The Drama of Zack Grayson

Zack Grayson was born this past Saturday, August 17, 2013 at 11:57 a.m. His due date was estimated to be August 20th, but at my last doctor appointment, my OB opted to induce early. I honestly do not know his exact reasons why he wanted to. Maybe it was because I was just in the hospital for 14 hours of false laborious and I had just lost my plug the day before my appointment, or maybe it was because things just weren’t progressing as fast as he would have liked for being over 39 weeks along. Either way, my induction was scheduled for way too early (5:45 a.m.) on Saturday morning.

Thanks to mounds of admission paperwork, I wasn’t induced until around 7:45. After being on pitocin for an hour, my doctor came in to break my water and get the process moving along. Right when he did so, Zack’s vital signs plummeted. His heart rate dropped from 120 down to the 60s. My doc and nurses immediately started to move my position to help get the heart rate back up. The next thing I realized, an oxygen mask was placed over my face, a ton more people were suddenly in my room, and a woman was trying to get me to sign a consent form. I started to cry and asked what was going on. As my doctor started to tell me, Zack’s heart rate went back up to normal. I swear all 15 people in the room sighed at the same time.

My doc said he thought that when he broke my water, the baby might have laid down on the umbilical cord wrong or the cord briefly got caught up in something. He was sure everything was fine, but just in case it happened again, he wanted to go on ahead and get the epidural in place even though I was just starting to feel the contractions.

An anesthesiologist was brought in, and Shawn was asked to leave for 10 minutes (husbands aren’t allowed to be present duribg an epidural due to too many of them passing out while watching the procedure). I’ll spare you the details, but I had 3 failed placements. After the third failure, he told one of the nurses to call the OR to prep for a spinal tap. Yeah, I started to cry again. Fortunately, the fourth placement was successful, but it was that point I just knew this delivery was going to end with a c-section. I thought it would be several hours from that point, due to a failed induction, but since nothing had been simple at this point, why would my reason for getting a c-section be simple?

Just a couple of hours later, the nurses noted that Zack’s head kept floating upward, away from where it needed to be. They needed me to lie in a certain position to force his head downward and therefore help speed the induction along. Since I was numb from my hips down, I could not move how they wanted me to at all. It took two nurses and Shawn to lift and move my deadweight body around. I was laughing rather hard at how useless I was with my own body, which made the three of them laugh while moving me. As soon as they got me in position, Zack’s heart rate dropped severely again. They moved me repeatedly to get the heart rate back up, but nothing they did worked. After 10 minutes of his heart rate in the 50s and dropping, they called in the surgical team.

Now I was crying uncontrollably. The team was literally running my bed down the hall to the OR, calling for my doctor to get down there immediately and calling for a NICU team. One nurse held my hand the whole trip, telling me they were going to everything they could to save my baby. My brain was full of nonstop prayers to please not lose another baby. I have never been more terrified in my entire life. I hope I never get that scared again.

As soon as we reached the OR, they hooked me back up to the baby monitors and found that Zack’s heart rate had gone back up again. The head surgeon said that this meant they could wait for my doctor to get there, but they were going to operate anyway, as they were not going to risk that happening a third time. My doc and Shawn arrived around the same time, and my doctor agreed with the head surgeon completely: baby was coming out now. The anesthesiologist upped my epidural dosage and Zack was scooped out in less than two minutes.

His vitals checked out just fine, so the NICU team gave their blessing and left empty-handed. None of the team knows why his heart rate dropped. My doc thinks that the act of labor stressed him out, but of course we’ll never really know. But that’s okay I’ll never know; we came in with the goal of having a healthy baby and we left with that goal in tact. Sure, it wasn’t the way either of us wanted, but the important thing is he’s okay, I’m okay (just with a new scar), and Shawn is okay (just with a few more gray hairs).