Hayden James Duvall

Hayden James was born May 2, 2010 at 9:17 a.m. 8 lbs 10.5 oz, 21 in. His delivery was not what you'd probably call uneventful...

Gina's water broke while we were at the Nashville farmer's market around 1 p.m. Saturday, May 1. We went home to get our stuff and headed to the hospital. The tests verified her water had broken but that Gina was only 1 cm dilated. We proceeded to walk around the floor for several hours but nothing advanced. By 9:30 p.m. we no longer were given the option- Gina had to have Pitocin to ramp up her contractions and advance labor. The baby has to come out w/in 24 hrs of the water breaking or infection becomes a significant concern. This was disappointing because we immediately knew that it basically killed Gina's chances of going "fully" natural without an epidural b/c the pitocin-induced contractions and particularly incessant and painful (so i hear). She toughed it out for about 4hrs until she was dilated to around 4 cm. At that point, the pitocin-enhanced contractions were not manageable, and Gina could not get any relaxation. Knowing there could be numerous hrs left for her advance to the requried 10 cm, she got the epidural. It calmed her down quite a bit, and in the long-run, this was probably a well-timed decision. She "flew" the rest the way to 10 cm by 4:45 a.m. By 5:30 am, things seemed on track and we were ready to "push". Gina pushed through 2 contractions- yes 2! ..... and (drum roll).... nothing really happened except someone immediately came in and said we had to "shut it down" and move into the hallway because there was a tornado warning in the area. (I haven't mentioned that there was a "100-yr flood" that has led to motorboat rescues on the freeway going on outside during all of this.) The halt in the action and move triggered Gina to say "you've got to be kidding me" about 27 straight times. We sat in the hallway doing absolutely nothing for about 45 minutes when the Dr. decided we would move to an OR to pick up there (b/c the OR's do not have any windows to the outside). At about 6:30a, we were fully settled in and ready to go in the OR. Immediately, they come back on and call the "all clear", "uhhhggg!". So now we're in the OR w/out our music and all of these other accessories we had imagined were going to ease the birth process. We re-commenced immediately with the pushing. To say Gina was a soldier in this affair would be an understatement. The baby was OP positioned (i.e. nearly impossible to deliver, especially for a first-time baby momma "packing" a gentlemen of Hayden's proportions. After nearly 3 hrs of pushing following the full night of active labor, Hayden finally came out "on his own". We were thrilled with this. The labor nurse and Dr. were very patient and coached Gina through this, although I'm not sure how much more time we had before the knife was coming out. Phew!!!. Well, once he squeezed out of there, there was more to come. We then had a big scare because, although the monitors continually indicated he was fine during the labor, he came out with the cord around his neck. His apgar score was 4.8 at 1 min. He had zero muscle tone or response to stimulation. To say the least, this was a surreal experience, especially after assuming he was just fine the whole time Gina was laboring. It seemed strange b/c he looked great (nice and healthy and pink) as you can see here in this pic of Hayden almost immediately after coming out. I am still not convinced that it wasn't the trauma/shock of getting squeezed out of there as much as anything.

Hayden got to give a quick hello (from the outside!) to his momma. This was an emotional experience. Our "birth plan" which had gone up in flames many hrs before, was for the baby to go to momma right away and to stay with her. But he really just got a hello, and then he and I had to head straight to the NICU to the "transitional nursery".

Once there, he really perked up pretty quickly while getting weighed and getting the thorough lookover. You can see that at first he looked about 25% confused and about 75% completely unhappy with his brutal new surroundings.

But, after a little over an hour in the transitional nursery, he got to go back to Momma and got to visit w/ Gma S., he was "practically a new man" - ha. I guess we'll see what day 2 brings.