Tuesday October 26, 2010 I went to my regularly scheduled doctors appointment at 4pm. I was 40 weeks and 4 days pregnant and my doctor said that there were no signs of Taylor coming anytime soon so she scheduled an induction for Saturday the 30th. I left the appointment sad and for the 1st time disappointed that Taylor had not arrived yet. I came home and had dinner with Gus and by 10 pm I was starving again so I ate dinner for the 2nd time (this was the first time I was actually starving during my pregnancy). After a few tears of sadness that I was going to have to be induced we went to bed unbeknownst to us that it was our last night as a family of two.
Around 12:30 am I awoke with a funny feeling that something was going to happen, I rushed to the bathroom and my water broke! I woke Gus up and we got ourselves out the door with a quick stop at Del Taco for a 3rd dinner on the way to the hospital. We arrived at 2:15am and we were admitted to Labor and Delivery. I was dilated to a 3 and the nurse was shocked that I had not felt one pain! Around 3:30 am we were moved to our room and Grandpa and Grandma arrived to wait out the night with us. I was started on Pitocin so my contractions became more and more apparent and Grandma Nicky arrived to wait the day with us as well. At 7:45 am I got my epidural and it only worked on my right side, we had to have the anesthesiologist come back and reposition it so it would be in the proper place to numb me on both sides. As we watched as my contractions got stronger and I laid my head back to get some rest. The midwife told Gus that it would be about 6 hours or more so he laid down for a nap too.
This is where the timing gets fuzzy for me, the following events happened between 9:30am and 10:30 am but they felt like 10 minutes in my mind. The midwife became concerned that Taylor was in distress because on the monitors his heart rate was slowing with each contraction. They switched me to an internal monitor so they could get a more accurate reading of his heart rate. At this time I was dilated to a 5, so we had a ways to go! They turned up the volume on his heartbeat so we could hear it very loudly in the room. With each contraction I heard the beeping slow and I started to panic a bit. I asked Gus for his Ipod to listen to something other than his heart slowing so I could stay calm. As tears streamed down my face and I listened to the Black Eyed Peas (I had to have something… anything that wasn’t sappy that would make me cry) mom came over and prayed for Taylor and me. After seeing his heart rate drop below the chart for the third time mom went out to speak with the midwife because she was very concerned that with every contraction the beeping became slower and slower and then stopped and we all knew what that meant. The midwife was watching the monitors as well and my mom told her that she needed to move NOW and I was all right with doing whatever needed to be done even if it was a C-Section to keep Taylor safe.
The midwife came in with 2 nurses and I knew it was getting bad because this was the 1st time more than 1 person was coming in to see me. They tried to re-hydrate me and when that didn’t work they gave me oxygen and then flipped me to my left side, then very quickly to my right because that only made it worse. They gave me a shot in my arm to help slow my contractions which didn’t work and they told everyone but Gus to leave the room. The surgeon came in, looked over the charts and very quickly said they had to get him out right away. She called the operating room as they slammed the sides up on my bed and ran me out of the room. It felt like I was on a medical drama on TV as they ran me down the hall and I saw different faces appear above my bed as they ran. I heard them tell Gus to follow us and they wheeled me into a white room. Within seconds the room filled with people gowning up and I was frantically looking left and right for Gus. As they were prepping me I was trying to get a hold of the situation mentally and I am almost positive I saw them start to cut me open and then a sheet went over my head and there were 2 doctors in my face talking to me, then they put me under general anesthesia and I was out. It all happened so fast that they wouldn’t let Gus in the operating room because there was no time to get him changed and six minutes later the midwife came out to tell everyone that the baby was OK. He had been completely entangled in the cord and it was wrapped around his neck 2 times and every time I contracted his heart stopped. She said his heart rate was around 7, and the doctor said "I've never seen it get that low." Taylor arrived safe and sound at 10:34 am on October 27, 2010. Since we waited to find out if Tay was a boy or a girl Grandma Nicky said “well what is it?” and the midwife said, “I didn’t even look!!” Another nurse came out after that and told them all it was a boy and mommy was doing just fine.
I was brought out of anesthesia about an hour later and as they wheeled me to recovery I heard them tell me I had a son, and my heart leaped that he was here and safe. I asked where my husband was and they told me he was upstairs with my baby boy. I went to sleep after that and woke up another hour later in recovery. At 1:00 pm they brought me up to our room where Gus handed me my son and I had the most amazing tears of joy stream down my face. After the most exciting 9 months and the scariest 24 hours I have ever lived thru I met my son, Taylor Lombardo.
