the c-section

as you all know, i had to have a c-section. the reasoning for that is in another blog post if you're interested in the why. this post is just going to be a run down of the morning up to his birth. there really isn't anything graphic or scary in it, i'm just sharing my experience.

we arrived at the hospital at 5:30am on thursday, august 4 for the birth. they took us back to our room and asked me a bunch of questions before putting my i-v in. let me tell you, that hurt SO bad. seriously! because i couldn't eat or drink after midnight and i had been downing water constantly, i was dehydrated and my veins were not cooperative. they had to prick me 3 times and it just hurt really really bad. the firs 2 times they hit walls and tried to push through them- major ow. the final time it didn't actually hurt, because they did it in the right place.

anyway, enough about what should have been meaningless. the anesthesiologist came in to give me a run down on the spinal. his nurse was SO nice, i loved her. he made me feel fairly comfortable about what was about to take place. then they gave matt his scrubs to change into and started to wheel me into the operating room. we left for the o-r at 7:30.

i was not nervous at all until we got in the o-r. for some reason i just did not expect it to look like a real operating room but it did. i told them all i felt like i was on a medical tv show. it was just so white and sterile looking and everyone had on masks and there were tons of machines and tools- it scared me. the nurse helped me though by holding my hand while they put the novocain in my back to numb is before the spinal. this burned really bad for about 5 seconds and then, i didn't feel anything. i did not feel the spinal AT ALL so it was worth the little bit of burn.

they laid me down on the table and started doing stuff. the nurse kept talking to me to keep me calm, i loved her! then the anesthesiologist told me he also has gilbert's syndrome (a liver syndrome i have) which was neat to talk to him about. every now and then they would ask me "did you feel that?" my answer was always no and then they would say something like "we just pinched you as hard as we could". once i was totally under, they let matt in and they started the cutting.

before we got there, matt said he was not going to watch, he thought it was gross. but then when they said "we're pulling out the head" matt stood up and never sat back down. here are the pictures he took of that moment

pulling out the head! 

here he comes!

he's here!!

everyone warned me that i would feel a ton of pressure but i didn't. i didn't feel it really at all. he came at exactly 8am. he immediately cried and they lowered the sheet to show him to me. we just loved him instantly! matt was really into watching the surgery and even after they had him out, the nurses had to call him over to the baby because he was watching them finish up the surgery. he went over and got to see all the stuff going on like the clean up, measuring (21.5 inches), weighing (10 pounds 3 ounces), dressing, etc. here are some shots of all of that stuff happening:

so here is where it got bad for me. once he was out, i felt terrible. i felt like i was going to throw up/pass out. my hands got all tingly and weird, i just felt horrible. i kept my eyes closed and just tried to relax. matt came over every now and then to check on me and was sweet through it all but the nurse was the best, she calmed me way down. they brought evan over for some photos before matt got to take him back to the room and just be with him while they finished cleaning me up.

even with the bad feeling after they took him out, i would say overall the experience of the c-section wa very positive. i felt no pain (until that night...) and it was super fast and easy. but most importantly, evan arrived perfectly perfect and healthy because of it. here are some additional photos from the o-r: