Zoey must be impatient like her mama because she decided to arrive two weeks early, on May 18. The past three weeks have been crazy and in retrospect have gone by way too fast. I think I'm sort of starting to get the hang of this mom/baby thing! But first thing's first - here's the birth story.
I was well into my 35th week and had not yet had one contraction. Not that I'm complaining at all. I think it was Saturday, May 15 when I first felt something similar to mild cramps in my back but that was it. On Monday the 17th Jimmy and I were relaxing on the couch, watching Friends, when I noticed a couple more back cramps. Jimmy said we should time them and I said that was ridiculous, there's no way these are contractions. They were hardly noticeable! He went ahead and timed them anyway and they were something like 27, 35, and 33 minutes apart. So I told him he was silly and to calm down, we still have two weeks to go! Sarah was returning that evening from a semester in Italy so Chase and I went to the airport around 9:30pm to welcome her home. Then I came home and went straight to bed because I was exhausted as usual.
For some reason I woke up at 3:15am. I decided to go ahead and go to the restroom, since I had been getting up two to three times a night for that anyway. I'm not certain, but I'm pretty sure at this point I had my bloody show. Then as I'm sitting on the toilet I hear a 'pop' sound, which is a very unsettling thing to hear coming from your body. I sit there for a minute just in case, but nothing happened. So I went back in the room to see what What to Expect has to say about this. I had been to 12 weeks of child birth classes but I could not remember what to do when I saw the bloody show! The book didn't say to run to the hospital so I went back to bed and told Jimmy not to panic but I think I just had my bloody show. He sounded concerned but quickly fell back to sleep. Not 20 seconds later the flood gates opened - my water broke in our bed! I hurried to the bathroom where I continued to leak. I yelled to Jimmy that my water broke, at which time he sprang out of bed and started darting around the house, preparing for our dash to the hospital. It was like something out of a movie - pregnant lady is calm and collected and the father-to-be is panicky and anxious. I couldn't help but laugh at him a few times. Luckily I had my hospital bag packed and ready to go. Jimmy, however, had to scramble to get his stuff together, plus type up our birth plan (which we kept putting off). He also synced the iPod, which is another task we had delayed in completing because our iTunes was being finicky. While Jimmy tried to get things together I showered, made the bed, cleaned up the kitchen a little, packed the cooler and tidied up the living room. At around 4:30am we were ready to go. We were both so excited and in disbelief that this was actually happening!
I was definitely excited to be in labor, but not so happy that it had started with my water breaking. The plan all along had been to labor at home for a while, until my contractions were about 4-5 minutes apart, and then go to the hospital because the longer you're in labor at the hospital the more chance you have of the doctors wanting to intervene to move things along. Well when your water breaks you pretty much have no choice but to go to the hospital right away. Usually doctors won't let you go longer than 18-24 hours after your water breaks, plus since I'm group B strep positive I needed to have time to get two rounds of antibiotics before the baby was born. So it was off to the hospital we went.
Luckily we did our hospital preadmission two weeks earlier so check in went quickly. When the nurse examined me in triage I was 3cm dilated and they verified that my water had indeed broken. Jimmy called his parents and I called my mom to let them know they would soon have a new granddaughter. Jimmy and I were so excited that this was the day we were going to meet our daughter!
I was moved to a labor and delivery room and was instantly hooked up to the fetal monitor, IV and blood pressure cuff. My birth plan stated that I wanted intermittent fetal monitoring and a heplock, not an IV, but since I had to have the antibiotics I really didn't have a choice. My first nurse was really nice and explained everything that she was doing. She read over my birth plan and said it shouldn't be a problem to accomodate our requests, however my doctor may want to give me pitocin if I don't make any progress soon. I really didn't like that she felt the need to bring that up so early into labor but I just stayed positive and assured myself that I could do this completely naturally. At this point and for the next several hours my contractions were very irregular, very far apart and not very strong. After I had the first round of antibiotics I was allowed to walk around for a bit. I got a new nurse who was nice but not very interested in my birth plan. She too mentioned the possibility of pitocin, and at this point I began to get a little concerned. Then again they can't force me to have any medication. I just kept a good attitude and walked the halls to get things going. My doctor came in around 9:00am to check me and I had only dilated about 1 cm. Again, the "p" word was brought up and I asked if I could walk some more and they agreed to give me more time to let things progress naturally. Although they let me walk around I had to go back to the room frequently to hook up to the monitor so they could make sure the baby was okay. The nurse checked me about an hour or so later and I had not made any progress. The contractions weren't getting any closer together either. Then came the talk I was dreading.
I had been in labor for 7 hours and had only progressed 1 cm. Since I had group B strep and my water had broken my doctor was concerned because I wasn't dilating. She suggested pitocin to move things along, since my uterus "wasn't catching up" which can be the case when someone's water breaks prematurely. At this point I understood where she was coming from, but I wasn't totally on board with taking meds. This is not because I wanted to brag that I had a totally med-free birth, but more because I have heard that pitocin makes you have really really awful contractions which leads most women to take pain medication. I certainly wasn't going to have any pain meds so I was in for a guaranteed several hours of excrutiating pain. Jimmy and I discussed our options with the nurse, who didn't really seem to care about our preferences in this situation, and then talked alone for a while. We decided to do the pitocin, and then I cried for the next 30 minutes.
Let me stop the story for a minute to tell you how great Jimmy was this whole time. He really stepped it up as my labor coach, putting into practice all the techniques we learned in our Bradley classes. His job was to keep me relaxed every time I had a contraction - this involved finding any areas I was tensing up and basically giving me a full body massage the whole time I was in labor. Not only that, but he somehow managed to stay so positive throughout the whole experience, even when I was crying like a little baby because the contractions hurt so bad. Jimmy was amazing and there's no way I would have been able to do this without him.
So now it's 11:15am and the pitocin fun has begun. The contractions definitely became more regular and more painful. Plus they wouldn't let me off the fetal monitor because the baby's heart rate was dropping during contractions. Super. So I'm stuck in this very uncomfortable bed with wires and tubes all over the place and I cannot get into a comfortable position. My mood had changed from optimistic to pissed off in a matter of minutes. The nurse checked me around 1:00pm and I had dilated 1 more cm, so now I was up to 5. If I was going to dilate 1 cm every hour like they say should happen, I was going to lose my mind! These contractions were so painful - it felt like my pelvis was going to explode. That was definitely the worst pain I have ever experienced, and now I completely understand why people get epidurals. At this point I am not the Bradley 'A' student I thought I would be - I'm flexing my feet, tensing my shoulders, wrinkling my forehead, holding the bed rails for dear life. And there's good ol' Jimmy, telling me how great I'm doing and massaging my feet (Jimmy hates feet more than anything in the world) and being totally awesome. I just really wanted to go to sleep and put this labor thing on hold for a while. Things were getting really intense and my contractions were really close together. Then around 1:50pm I'm having a contraction and I feel the urge to push. Of course I think this can't be right, I was just 5cm less than an hour ago. Jimmy paged the nurse and she checked me, only to discover that I'm 9 1/2 cm! Holy crap! No wonder the contractions hurt so bad, my uterus was making real progress that last hour!
The nurse paged my doctor and called for the room to be set up for delivery and I am in disbelief that this is really happening. I am of course relieved that the hard labor only lasted a few hours, but now I'm freaked out about pushing this baby out. The nurse instructed me that I can push with the first few contractions but I may have to hold off on a few until my doctor arrives. I push a few times and it's not so bad. There was more of a break between contractions and pushing gave me some control, which I liked. Now about that holding off on pushing thing - are you KIDDING me?? That was one of the hardest parts of labor! I was trying not to push which made my breathing really weird and I almost hyperventilated. Thank god my doctor arrived fairly quickly and then things really got going. Pushing got harder and more painful. Once I felt the "ring of fire" I wanted to quit, but obviously at this point there was no turning back. I just went for it and pushed through the [excruciating] pain. I pushed for a total of 30 minutes and then Zoey Claire was here! The doctor placed her on my chest and that was the most amazing moment. I couldn't believe it happened so quickly and our daughter was here! She weighed 5 pounds 15 ounces, was 18 3/4 inches long and had a full head of dark hair. Other than the hair (and weird ears) she looked just like her papa.
The nurses took Zoey across the room to do the APGARs (on which she scored a 9, by the way) and Jimmy stood by her and took lots of pictures. I was so relieved that labor was over and I could finally relax. Little did I know I was far from relaxing. My two tears had to be stitched up, I had to be cleaned up, and a bunch of people got to push really hard on my stomach repeatedly to get all the blood clots out of my uterus (did not know about this part!). I screamed the first few times they did it - Jimmy said that was the most noise I made throughtout the entire process. Finally about 30 minutes later everyone was done routing around in my business and I got to see my daughter again. And she was perfect.
We had a whole waiting room full of visitors standing by: my mom, Pam and Jim had been at the hospital since about 7:00am, plus my dad, Rachel, Sarah, Jennifer, Austin, and Addison were all there to welcome Zoey. It was such a surreal day. I thought I would want to crash right after Zoey was born but I was so excited there was no way I could sleep.
In the end I think I had a pretty easy pregnancy and labor. Here are some of the highlights from the past nine months:
- I had awful morning sickness until about the 20th week of my pregnancy which caused me to drop 10 pounds and not even look pregnant until about week 24
- I gained 20 pounds
- I never really had any wacky food cravings, just really enjoyed sweets more than usual
- My belly button never became an "outie"
- My only "complications" were that I have group B strep and my and Zoey's Rh factor didn't match up
- Jimmy and I completed the Bradley Method of Natural Childbirth training one week before Zoey was born. This helped us focus on a goal of a totally natural birth experience.
- I had maybe only one or two mood swings the entire time (this is straight from Jimmy's mouth, people)
- I could wear my wedding/engagement rings throughout my entire pregnancy
- I developed a mild case of "cankles" in the last week or two
- I wanted a completely natural birth experience and I feel like I achieved that
- Labor lasted 11 hours, but only about three hours were hard labor
- I had dropped all the baby weight by 8 days postpartum (but I sure have a lot of tightening and toning to do!)
Ash
I'm so glad everything went well and you got to have a pain-med free delivery! Love the pictures too. : )
ReplyDelete