It's an Eloise! Part II

(You can read Part I here)

For a second I thought maybe she was joking, but then I realized everything was wet. I think she was almost as surprised as me and Cody, she said this had only ever happened one other time. Oops. “Well, today is the day!” She checked to see if the coast was clear in the hallway and then sneakily escorted me to the bathroom to get cleaned up.

Cody was so excited. He rushed back to our apartment to pick up Chanel and gather some things for me. After I got cleaned up, a nice lady came and wheeled me over to the hospital. I always thought I’d feel like in the movies where they start screaming and breathing like a dog as everyone rushes them to the hospital, but the wheelchair ride over was surprisingly relaxing. Everyone stared at me as we rolled by. I kind of felt like a celebrity.

It was probably around noon once I got checked in and set up in a room. The nurse handed me one of those comfy hospital gowns and told me to get changed, leave another pee present, and she’d be back in 5 min. I had no problem leaving another gift, but I may or may not have struggled with the hospital gown. Don’t tell anyone, but I finally ended up just walking out and asking the nurse if I had it on backwards (you’ll be proud to know that I did not). With the hospital gown fiasco behind me, I got hooked up to a few monitors, filled out some paperwork, and waited for Cody to get there as I happily ate my flavored ice chips (which by the way were delicious).

Cody and Chanel came and took a million paparazzi pics to make sure everything was documented and kept me company. They even brought balloons! So fun. Every once in a while the nurse would come in to see how I was doing and check the monitors. Things were going pretty great.

One of their paparazzi pics 

Chanel keeping me company 

The balloons 

Then the nurse came in looking a little concerned. She’d been keeping an eye on the monitors they had outside the room and had noticed Eloise’s heart rate kept dropping down and then coming back up. This time, it had dropped down to 80bpm and wasn’t coming back up. She explained that sometimes changing positions can help, so she quickly put my bed back further and gave me some oxygen. There was still no change. The nurse said that if the baby’s heart rate didn’t go back up soon, they may have to do an emergency C-section. I said a silent prayer and hoped for the best. A few minutes later Eloise’s heart rate was back up and going strong. I felt very blessed.

Because Eloise’s heart rate had dropped so low, they wanted to put an internal monitor in just to make sure they caught any irregularities. A study was being done using the same internal monitors the hospital would be putting in, so I volunteered to participate (they told me I'd get a free box of diapers out of it. Holler).

One of the research ladies doing the study came in to get me all hooked up. At this point I had started having pretty bad contractions, but I wasn't sure when I should ask for an epidural. The research lady wasn’t going anywhere, so I figured I’d just make her tell me what to do. "Excuse me, when do you get an epidural? Do you think it's too soon? Should I wait? Is there some kind of etiquette for asking? What do you think?" She told me if I was planning on getting an epidural I might as well get it now because there was no sense in suffering through pain. Bless you, research lady.

The anesthesiologist was called in in 0.2 seconds and got right down to business. Cody came and held my hand. "Ok, now bring your knees up to your chest." Yeah right guy. I was so big and swollen I couldn’t even get my knees at a 45 degree angle. I shimmied my legs around and tried to curl up into a ball anyway. Then the anesthesiologist told me again to bring my knees up to my chest. Um, excuse me? I already did that. Cody tried to help shove my legs up further, bless his heart, but it wasn’t working. The anesthesiologist must’ve realized this, so he started.

Right as the needle went in I had the worst contraction I'd had yet. Cody said it went really high on the monitor. Totally awesome. The anesthesiologist kept asking me if it felt like the needle was to the left, the right, or the middle. I was pretty sure I was paralyzed/dying/having a stroke, so I just told him I didn’t know. He wiggled it around some more and then it was all over. He said I could push the button anytime I felt like I needed more medicine and then left as quickly as he had come.

Even though it hurt like a beezy for a minute, my epidural was the bomb. The only discomfort I felt the whole time I was in labor was in my legs. I kept complaining about how numb/tingly/achy they were. At the time it seemed like the end of the world, but looking back it sounds pretty ridiculous. I probably had Cody, my mom, and the nurses rearrange my legs a million times to try and make them less achy. Anyways, with my epidural all set, it was just a matter of waiting until I had progressed enough to start pushing.