Delivery Day

The story of Parker's arrival! My mom and dad were scheduled to come out to Oklahoma on Monday the 22nd, and my doctor had planned to induce me on Tuesday the 23rd. Everything was going well and I had a checkup scheduled for Thursday February 18th at 1:00pm. Well, Wednesday came around and I was feeling like crap - just sick all day. I didn't want to do anything but lay on the couch and watch TV. This was actually unusual because I hadn't had too many "pregnant days" in the whole 38+ weeks, but I was feeling nauseous and crappy so I just laid around all day.

Low and behold about 2:30 AM on the 18th I woke up to some contractions. At the time I didn't think much of it because I had been having contractions off and on for about 2 weeks, so I just tried to go back to sleep...after about 30 minutes I noticed that these contractions were "different". I decided to get up and see if I could pinpoint what was different about them. At about 3:00 AM I thought that my water was starting to break, still not a big deal, and I waited until about 4:00 and went to wake up Ben - I figured we should at least go get things checked out at the hospital. I hadn't even called my mom to tell her what was going on - assuming we would have plenty of time and I would just call when/if we knew for sure what was going on. The funniest part before we went to the hospital was that I was going around the house and putting last minute things into the suitcase when Ben just looked at me and said "Do I at least have time to take a shower?". Yes honey, this kid isn't rushing out or anything. So Ben took a shower and I got our things together. We were getting ready to leave for the hospital at about 4:45 when my water officially broke, so I decided to call Mom; I wanted to make sure she could try to catch the first flight out of Medford in the morning.

After an exam to confirm I was really in labor I was admitted to the hospital at about 5:30am. When I was admitted I was dilated to 4 and 100% effaced. I was hoping that the anesthesiologist would be waiting at the door to give me my epidural, but unfortunately I had to wait about a half hour before he came. By the time that I got my epidural I had felt enough real contractions to know how much I would be valuing the epidural...I don't know how people do it naturally!

From 5:30 until about 9:00 I was regularly checked by the nurses and midwife on staff to ensure everything was moving along. Unfortunately they weren't able to get a good read on the baby's heart rate. We started with an external monitor, but then had to use an internal monitor to try to monitor him. After watching his heart rate for about 30 minutes the nurses and midwife were concerned that he looked like he might be in distress. They checked with my doctor and sure enough she decided it was best to do a C-section. It's true that you never see things move so fast! One minute we were laying around in the hospital room and then next I was flanked by nurses, the anesthesiologist, my doctor, and Ben and was wheeled into the operating room. The actual delivery went very fast, but I HATED the feeling of the spinal block on my body, not being able to feel below my waist was beyond belief.

Parker was officially delivered at 10:15am on February 18th. Ben was able to see him come out and hold him as soon as he was checked out. Then Ben went with him back into the delivery room while I was sewed up.

When I was brought back into the delivery room our son was under the heat lamp sleeping. I asked Ben "who" he looked like - we had a couple of names in mind...and he said he looked like a Parker. So, Parker Kenneth Culver was named.

The stars had also aligned for my mom who was able to arrive in Lawton at 4:00pm on the 18th. She did miss the delivery, but with all the drama and worry right before Parker's arrival, we were all relieved that she didn't have to worry.

We spent the rest of the 18th and 19th in the hospital and were allowed to go home on the 20th. Everything was looking great for both Parker and me, so we were given the doctor's blessing to finish recovering at home.