Easy Like Sunday Morning

There was only one baby born in Covenant Medical Center on Sunday morning, March 4, 2012.

And he belonged to us.

Kelli was scheduled to be induced on Monday morning, March 6. This was 7 days past her due date. She went 8 days past when she gave birth to Charly, who also came via induction. Suffice it to say, we were fully prepared to go in on Monday morning.

 

On Saturday, Kelli felt, what she thought to be, a contraction. It came while she was shopping inside a crafty boutique while Charly and I waited in the car. We thought we better start timing them. However 70-some minutes later, we let down our guard and again, began expecting Monday.

Later in the afternoon, her contractions started coming again, this time, every 30 minutes. By 7:30, they were coming every 20 minutes. By 9:30, every 10. We called the doctor. She told Kelli to come in when the contractions were 5-7 minutes apart and she also told her to take a bath to stop the contractions. Why in the world would we want to stop the contractions? If this baby was ready to enter the world, we wanted to be ready. Comfortably in a hospital! Kelli called her parents because we didn't want to have to go in in the middle of the night.

After Denny and Carol showed up around 10:30, we continued timing contractions. We had three or four in a row, separated by only 7-8 minutes. So despite what the nurse told Kelli over the phone, we headed out for the hospital.

We sat in the triage room for roughly an hour, contractions stopped, and the nurse left us alone as she called the on-call doctor. She warned us that one couple had already been sent home that night. Kelli was only dilated to 4 cm (she had been 3 the preceding Wednesday). That bit of info and the fact that the contractions had stopped, made us feel as if we were about to be the second couple sent home that night.

Instead, Dr. Lipinski was on her way in! Her policy was to never send home a couple past due. With an induction scheduled for Monday morning, Lipinski's plan was to admit us, get us settled in a room, get Kelli an epidural so we could sleep and rest for the night, then start the pitocin first thing at 7 am the following morning. Kelli got her epidural around 3 in the morning and I made the couch into a bed. At 5:30, our nurse Carryn (the same delivery nurse we had for most of the day when Charly was born), told me to wake up. Things had progressed through the night naturally, and baby was coming soon!

Carryn got things ready and Dr. Lipinski showed up around 6:30 am, just as Kelli began to push. At 6:49, 19 minutes later, our son, Hayes Warren Henrichs, was born.