Troy Oliver's birth story

August 15th, 2008 I woke up at 4 am with regular contractions coming every 5 min. I timed them for a couple hours until Erik woke up. I sent Erik off to work because they didn't seem to be getting any worse. They slowed down after a couple more hours, but were still coming about every 10 minutes the rest of the day. I took Brooklyn to Southcenter Mall, and we walked around for about 2 hours. I wasn't trying to start anything, it was just really hot, so we went there to cool off. We walked around for about 2 hours, and got some pretty funny comments from people. Several people asked me when I was due and when I would say "two days ago," they would reply, "oh my, you should go to the hospital!" One lady was especially concerned when I was clearly having a contraction while talking to her. Pretty funny.

August 16th, 2008 I got out of bed at 2 am because I was having regular contractions again, and I just couldn't sleep. I timed them until 6:30, then decided to hop in the shower to go to the hospital since they were consistantely coming every 4-5 minutes. Well, I called the hospital, and they said what I knew there were going to say, "Drink some water, and lay on your side because you're probably dehydrated from the heat yesterday." Ya, ya. I told the nurse I HAD been drinking water ALL night because I knew they would tell me this. It just happened to be a lunar eclipse that night as well, which apparantely brings in a lot of people for labor. Anyway, so they were full. I told her I would labor a couple hours at home then so I didn't have to wait in the waiting room. At about 8:30am, I had had enough and told Erik we were going to the hospital, I don't care if they're full, they have to admit me if I'm in labor. So we dropped Broolyn off around 9:15 with our good friends and we headed to the hospital. Dropping her off hurt more than the contractions.

We get to the hospital and they send me into triage to be monitored for a while. My blood pressure was really high when I came in, so they wanted to pay attention to that. It went down to it's normal rate after about an hour. Since my Dr. was out of town, I was relying on the on-call Dr. to admit me into the birthing center. Of course my contractions slowed down, so the nurse told me it probably wasn't going to happen even though I had progressed to a 3-4. Fortunately, they sped up and got worse, so the FINALLY admitted me at 1:30 pm. I was already asking for the epidural. Ok, to be honest, I was asking it when I entered triage. :)

I got the epidural at 2:30 pm and Dr. Channel broke my water right after. I was at a 5 by this point, 80% effaced and -2 station. Dr. Channel checked me again at 4, and I was still only 5-6 dilated and -1 station, so they started a pitocin drip in my I.V. By 5:30 I was at a 10 and 0 station so they had me sit up for about a 1/2 hour to labor down. I began pushing around 6:10, and Troy Oliver made his appearance at 6:24 pm, after only pushing through 2 contractions (about 5 1/2 pushes in all!). It was extremely fast. I didn't even know his head was out until they laid him on my stomach. He came out crying, which was a relief since Brooklyn was blue and not crying with the cord around her neck. They laid him on my chest right after and cleaned him up. I remember thinking, "Eww, this is kind of gross, but I can't help but kiss and love him!" I looked up at Erik and it was so sweet to see the tears in his eyes when he saw our little boy. We are very proud of our sweet little guy!

Troy Oliver Paternoster 08/16/08 8 lbs 7 oz 19 3/4 in