Introducing Ethan Glenn Buscher

Well, remember the induction date I had set for this morning?? Never happened. And remember this post? Well..that wasn't real. But 12 hours later, it was.

My parents weren't supposed to come until early Saturday afternoon since we were checking into the hospital after 8 that night for cervidil. After knowing what happened, we all decided it was best for them to come up Friday night. Good thing b/c I went into labor shortly after they arrived at 11:30 that night. By 4am we were on the road to the hospital.

Birth story's pretty short this time. No 21 hour labor complete with almost 2 hours of pushing. This was more like a 12 hour labor complete with me saying to the nurse "uhh.....he's coming out.....where's the doctor??!!" They went on and did a little Pitocin to "help" me progress since I was still only 1 cm dilated upon arrival.

I labored by breathing through contractions (and help with Darin rubbing my back during them) for several hours. After a while, I realized thought back to the fact that I'd had a total of 4 hours of sleep during the last 48 hours and with pain intensifying, I decided to go ahead and get the epidural so I could rest before the actual delivery process. Epidurals = heaven on earth...let me tell you!

Getting to 3 cm seemed to take forever...like 6 hours or so. But once I got to b/w 4 and 5, I went to a 10 in only about 2 hours. By the time I was 10 cm dilated, he was moving down so fast that he was crowning before the doctor even got there and after being told, "Don't push yet", thought he was just going to fall out before the doctor even got there.

Here's the scary part of the whole deal. Right before the nurse came in the last time, she started to get a little alarmed by his heart rate. It would plummet from 140bpm to less than 60bpm during contractions. She kept coming in having me switch positions thinking maybe the cord was getting pinched. Nothing worked for long. So by the time the doc finally arrived, and since he was already crowning before I even did one push, I did about 9 or 10 pushes through only 3 contractions and he was out. They confirmed that it was a cord issue, but it was a bit scarier than that. The cord was wrapped tightly around his neck and was being compressed during contractions. Think that's scary? Normally it would be...but in this case, not only was the cord wrapped, but it was tied in a knot. He came out blue from head to toe and the nurses whisked him away before they even put him on me. No hearing, "It's a boy!". No, "Congrats, mom and dad." No, "Dad, you want to cut the cord?" In fact, there was no cry of any kind, even from the baby. I watched in horror as two more nurses piled into the room and tried to get oxygen to him and get him to breath on his own. Almost a minute passed before I heard any sound at all. Let me tell you, there is no sweeter sound than the first cry of your child.

So...that all being said, he's in great shape now. Healthy as could be. All is well...praise the Lord!

Baby Stats:
Born - 5/2/09
Weight - 7 lbs 10 oz
Height - 21 inches