The Road to Ethan's birthday.

Now that I've blogged about how I got pregnant, I figured it'd be interesting to see how I got to Ethan's birthday. The long road called pregnancy! At 16 weeks, I was diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes. I had been steadily losing weight so they wanted to check things out (especially since I didn't throw up my entire pregnancy). I kept my gestational diabetes under control by diet alone until I was 35-36 weeks pregnant, when I went on pills to level out my morning sugars.

We moved to Saint Louis when I was about 18 weeks and I got a new OBGYN. From the first time I met her, she had decided I was having a c-section. I believed they had my due date wrong all along (about two weeks later than it actually was) and that's why I was measuring big, but overall she was a very supportive OB and said "we'll see". She didn't like GD patients to go much past 39 weeks because of complications. At 38 weeks, I had an ultrasound. Ethan was measuring at 41 weeks + and my placenta was showing signs of dying. The choice was made for me to schedule a c-section for the next week.

On the morning of June 16th , I got up bright and early and we went to IHOP for breakfast (around 5am), my c-section was scheduled for 6:00pm. I started having bloody show and contractions about that time and knew that either way at the end of the day I was probably going to have a baby. I tried to nap and couldn't, I was so excited and in a little bit of pain. After checking into the hospital and waiting for the doc (getting the IV and all that) she came in and was very surprised to see that I was having contractions, but on we went with the c-section.

When I got into the OR, I got the spinal block, once they laid me down I became very sick and told the anesthesiologist. He gave me blood pressure medicine, saying that my blood pressure had dropped really low. When the first dose didn't help at all, he gave me a second dose. At that point I had become loopy and Andrew walked into the OR and said, "why do you have that doofy looking smile on your face?" I just laughed at him.

At 6:30pm exactly, Ethan was here! He took a gulp of amniotic fluid right before coming out and so he didn't cry right away. One quick suction and I heard him and teared up. At that point, everything happened so fast. Andrew stood up to go see him and the nurses whisked him to the other side of the room. No one bothered to show him to me. His apgar scores were 8, then 9. He was too big for the regular scale (read: too long) so they got another one out and I got to see him. It was love at first sight!

When we left the OR, I got to hold him, and he opened up his beautiful brown eyes and looked right at me. It was one of the most beautiful moments of my life.