The Bishop Diaries: Jackson Quinn Bishop

Our last post was Monday evening after our doctor tried to help naturally induce labor. Kudos to Dr. Polaschek, because, whatever she did, it worked! Contractions started early morning on Tuesday and it didn’t take long for them to become stronger and more painful. We waited it out for awhile and decided to head to the hospital around 6 AM. They immediately put us in a delivery room and started testing to determine where we were at in the stages of labor. At 7am we were officially admitted, but at the time, only 1 cm dilated - This was the beginning of the longest day ever. Throughout the day the contractions continued at a very regular rate, but every time they checked, there was no change. Early afternoon, they checked and said that we were now at 2 cm but it didn’t progress any further from that point. Later that evening, the doctor decided to hold off on inducing and give it the night to see if things would be able to progress naturally. Unfortunately because of scar tissue from Karen’s previous surgery, the next morning at 5 AM we were still at 2 cm. It was very discouraging to be in labor for over twenty four hours, but not having any change at all. At this point they decided to induce and started an IV of pitocin to get things going. Around 11am, things started to drastically take a turn. Although still dilated to 2 cm, the contractions became unbearable and an epidural was ordered. The doctor came in to give the epidural and pretty quickly it became apparent that it was only working on one side. He waited around and decided to reposition the catheter and assured us that it would soon take affect. 15 minutes later, nothing had changed and the contractions were continuing to get stronger. They called him back to the room, but nobody knew how long it would take, so they decided to give a quick shot of IV pain reliever in the meantime. That started taking the edge off, but made Karen very dizzy and disoriented. The anesthesiologist walked in about 2 minutes after that to redo the epidural and she couldn’t even sit up straight without being held. He took everything off and started over in placing the epidural which finally worked about 5 minutes later. This all basically put her to sleep over the next 2 hours. Right at 1 pm on Wednesday, the nurse came into the room and wanted to check on Mommy and baby as his heart beat had dropped. They had to wake Karen out of her deep sleep and as they did this, she immediately told the nurse that she wanted to push. The nurse decided to check to see if she had progressed any further and immediately said “she’s fully dilated, ready to go and I can see baby’s head.” Frantically, they called our OB, who made her way to our room just in time for Jackson’s birth. After 36 hours of labor, it only took 13 minutes of pushing for Jackson to enter the world.

He was born at 1:13 pm, weighing in at 6 lbs 2 oz and 19 inches long.