I'm C&P'ing my birth story for you here, I'm not going back through and editing it from its original debut. So excuse the typing errors and things that might not make sense! I was a few days PP and still very overwhelmed! Enjoy!
"There is nothing as miraculous as the birth of a baby."
May 7th – Contractions started about 10 pm, around 12 I start timing them because the pain is getting worse and they seem to be coming semi close together, they are 5-6 minutes apart lasting a minute or more each (by the way I really recommend contractionmaster.com, no need to do math or use your brain at all, fabulous!) I continued to time until around 4 am then decided to call my midwife. I tell her everything that is going on, she said it sounded like early labor but I should try to wait to come in till they are more consistently 5 minutes apart, (not 5 to 5 and half like they were) she asked if I had gotten any sleep that night, which I hadn’t. She recommended taking some Tylenol PM and trying to get some sleep since labor was probably soon. I do so but it doesn’t touch the contraction pain (which was manageable but I just couldn’t sleep though them because I needed to concentrate on breathing through most of them) From 4am to about 8 the contractions are coming in about 4-5 minutes about. I finally find a position in bed that dulls the contraction pain and I fell asleep for about 45 minutes, woke up and damn it!! The contractions had fizzled out! Damn, damn, damn!! If that wasn’t real labor contractions I’m screwed!
May 8th – Today is my niece’s birthday, she’s turning 5, Happy Birthday Alex! Even though I’m super tired from no sleep and from contracting all night the night before I go to her birthday party at my sisters house only about 10 minutes away. About 6 pm the contractions start again. Great. I have to stop what I’m doing to breathe through most of them and sitting made them stronger so I stood the whole time killing my back and feet. Jason and I decided to leave to see if I could get some rest, everyone at the party was betting I’d have him that night and demanding we have sex to get him out quicker… yeah, RIGHT! Thanks for the advice but no thank you! We go home and go to bed, though again, I cant sleep. The contractions are again 4-5 minutes apart. I decide to again call the midwife. She’s says that though it sounds early we can come in and get checked to see what is going on since I’m unable to sleep. Jason and I get up and start getting ready. I start to notice that the contractions aren’t as strong standing and but decide to still go to the hospital.
1:45- We finally get out of the house! Suit cases, car seat, extra blankets, the whole nine yards gets packed into the car! While on the way the contractions still aren’t as strong as when I’m laying down and are starting to get a little further apart, crap. I still want to go to the hospital though because if this isn’t real labor then I want to know how the hell to know real labor and how to get rid of what I’m experiencing at the moment. The entire time I’m apologizing to Jason for getting him up for nothing and that I’m almost positive we are getting sent home because things are slowing down and not as intense. He was so understanding and said we just needed to know what was going on. I still felt horrible because if I wasn’t really in labor then he had to go to work at 7:00am with no sleep.
2:30- We finally get to the hospital and into triage, I’m convinced at this point we are wasting our time and getting sent home and continue apologizing to Jason to which he said if I apologize one most time he was going to thump me, I say sorry again, and then he really did it! He thumped me! The nurse gets me on the monitors, but my bump is so “out front” they have a hard time keeping them on and we kept losing the baby’s heart rate so they aren’t getting a real accurate reading of my contractions.
3:30- After being in that tiny uncomfortable room for an hour the midwife finally comes in to check me, I told her I was sorry if I was wasting her time, but I couldn’t handle another night of no sleep and contractions without know what was going on. She was so nice and said lets just take a look. 5cm 100% effaced! Holy crap! We’re staying! WE’RE HAVING A BABY! SOON! Then the thought crosses my mind, holy moly, this is real, I’m going to have to actually do this, I am soon to push a baby out of an abnormally small area. What were we thinking?! I now want to go back home, we’ll do this later. ;0)
4:00 Finally we got into our room and start to settle in. I sit in the bed cross-legged refusing to lay down because the contractions feel so awful in that position, laboring sitting up was the best position at that point, though again, didn’t help with keeping those dang annoying monitors on!
4:30- The blood lab people came in, took my blood then the nurse was in line to get my IV going. OMG. The IV was the absolute worst part! (Of the needle sticking at least!) That hurt like she was digging through my bone and I squealed through it because it was so unexpected. I held onto Jason burying my face into his arm and squeezed his hand and just whimpered, it seemed to take forever. Jason rubbed my head and comforted me which really seemed to help.
6:00- They asked me if I planned on having an epidural, I replied yes but the pain was still manageable so I didn’t need anything now. The nurse said we’d get the paperwork together for it so we didn’t have to mess with it once I was ready. See comes back in, explains one line then I see someone coming in with a cart behind her. It was the anesthesiologist, “Hi! I’m here for your epidural!” I didn’t even ask for it yet! “NOW?! We’re going to do this now!?” I told them I didn’t feel I needed it yet to which they told me there was only one person on the floor doing them, they had three c-sections scheduled and that the floor was packed, if I wanted it in any kind of timely manner, I’d get it now. I was convinced I needed to do it then, scared shitless, but going to do it.
Everything was okay until they said Jason couldn’t stay, to many dad’s pass out and they wouldn’t let him be in the room with me. “OMG, I cant do this, I can’t do this without him! I’m terrified of needles and he is my support, I NEED him!” To which they didn’t care. Jason left and I just started to tremble and tear up, they kept reassuring me that everything was going to be okay, that she would walk me through every step, etc. So we get started and I feel as if I’m going to vibrate off the bed and throw up at the same time. Let me tell you, the epidural really isn’t bad at all!! I was so surprised! I did jump once when the meds shot a shock down my right leg, but it wasn’t from the pain, it just scared me! So fear not! I am the biggest wuss EVER and ever I am saying, its not that bad!
The epidural is so strange! I don’t know what I was expecting but not that! You can still feel touch, which makes you think it is not working but you don’t feel the pain of the contractions. The sensation was just like when your leg falls asleep and is waking up, kind of a heavy pins and needles feeling. Trying to move was the weirdest sensation! I could move just a little but when trying to change position my legs felt like they were loaded down with lead, so strange!
Between now and 9 no one came in, I hadn’t been checked since triage so we were just hanging out. Jason called into work saying I was in labor and his 2 week leave started that day, yay! He just had to sign his time card on-line to get paid for the previous week. So he whips out the laptop and does his thing and that is when I decided to update the Nesties, you know, didn’t want anyone to worry! ;0)
9:30- The midwife comes in and checks me, I’m 6 cm, we decide to break my water and I immediately progress to 7cm! After this I try to get some rest since I haven’t slept in two days. Though Im not feeling any pain, the way to I have to sit (tilted) isn’t very comfortable and I’m hooked up to every imaginable contraption, wires going everywhere and a blood pressure cuff that goes off about every 5 minutes, so sleep was out. But at least I got to rest a little without pain. (The blood pressure cuff was so annoying because it had to go off every 5 minutes!)
11:30- Checked again, 9.5cm, +1 station, with just a lip of cervix left. YAY! We decided to wait a bit and labor down for the lip to go away and for the baby to descend a little more.
1:00- Started pushing. Holy crap this is hard work! I cant hold my breath in, I cant keep a good ten count, I’m just soo tired and Ethan was still a little high. We did this for about 20 minutes and thought it might be a better idea to labor down some more and just take a break. Thank goodness!!! During this time I developed a “hot spot” a spot where the epidural wasn’t working. It was a spot about 3 inches or so in diameter at the top of my left butt check, I could feel the contractions there, and with the pain being so localized and one sided I was in a fair amount of pain.
2:30- I started pushing again, yep, still hard! They kept wanting me to push for 10 seconds, I swear they are counting slow on purpose! I cannot push for that amount of time because I feel as if my face is going to explode. More specifically that my forehead was going to blow up every time I pushed. Jason held a cold cloth to my forehead every time I bared down. I could tell that he was having a hard time not being able to do anything for me, so he just held my hand and told me I was doing great though I know it was tearing him up to feel so helpless. The pain in my “hot spot” when pushing was something else! It was so weird (for lack of a better word) to have that kind of pain just in that small area, then still some real pain going on in my crotch, which I was feeling more than just pressure in.
We continued this process without much progress. The midwife suggested I try the squat bar if I felt I had enough control over my legs, I did. When up on the bar it seemed like gravity was helping out a bit, I pushed in this position for a few contractions and got him down a little more. Then the midwife wanted me to lie back down because I was starting to shake to much and she thought at that point laying down would be more effective. Dang it! This change in position of the baby resulted in losing the ‘hot spot’ on my butt-check (yay!) and gaining another one on my right side at my gluteal fold (the spot where your butt-check meets your thigh) Boo!! It was complete from one side to the other and painful! It was rather distracting when you have contractions and full pain there, then you feel pain and pressure in your crotch and nothing in the other side, I felt so lope-sided and sometimes didn’t push as effectively as I could have because of it.
They asked me I wanted to touch the head, took my hand and I felt what seemed like a hard slimy rubber ball, whoa, that was weird! Let’s get him out! Now! I pushed for probably another half hour or so, and then he was “right there” and needed just a “few more pushes” I thought I was going to die. At this point the pain was crazy (for having an epi) and I kept telling Jason I couldn’t do this, I was to tired and I just couldn’t do it. I was getting so frustrated and just started crying.
4:05- Though it wasn’t s a “few pushes later” Ethan was finally born!! His head coming out scared me because I could hear it, and the shoulders were the worst! But he was here! They threw is cheesy little butt up on my chest and it was love at first sight. Oh my goodness, he looks so much like his daddy! I’m sobbing and staring then I hear Jason behind me, crying as well, aww. After the cord stopped pulsing, Jason cut it, which was a lot tougher than he thought it was going to be, I guess he thought it would be more sponge-like then it actually was. They took him to get cleaned up and Jason went with him and never left his side (not before kissing me though!), then the real fun for me began!
The stuff no one talks about! - Delivery of the placenta, um, ouch. They said this isn’t going to be as bad because there aren’t any bones, lol, okay. That thing was huge! They plopped it in a bucket and set it aside for us to ‘look at later.’ (Very interesting/gross by the way!) I had a first-degree tear but in such a weird spot apparently that she had a hard time fixing it properly. After the epi was turned off (wah!) and after the surge of emotions from the birth I was shaking so badly I thought I would fall off the table, then I had the midwife coming at me with a needle… holy crap, she’s going to miss because I cant freaking sit still! I kept apologizing for shaking, but I couldn’t control it. Sewing up the tear took forever, then I surprised the nurses and midwife with how much swelling I had, so much so in fact that they inserted another catheter because I would not be able to pee due to its severity, which apparently isn’t very common. Yay me. Finally after about 20 minutes of ‘after care’ aka, people still poking and prodding at my down stairs, we were finally left alone.
When we were taken up stairs to recovery we had family come in and everyone just fell in love immediately! He was so alert! He looked at everyone and didn’t cry (he still rarely cries!) It is so wonderful to be a family!
I didn’t get up for about 15 hours due to the catheter, I didn’t really have to because it was doing all the work for me. Well I decided I wanted to go to the bathroom to assess the situation, it hurt… like crazy, so I wanted to see what it looked like. BAD idea! So I got Jason to grab my cath bag and I hobbled oh so slowly to the bathroom, I walked as if my legs were glued together until my knees! I’m sure I looked like a fool! (This I kept up for about three days after as well, because every time I got up I thought my insides were going to fall out) I get inside, pull down my mesh undies with the pad the size of a airport runway (around the damn catheter tube) and OH MY GOODNESS. It looked as if someone had replaced my vagina with triple stuffed Twinkies, one side still larger than the other. I was horrified, no wonder I couldn’t sit! At that point I was so exhausted, still hadn’t slept and then another surprise, I released buckets of blood on the floor just standing there, but I couldn’t bend over to clean it up. Enter Jason, poor guy! Through the next three days (how long I was in the hospital) this was a common occurrence; get up, hobble to the bathroom, stand there and catch my breath because the walk across the room was excruciating and exhausting, use restroom (cath out by now), rest again, put in new runway pad, clean up as much as possible, spray Dermoplast, rest, go back to bed, have Jason help me in and find a way to sit because I couldn’t sit straight, it was like trying to sit on a titter-totter that shoots lightning into your crotch. Not pleasant!
Then it was time to go home, our lives were forever changed, we were a family. I fell in love with Jason all over again, he did everything for me and for Ethan, he was my savoir and he was now the father to our son, what a beautiful sight. I couldn’t wait to get home and for life begin, and what a wonderful life it is!
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