Troy Elijah Moreira: Labor, Delivery, and the Hospital

Troy Elijah Moreira decided he was done cooking Thursday morning around 4:30 AM. Cristy started having contractions, which around 7 AM were 5-7 minutes apart. Nathaniel decided to stay home from work.

By 10 AM the contractions were more spread out and Cristy decided to take a nap. Around noon Cristy and Mandy went for a long walk (trying to help Troy out a little). Still no progress. As they started to prepare dinner at 2:30, contractions picked back up, and by 5 PM they were about five minutes apart.

If you didn't know, contractions aren't pleasant. Giving Cristy back, foot, and leg rubs helped distract her from the contractions. Sometimes Nathaniel just needed to find the right angel to get the best rub.
We decided making final preparations for a possible hospital trip was a good idea. (Note: next time, we do not need a suitcase or too many extra clothes).
After an hour of close contractions (6 PM) we made the call. The doc said we were ready to come in!

We're having a baby! Fun!

Nathaniel would like to take a moment to thank Mandy so much for her visit. Being away from her family was hard for her, and she did so many things for us while she was here (while 36 weeks prego!) One of the many things was take all of these pictures! Thanks Mandy!

The bum shot.

Because there were not any "clean" rooms at the moment (that is, 0/16) we got to wait in the waiting room for awhile.

For over AN HOUR! They didn't even check her. We were getting pretty upset, and Mandy and Nathaniel made it known that Cristy needed a room.

Now! The pain is getting worse.

Poor Cristy :(

Finally the head nurse came and assigned us a room. Cristy changed. Please note that we arrived at the hospital at 6:30 PM, and it is now nearly 8:30 PM.

I got pretty excited to see this new baby contraption. It came complete with diaper, nose sucker-thing, and newborn beanie.

Mandy was a champ and let all the Campbells and Poteets know how things were going throughout the night.

And Cristy was an even bigger champ for doing so well through those early contractions.

When Cristy would walk around and didn't need rubbing, Nathaniel would play Majong Dragons (read: worry about Cristy, Troy, and studying for Finals).

The contractions would taper off and then come back, sometimes with 15 minutes in between. By 11 PM Cristy had still not progressed passed 4 cm.

This is Cristy and Nathaniel's last picture together as a married without children couple :)

The following events unfolded very rapidly. For the next hour the contractions picked up in speed and consistency. Cristy could grit through them and only "complained" (note: she was still so nice about it) when she was contracting and not getting rubbed hard enough.

Ten minutes before midnight Doctor Maisel checked Cristy and she had progressed to 5 cm. She said Troy would probably be born around 8 AM. Nathaniel asked Cristy if she wanted the epidural (we were going to see if we could go without it). Cristy was OK. Two contractions later Cristy was sweating through a particularly hard contraction. Nathaniel asked again. Cristy wanted the epidural. Mandy started to wipe the sweat off of Cristy brow that was accumulating quickly.

We paged the nurse (Sarah 1) who came in and tried inserting an IV to run the necessary saline solution through Cristy before the Anesthesiologist arrived. The nurse struggled a bit for the 20 minutes before she called in the Head Nurse to try on a different arm. While inserting the IV correctly, someone noticed that Troy's heart rate had been down for five minutes. This is apparently not good.

Rather quickly, Doc. Maisel arrived and several nurses came with. Cristy was checked again and she was at 10 cm! (all in thirty minutes). Talk about contractions! Cristy was put on oxygen to try and get more air to Troy. Cristy was told to slip to each side and to try and sit up on her knees. None of these things were working and it was now 10 minutes since Troy's heart rate was lower than desirable. They gave Cristy a shot of something that has the opposite effect of Pitosin and is supposed to immediately slow down contractions (in thirty seconds or less). It did not.

Doc. Maisel then made an executive decision that Cristy would be going "to the back" to have the baby. Nurses were scrambling to unhook plugs and prepare the gurney while Doc. Maisel described that Cristy needed to have an emergency C-Section because they did not want Troy's heart rate to be low for any more time. Even if this was her fifth child and it would only take her five minutes to push, five minutes might be too long. This is not what Nathaniel and Mandy wanted to hear.

A nurse made mention that Nathaniel would be given scrubs to join his wife in surgery. Cristy was quickly wheeled out of the room, leaving Nathaniel and Mandy teary-eyed with only a handful of towels strewn about the floor. After a few minutes of waiting, Nathaniel and Mandy walked towards the C-Section room and waited behind double doors for any news.

A nurse came out and mentioned to Nathaniel that he would not be going into the room because family members are not allowed into surgery when patients are not breathing on there own and they have been put to sleep with general anesthesia. This was also not what Nathaniel and Mandy wanted to hear.

More emotional than ever, Nathaniel and Mandy waited for any sign that the surgery was successful. A nurse came out and waved Nathaniel through the first set of double doors. From there Dad could hear his son's voice for the first time, crying like all newborns do (Troy had been delivered 9 minutes after they left the delivery room).

A few minutes later two NICU nurses (Sarah 2 and Sarah 3) pushed Troy into the hallway. He was pretty pale, grunting from lack of oxygen, and sporting a distended belly, but he was OK. His low APGAR score (3) was getting him sent to the NICU for a spell, but he was beautiful babe from the beginning.

And he had a full head of hair, just like Momma wanted.

Troy Elijah Moreira came into this world at 12:48 AM, 7 May 2010, weighing 8 lbs, 1 oz, and measuring 21 1/4 inches long.

Next Up: Troy's First Day!