Welcome to the World

We went into the hospital for our scheduled induction at 6am on monday the 20th. Things started off pretty slow, I got a dose of cervidil to help thin out my cervix. After an hour of recieving the dose I started having contractions. They decided after 4 hours not to continue the medication as my contractions were regular. At 8pm they started me on pitocin, we settled in for the night and tried to get some sleep. Of course, everytime I got comfortable a nurse would come in and adjust my monitors. Needless to say I didn't get much sleep. At midnight I had to go to the bathroom, when I rolled over my water broke. (What a weird experience!) Once that happened, the night went by very fast. My contractions sped up and got much more intense. At 2:30 am I asked for pain medicine, they gave me a syringe full of some type of pain control medicine, which I had had before with Corbin. It did nothing. After an hour I was dying for an epidural, any type of relief, the pitocin made the contractions so intense I was ready for some relaxation. The anesthesiologist came in around 3:30am and got me set up for the epidural. By 4am it was in, I was so looking forward to some relief.
I didn't get any.
The epidural had failed. I was asking why it wasn't working and they were all unsure, the anesthesiologist was called back in to give me another dose, which did nothing. The nurses said I was progressing too fast for the pain medicine to have any effect. I went from 4cm dialated to 7 in an hour. My contractions were forcing me to push even though I wasn't dilated completely. I couldnt help myself. The nurse let me push through and helped me dialate the rest of the way. According to our paper work, I was fully dialated at 4:19am, and Logan was born at 4:25am. I pushed for 6 minutes! And he was out! He was in a hurry! They put him on my chest and he began to cry, it was a great sound. They took him over to his little bed to clean him up and evaluate him.

He looked great! We were expecting a blue, oxygen deprived baby, but he pinked right up. He got an 8 out of 10 on the APGAR scale, the -2 was due to his color. Although he was pink his extremities were a little dusky. They wrapped him up and gave him to me he looked so normal and healthy. They took him away what seemed like immediately. We weren't able to see him again until 5 hours later! We were met with one of the cardiologists while we waited, he confirmed his diagnosis. The pulmonary steniosis was worse than we thought. The valve is bascially completely closed and there is no blood going from the heart to the lungs. All babies are born with a hole in their heart that typically closes hours after they are born. This hole is Logans only way of mixing oxygenated blood from the lungs with blood in the heart. The hole bascially bypasses the pulmonary artery, because of this they gave him a medication called Prostiglandin to keep this hole open. We were told that his oxygen levels were exceptional. After the medication was given his oxygen was at 80-85%.
We were also told that he began to have trouble breathing, which is a side effect of the medication, and also common in heart babies, so they put him on oxygen. They contemplated intubating him, but once they put him on oxygen he did much better. Yay!!

When we were finally allowed to see him he was hooked up to an EKG monitor and countless other machines. He had IV lines running through his umbilical cord. He looked so good, as far as color, and he was huge, 9.5 lbs, 22 inches! We just bathed in his company for a while. Unfortunately because of the IV lines in his umbilical cord we are unable to hold him. We can only stand over his bed and hold his hands and feet or touch him just to let him know we are there. Later in the afternoon we spoke with the doctor whom told us they had done an echo and reiterated that the pulmonary valve was shut. This is their main concern at the moment and the first defect that needs attention. He said that Logan will need a procedure to temporarily fix the problem. He will undergo a procedure called the BT shunt procedure, which is closed heart surgery. He will need to go to Rochester for this procedure, as it cannot be done here. The Dr. told us that he plans on having it corrected within the week. Finally, a game plan! The rest of the defects will be adressed once the pulmonary defect is taken care of. One step at a time! Although he is surprising us with how well he is doing now, he still has a long road of rough recoveries, but we are hopeful that he is going to be strong throughout it all.