March 27: I had my 38 week appointment. I was feeling pretty good considering I was 38 weeks along, worked nights and had two kids. At my appointment my blood pressure was a little elevated, 140/90s. Nothing too concerning because it went down a little the second time we took it. Dr Melendez and I joked that I was just trying to get out of my next few shifts. He then told me, in all seriousness, that when I went to work that night I needed to take my blood pressure and call them with the results and if they were high again then we would have a baby. OK, sweet. In my mind I was having white coat syndrome and was just nervous at the office. So I mentioned it in passing to Cody and we were both pretty sure that really it was no big deal and we would have a baby on our scheduled date in a week. So off I go to work that night. I had been mentoring a nursing capstone student for the past few months, (A student in her last semester of nursing school) and it was her last shift with me. It was a pretty quiet evening. I finally decided to check my blood pressure at about 9pm. My friend and charge nurse came in with me and the first number to pop up was 175/93! Um, yuck! So we tried having me lie flat, 163/95. Next with the cuff up to try and make it falsely low 152/82. And last but not least 158/102...do you think I was freaking out at this point? Yep. Well I called up Dr Lamoreaux and began to recite my results in my most optimistic, lets just let this go voice. He just laughed and said, "Aubry! Clock out and get in a bed! Now let me talk to a nurse so I can give orders." That was it, I was going to have a baby and I had to drop what I was doing and have him now! It took me a few minutes but I reluctantly called Cody to tell him what was going on, he conveniently was at Nana and Papa's house and they were kind enough to keep the girls. I got myself into a gown, had my nursing student put me on the monitors and start taking my admission history. Might as well make the last few hours interesting for her right? We had my IV in and going by about 10pm, and Dr Lamoreaux was there and broke my water at about the same time. Having my membranes ruptured is one of the weirdest feelings, like peeing your pants but you have no control of anything that's happening. Cody just laughs at me. Fluid leaks out, and so I laugh, then out comes more so I laugh harder. Pretty soon I've laughed my way to needing a new gown and linens. Anyway, we got the pitocin going full blast and had an epidural in place by midnight. We all, including the doctor, were pretty confident that it was only going to be a few hours before we were snuggling our little man. He however had a different plan. Nothing happened! I dilated at what felt like a snail's pace. I hung out at 3-4 cm for hours. They couldn't tell what was going on. My blood pressures had resolved after my epidural but were gradually beginning to creep back up and they were considering starting a magnesium drip to help control it. Knowing what a treat that stuff is I am so glad it didn't come to that. On top of that little man was having late decelerations. This means that his heart rate was dropping after my contractions. A prolonged period of this pattern signals stress and eventually the baby can't stand the stress any longer. Bless my dear friends they watched over us so carefully, intervening as needed and keeping me calm. We had been at the maximum level of pitocin for quite some time so they bumped me above the max to try and get things to move. I know many of them as well as myself were worried that this just wasn't going to happen and I would end up having to deliver via Cesarean. I know that would have been fine but after delivering the girls vaginally I hoped it wouldn't come to that. Shift change came and my day shift friends arrived. I had made it to 6cm, Still no baby. Somewhere in there I started to hurt again so they redosed my epidural. Then I'm not sure what finally happened but all the sudden at around 9am something was different, I had a severe wave of nausea and began throwing up. YES! I knew what that meant, 10 cm! His heart rate had still been dropping so I knew he needed to get here. The NICU team and respiratory therapy were there just in case. I pushed with 3 contractions as hard as I could, remember the epidural redose...I was pretty numb. Then March 28th at 9:09 am my little boy came into the world. Dr Lamoreaux unwound the cord from around his neck and placed him on the towels on my chest. He was here! He was also very blue and only shallowly breathing. I immediately looked at the NICU nurse and said... 'Take him. Lets clamp and cut and you take him.' They worked to get him going but he was so tired. Soon the NEO Code rang out and there was a flood of people in our room to help our little boy. I went into nurse mode, comforting Cody and saying it was going to be alright. My dear friends were at my side holding my hand and doing the same for me. After only a few minutes he perked up and was doing well enough that after getting the OK from the respiratory therapist and the Neonatal NP they wrapped him up and let me hold him.
My sweet little man was in my arms. He had some pretty good bruises and swelling on the front right side of his head showing where he had been trying to come out sunny side up and with the wrong part of his head. He also had a pretty good scratch on the front of his nose where I can only figure came when the doctor was trying to put an internal contraction monitor in and couldn't. Because of his traumatic start and the heart decelerations they sampled his cord blood to check his blood pH. It was very low. Low enough that had the neonatologist found any of his reflexes to be reduced or if he showed any abnormal neuro symptoms they would have admitted him to the NICU and placed him on brain cooling. I feel beyond blessed that he remained in my arms with everything checking out normally.
He did end up having to have some one on one nursery time since he decided to continue to have respiratory issues. He would grunt and 'sing' with each breath. 'Singing' is when they make sweet little wheezing sounds that sound cute but mean they are struggling to force air into the tiny alveoli in their lungs. They drew labs to check for infection, gave him an IV bolus to help keep up his blood sugar and replace any fluid lost during the stressful delivery, put him on some cardiac monitoring and did a chest X-ray. Quite the adventure. Again we were blessed to have all of these tests come back normal.
My tiny sweet little man. You can see some of the bruising on his head but the picture doesn't show quite how purple it was up under his hairline.
After that was all over the rest of our stay was much like my other two and we went home together two days after just as if there had been no complications. I am so thankful for everyone who cared for me and for Hayze. My co-workers are incredible! I'm thankful for my amazing husband who was by my side through it all. He is my rock and I love him more and more each time I see him hold one of our newborn children. He is an amazing father and you can see how much he loves his babies.
His sweet big sisters loved him instantly! 
I am such a blessed mama to have such wonderful children. I am so thankful for the Lord's watchful hand. I know that we were blessed many times during this whole process and I'm thankful that everything turned out as positively as it did. I am completely in love with my sweet little man and I'm so excited to learn how to be a mama to a little boy.
