Wondering if he'd EVER show up!!!

Okay, that our son is 6 weeks old- I am going to attempt to update our blog while he naps!! I figured I'd better get around to it before I forget any important details!! (Plus my mom keeps bugging me about it!! :) )

I had planned on teaching till the Friday before Payton was due (he was due on a Monday)- and we had a field trip to the Grace Museum on Thursday. On the field trip my feet were hugely swollen and I was feeling a little dizzy and REALLY tired. So when we arrived back at school about 2:00 I had the school nurse take my blood pressure which was 140/85. The nurse and principal told me I needed to go ahead and leave for the day and call my Dr. When I called Dr. Tadvicks office they told me to head directly to Labor and Delivary to be monitored. This, of course, scared the living daylights out of me!!! So I called Chad and had a close friend from school drive me to the hospital. When I got to the hospital they asked me a million questions and it was straight into a hospital gown with monitors on my tummy to monitor Payton and a cuff on my arm to take my blood pressure every 15 minutes.

It all became so real when Dr. Tadick called the room and told me that I had pre-eclampsia and that we were going to start the medicine to induce within the next few hours!!! My heart started racing and I had to stop myself from bursting into tears!! Tears that were part happiness, part nerves!! Actually knowing that when we left the hospital we would have our son in our arms was thrilling and yet scary! It was time for everything to begin! As soon as they decided I was going to be staying I had to have an IV put in, this was a first for me. It took them 7 TIMES to get the darn thing in!!! 3 different nurses tried twice and after blowing 6 veins they called in the anesthesiologist- who got it right away. Lesson learned...next time I will request the anesthesiologist right away!!! That was a nightmare...and a hint of how things were not going to go according to plan for the rest of our stay!!!

I was so READY!!! Here was my 9 months pregnant pic:

Of course, since every time that I had been to the Dr. I hadn't even been dilated I hadn't even packed our bags yet!!! My wonderful sister-in-law Rachel had come over and made me get Payton's packed thank goodness- but poor Chad had a lot on his plate when he had to do it all on his own while I was at the hospital!! So he headed home to grab all of our stuff and take a shower while mom sat at the hospital with me. They began the pitocin and put the cervadil in that evening and then the contractions began!!!

The plans were that the next morning I would hopefully be dilated and Dr. Tadvick would be able to break my water. But, as usual Payton had his own plans!! After an entire night of contractions, back pain, and very little sleep....I STILL wasn't dilated!!!!! I was heartbroken!!! So they put me back on Pitocin to keep trying. After the entire day Friday on Pitocin we still had no progress. Our stubborn son was just refusing to come out!! So Dr. Tadvick said we would continue the Pitocin and try Cervadil once more on Friday night. On Saturday morning they checked me and you guessed it....NOTHING!! After checking me Dr. Tadvick discussed options with Chad and I and we came to the conclusion that the best course of action for me and for Payton was a C-Section. Then Dr. Tadvick shocked us and told us we had 30 MINUTES until they were going to take me to the operating room!!! My heart started racing immediately- but in the long run I think it was better to have no advance notice because I didn't have much time to think about the fact that I was about to be cut open!!!

Mom, Chad, and I picked up our phones and started making calls, we had so many people to call!!! Amazingly pretty much everyone made it up there before they took me back. Sadly it conflicted with Rylee's first communion so there were a few very important people missing, but they got there as soon as possible. Here are a few shots with people before they took me back:

And Papa made it all the way from Albany even though he was very sick! It meant so much to me to be able to kiss him before I went back. It was so nice for everyone to drop what they were doing and rush there to be there to meet Payton!! You'll notice Chad has on his favorite Polo hat under his scrub hat- he never goes anywhere without it...even the operating room!! So off we headed to the operating room, I was extremely scared, but knowing that when I came out I would get to hold our sweet son made it all worth it!!!

I will continue the story of Payton's birth tomorrow- I have been working on this one entry for over two hours!!! Updating from a laptop makes adding pictures extremely difficult! Hopefully this will tide my mom over until then!!!