Elvis, the early years

So, here we are finally getting this blog thing set up on line. I'll try to give the brief summary for friends and family.

The Beginning

Monday Evening (May 19th) Julie and I were taking our evening stroll and Julie commented that her feet were quite swollen. While we strolled she had a contraction with a bit higher intensity than previously. Tuesday morning I woke up to Julie telling me that she had been having contractions all night, but didn't want to wake me up as she thought they were only very early contractions. I was unconvinced of their innocent nature. By 9 AM, I called the doc's office to see what we should do. They recommended that we get over to the hospital as soon as possible.

Once at the hospital, we were almost sent home thanks to Julie's commenting "Oh, they're really not that bad" as she winced and grimaced along. Sometimes she is too tough of a cookie. They checked her and found her to be 1-2 cm dilated, so they were thinking we should go home for a while. However, just to be certain, they had us walk around the hospital for about an hour. By the time we returned, she was 3-4 cm dilated. They sent us to a delivery room.

Monday night Spokane experienced a major atmospheric pressure change as a storm moved in and it was a full moon. Apparently, these factors send women into labor. So, by the time we got to the room at 1 PM on Tuesday, the delivery area was running at full capacity with soon-to-be mommas everywhere. We sat in our room and waited for a nurse to check up on us. After about an hour I went back to the nurses station to see why no one had come by. Apparently, the nurse assigned to us got caught up with another patient who had arrived and was further along than Julie. No biggie, within minutes we had a new nurse whom I directed to order up the epidural.

Ah, the Epidural

The Nurse anesthetist was in our room at around 3 or so and had with him a trainee (apparently, local Gonzaga University has pretty good program). You may ask why it sticks out in my mind that he had a trainee? Because he was describing in detail for her everything that he was doing. "Now, notice how I have inserted the needle about 5 cm..." Whoa, that was more info than I needed! But, it was awesome for momma. She started smiling and saying, "Ah, there is another contraction. The epi lasted the entire delivery and, needless to say, it made the whole process easier.

Deep breath and PUSH!

Sometime between 7 and 8 we started pushing (and by we I mean, Julie was pushing, I was counting). Elvis, as he was known at this point, was lined up sideways, so we tried different techniques to line him up. After about 30 minutes he was in position. Julie kept pushing. But instead of coming further out, Little Elvis' heart beat would drop with each contraction. Apparently this is not too uncommon, but it is a sign of stress and something that you don't want going on for very long. The doctor came in a little after 8 and assessed the situation. After about 10 minutes he pulled me aside and recommended that we move over to OR and prepare for a vacuum delivery or an emergency C-section. I really wanted to don some scrubs anyway, so I said lets do it!

In the delivery room there were tons of people. the delivery team of about 5 people, the C-section team of 2 people, an anesthetist (for the C-section), and a NICU team. The Doc put the vacuum in place and Julie had another contraction. She pushed, the vacuum pulled, and VIOLA!

As Will emerged, I could see the problem. The umbilical cord was wrapped around his little neck. That was probably why his blood pressure was dropping and what was holding him up a bit.

He's here!

Upon delivery, Will let out a nice cry. He was handed off to NICU personnel who did a quick check and, when they realized he was fine, handed him off to me.

So there I was holding my new son, welling up with tears, while my wife is still on the delivery table and not looking so good. It was apparent that something was not quite right. I heard the doc say "Get that anesthetist back here. I need them now!!!" Then he said to a nurse, "I need to keep pressure here to reduce to flow of blood." Let me stop here and tell you that this is NOT what you want to hear right after your wife just delivered a baby.

The next thing the doc said was "Get Dad and Baby out of here. And where it that anesthetist? We need some morphine here NOW!" So I was whisked off to the Nursery where Will and I huddled together wondering what was going on with Momma. Every 5 minutes I asked how things were going and they just kept saying that they were still working on her. Every minute seemed like an eternity. First I got anxious, then worried, then just about cried. It was the best and worst time in my life. Finally after about 20-30 minutes, the doc came in. My heart was in my throat. "She's going to be fine," the doc said, "We needed to administer some pretty heavy pain killers to keep her from squirming while we worked and, once the pain killer was working, it was easy to take care of her." I think he could tell that I was worried, so he pointed out that it was not as bad as it had looked. Later on, I found out that the issue she experienced only happens in about 4% of the deliveries. Weren't we lucky to be one of the few?!

Will and I visited Julie in recovery for a few minutes, but she was quite nauseous and exhausted from all the painkillers and pushing, so Will and I went back to the nursery for a bit.

An hour later, we rejoined Julie in a postpartum room and the Lattin family has been together since. We all returned home on Friday afternoon, where Will is getting used to his new digs.