Coming home

Well, this has been an exciting week for sure. We are glad to be back in the comfort of our own home, and are excited to have baby Gabe. Let me fill you in on some of the details of the past week.

Rochelle has had pregnancy induced hypertension for the last few weeks. About a week before she had the baby, it was bad enough that they put her on strict bed rest, but not bad enough that they felt that they needed to do an emergency induction. That said, they planned an induction for Monday the 7th, and had her continue on bed rest. Rochelle was not wanting to be induced. We were hoping to go natural (using hypno-birthing), and being induced makes that very difficult. So we hoped that she would go into labor on her own before that time, but it was not to be. Sunday night she had a bit of a false labor, but come Monday morning, we were on our way to the hospital for the induction.

We arrived there around 7:40 in the morning, and she was hooked up to the pitocin by 8:30. For a while she continued to do the hypnobirthing techniques that we had learned, but as the contractions got stronger, she started to feel sharp pains in her back. The baby was turned, which caused Rochelle some heavy back labor. After about five hours of trying to relax and breathe, we decided that it was time for the epidural. The midwife was recommending the epidural on the account of Rochelle's high blood pressure, and the back labor was beginning to be unendurable. Rochelle was restricted to laying on her left or right sides, and was forbidden (again because of her blood pressure) from using other positions that might help reposition the baby and increase her comfort. So she got the epidural, and pretty soon was able to relax again. Hours came and went and Rochelle slowly progressed to completion. At times it seemed that she all but stopped progressing, but the doctor and midwife were patient and thankfully were not too anxious to do a c-section. It was determined that the baby was pretty nearly stuck- with his head turned sideways, a position more difficult to get out than if the baby were posterior (facing up) So around 11:30 at night they decided that it was finally time to get this baby out. He wasn't coming from pushing alone, and so it was going to be forceps or a c-section. The The doctor we had is very good with forceps, and decided that it was worth a go. He was able to turn the baby's head just enough that he thought that a c-section wouldn't be necessary. So everyone gathered around, and with some heaving pushing by Rochelle, and heavy pulling by the doctor, they finally got the baby out. Once out, we could see that the baby was fairly large, 8 lbs. 6 oz. We were grateful that the doctor was able to get him out with just forceps, even though the birth itself was far from what we had planned.

The baby was healthy from the start. He had quite a big cone head, but within a couple of hours, it was barely noticeable. He also had some bruising from the forceps around his right eye and his left ear. Otherwise, he was a happy and healthy baby.

Rochelle was also a bit battered and bruised from the forceps, but the doctor and midwife were more concerned about her high blood pressure that didn't seem to be reducing at all, which should have happened within a day of giving birth. So they had her stay an extra night at the hospital. She has been quite sore, but has been recovering steadily. We are all home now, and doing well.

Thursday afternoon Rochelle's mom came down from Portland and has been staying with us ever since. She's staying for a total of 10 days with us. We are grateful for her company as well as the advice and help she has given us already. We're glad she'll be here a while longer.

Below are some pictures. I'm sorry they took so long to get here, but we have had much to do, and are adjusting to our new lack of sleep. ;-) Thanks for your well wishes everybody. We are grateful for your support.