delicious lunch at Killen's BBQ, went to one last doctor appointment and waited for the call to go to the hospital. They told us to come in at 7:30 pm. We packed the car, kissed Sully & Lady goodbye and hit the road.

We got to the hospital and lugged our stuff to room 28. This will be where the magic happens. Michael, Jeannette and Mark came up to see us around 10, just after Gloria got the cervidil and dextrose drip at 100ml/hr. They later left and it was just the two of us again.

The cervidil has caused some pretty strong contractions. By 10:30, we were hungry - we last ate at 11:45 AM. Luckily, Gloria was allowed 2 sugar free popsicles at around 12:15AM. She also drank some Isopure protein. Hopefully that gives her strength to deliver baby Levi with greater ease tomorrow.

At 1:10AM (10/23) they wanted to put in a second IV and give Gloria insulin based on a blood sugar reading of 91. Fearing a potential low, we said 'No thanks, check back later.'

It is now 1:30AM. I gave Gloria my blanket and obtained a hospital blanket. Going to try to get some sleep on this little couch."

Thurs. 23 Oct 2014

"Gloria's pain from contractions became very intense at around 3:30AM. She was given something for the pain. I didn't go back to sleep. At 5AM, the cervidil was removed and she was still dilated at about 2 cm.

They started Pitocin just before 6AM and Gloria requested her epidural shortly afterward. The epidural was successfully administered at around 6:30AM. This brought immediate relief. I was kicked out of the room which I hated, but was comforted by the Doctor saying 'Not to worry, I'm craaaazy good at this.' He said he would vote for Levi if he ever ran for President.

Dr. O arrived around 8AM and we got good news - 6 cm dilated. Family is here now. We're very excited!

They gave Gloria oxygen at around 9:07AM in order to oxygenate the placenta. Also, because blood glucose was a 130, they started insulin at 1 unit/hr at 9:20."

This is where David's story ended because everything happened so fast after this. I believe it was around 8AM or so when they stopped the Pitocin. They said I didn't need it because my body was doing the work on it's own.The nurses were impressed and when they told the other nurses that I didn't need the Pitocin they sarcastically remarked "she's delivering a baby without Pitocin? That can't happen." I was happy to not need the extra hormones.

We were expecting Dr. O to come back in around 10 to check on me (she was doing a c-section that morning also). At around 10AM, my nurse Corissa check me again. She said "you're at a 10" and winked at me. I thought she was trying to get a rise out of David because she winked but she was serious! David immediately notified my mom and Laura to come into the room. Corissa made me do a practice push to see how effective my pushing was before calling in Dr. O. After 1 practice push, she said I was good to go and pushing was great so she called in the dr.

Dr. O came in around 10:30ish. We waited for my next set of contractions and I started pushing. I had Corissa holding my right leg, David holding my left (which was pretty dead from the epidural) and my mom and Laura were behind David with the cameras. With each push I just kept hearing David and Dr. O say they could see his head crowning and that I was making progress. At one point Laura asked me if I was ok and I said "yes, I'm ok, I'm just focusing." When I wasn't focusing too hard, everyone had me laughing which helped push Levi out. I think I did about 12 pushes in the 20 or so minutes from the time I started and he was out.

I won't ever forget hearing Dr. O telling me "Gloria, LOOK" because I had my eyes closed from focusing. I opened them and she was holding up my little boy who was staring straight at me. David cut the cord and they put him on my chest. I was freaking out before I ever started pushing bc I had what I thought was a sports bra on. I wanted to make sure I could do the immediate skin to skin contact so I told the nurses to just cut off my bra in the thick of the excitement. One of the nurses realized it was really a nursing bra though so it was fine, but that was a funny moment.

After all the excitement toned down they wanted me to try to nurse Levi. He was doing well right away with rooting but wouldn't latch. He was breathing pretty rapidly so the nurses decided to do all his vitals at that time. They checked his blood sugar and it was pretty low (turns out it wasn't as low as initially thought bc the glucometer was giving an incorrect reading). They took him up to the NICU to get him checked out in more detail. I wanted David to go with him and he never left his side.

They put him on a glucose drip to bring his blood sugars up and were monitoring his breathing and heart rate. I wanted to see him so badly but it took awhile to get me from Labor and Delivery to a Postpartum room. The NICU was demanding that I feed him to help his blood sugars so I had to pump colostrum and take it to the NICU to syringe feed him.

This continued for our entire hospital stay. They kept him in the NICU from delivery until Saturday when we finally left. We had to wait for his blood sugars to stabilize and be in a normal range on their own without the glucose drip. He was released by Dr. McGrann (his pediatrician) on Saturday morning but we had to wait for the pediatric surgeon to arrive to perform the circumcision. We were becoming very antsy to get home. The surgeon didn't show up until 4:15PM that day!!! When he arrived he told us "don't worry, this should only take 10 minutes." We assured him not to rush, that we had to pack up our stuff in our car and to take his time.

After we got our car packed, we headed back to the NICU to get our little boy and bring him home. We changed him into his going home outfit and they wheeled us out to our car. We couldn't wait to introduce him to the puppies and to let our family hold him. No one had been able to hold him yet besides David and me since he was in the NICU.

Here are some pics from the big day!