Brody's First Pictures!

Visitors

We are doing well and enjoying our precious new baby! We've spent the morning getting some rest, and Brody had his first little check up with the pediatrician... The OB came and checked on me, and we just got done with the lactation consultant so we're pretty much ready to see anyone that wants to come by! Visitor's are welcome today anytime after 3:00pm. We are at TCCH, in room 3105! Regular Visting hours run until 8:00pm.

I'll work on posting some more pics of our sweet boy tonight!

Introducing: Brody Lawrence Griffin!

We are pleased to announce the arrival of our sweet baby boy! Brody was born at 5:29 this afternoon. He weighed in at 7lbs even, and is 21in long, both Brody & Mama are doing well!

After a slow morning for us things picked up and progressed very quickly towards the end. As I mentioned in my 4:00am post, I was 2cm dilated when they first checked. After they started the pitocin the contractions came on pretty strong almost right away. Around 10:30am they gave me some Stadol, it knocked me out right away and took about two hours to wear off. After a long morning of labor they checked me again and found I was only 2.5cm, that was disappointing because I had expected after all those painful contractions that I would have been closer to 4cm. The nursing staff decided to move me over into one of the delivery rooms at this point, and strongly encouraged that I take the epidural. I reluctantly agreed because I had planned to go without, but in the end I felt like it was the best decision for us. Basically the nurses felt the main reason I wasn't progressing was because I was too tense and unable to relax during my contractions, they thought it would actually speed things up if had the epidural and it would also allow them to up the pitocin a little to make things happen a little faster as well. At around 2:oopm the doctor came in to break my water. Immediately following the anesthesiologist came in to administer the epidural. I do have to say the combination of these two procedures were actually very traumatic for me. No one really tells you what you are in for when you get an epidural! I thought they'd come in, give me a quick shot to numb the place where the big scary needle goes... and then use the big scary needle to get things started and get the catheter in place. No one ever told me it would take about thirty minutes and that I would have to sit completely still in the same uncomfortable position while enduring the most intense contractions I had ever felt. Once that was finally over it was only about 15 minutes and I was feeling much more comfortable. By 2:30pm I was at 4cm, I got to 5cm by 3:30, 7cm by 4:30 and fully dilated and ready to push by 4:45. Everything progressed very quickly after I got the epidural. The nurse had me do some "practice pushing", but realized in the process it would probably happen pretty quickly. I only pushed for about 25 minutes, and the doctor barely arrived in time to catch the baby. His head actually out before the doctor made it in the room. It turned out he had the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck and they couldn't get it loose, so the doctor cut it, suctioned him and then he pretty much slipped out on his own without me even pushing. I will post more pictures of him tomorrow, but for now we are all exhausted and need to get some rest!

Quick Update

So this is just a quick update since there is a lot going on and we will be able to write more later. But they broke her water and gave her an epidural at 2 pm and at 3 pm she was 4 cm. Now they say she is at 7 cm and she is having really big contractions and she feels like she needs to push, so its definitly going to be soon.

Drugs!

Hey all, its Sean. I'm posting because Sarah is drugged up on Stadol (or however you spell it) and is not very coherent, its kinda funny, since she asks me the same questions every five minutes or so. But anyways, since the last post that she did this morning, things have been slowly progressing. They haven't checked her cervix again though so no word on that, but the Pitocin seems to be working and is giving her full, regular, painful contractions. They finished with one round of that a few hours ago and started her on her Penicillian again, and then they gave her the Stadol about 30 minutes ago for the pain and she went out in less than a minute, so right now she is getting some needed rest. We'll keep the updates coming as long as something new happens.

4:00am

Wow, its early! I certainly didn't come here to sleep, but somehow I wasn't quite ready to begin the early morning torture session. I was actually getting some good rest... oh well, I'd rather be making some progress so we can meet this baby boy today! It turns out that my body decided to cooperate a little over night.... it's about time!!! I was REALLY discouraged after what they said when they checked at 7:30, so it was nice to finally get the good news. My cervix has softened, and I'm finally at a good 2cm dilated- oh and my nurse is sure of that this time! They came in early and got me monitored for a little bit to make sure the baby was still doing well, and by about 4:30 I was all hooked up and am now receiving Pitocin to get the active labor going. I guess they like to start really early so that I will deliver sometime during the afternoon or evening rather than in the middle of the night. The nurse said it would be pretty slow going at first and that I should get some more sleep, but I don't know how sleep would be possible right now with these contractions! These hurt pretty bad already, which has to be a good thing in terms of progress!

No Progress...

Well tonight at around 7:30 they came in to check and see if I had started to dilate yet, and unfortunately there was no progress. I was also starting to contract too frequently for them to be able to administer my 3rd dose of Misoprostol. These aren't true labor contractions, just a side effect of the medications. But hopefully they are doing some good. It was really hard for me to hear that we'd spent another whole day here and hadn't gotten anywhere. The next step is to start the Pitocin tomorrow morning at 4:00am. The goal is to have this baby sometime tomorrow, one way or another- and hopefully that doesn't mean a c-section! We may not be able to update as frequently as things progress, but we'll do our best. Please continue to pray for us, its going to be a very long hard day... hopefully with a beautiful ending!