Maternity Leave, Day 2: A Successful Flipping

Yesterday, Ross and I had to wake up crazy early and get to the hospital by 6am to attempt to flip Cash around again. This time we were going to try the version with the added benefit of spinal anesthesia, something that even though I'm petrified of having a long needle stuck in my back sounded like a good solution after last time's excruciating torture session.

So Ross and I got there and didn't expect much out of the hospital - our last encounter had been less than reassuring due to having to wait around for about 2.5 hours to get into a room, a nurse that couldn't find a vein, and the whole "failed" thing - however, this time everything went pretty amazing. We were put in a room right away, had some great and friendly nurses, and everything proceeded very much on schedule. At around 8:15 my doctors showed up, confirmed that stubborn little guy was still breech and said, "see you in the OR in a few minutes". I didn't really realize that I was going to be going to the OR for any of this. Last time, we had tried everything in the labor room, so I got a bit panicked as I was walked into a bright room with a gurney in the middle of it. I think my doctors saw me go a bit white though because they were in there in no time and Dr. Worth held my hand as I got the spinal. After that, Ross was able to come in, my whole lower body went completely numb (which was pretty freaky) and Drs. Musalli and Worth got down to turning Cash around....in about 10 seconds. That is seriously how long it took. They said, "and we're done" and I came back with "are you serious?". After monitoring Cash for a few minutes after his heart rate dropped a bit, he got better and I was wheeled back into the labor room to wait until I got some feeling back into my legs. I felt pretty bad for about an hour afterwards, mainly due to my blood pressure dropping, but that was fixed by the anesthesiologist and Ross and I spent the next few hours watching old episodes of The Office on our laptop. We were home in time for lunch with the knowledge that now we didn't have to schedule our son's birthday and that I could at least try for the natural birth I have been wanting to have all along.