birth story

Yes all the following posts will be baby related and this may have more detail about labor than you ever wanted to know. Just warning you in advance. I have a lot of memory loss right now due to being in a sleep deprived haze so I'm trying to document as much as I can remember.

So for my childbirth class, they told us to write a birth plan though I guess it's usually more of a wishlist. I had told C that I just wanted one line for my wish list which was "to have the fastest birth possible".

Well we came close.

At 9pm, they started the pitocin to induce contractions and my midwife stopped by to check on us and suggested that we get some rest overnight since first babies could take a while. C took this to heart and settled down on the fold out chair and we turned off all the lights in the room. At this point, I had an IV and fetal heart rate monitor attached to me so was attached to a lot of equipment. It kind of was a pain because I had to wake C every time I wanted to go to the bathroom which was pretty often due to the IV. As time went on, it was getting more uncomfortable to just lay there on the hospital bed - they wanted me to lay flat on my back and not on my side since that would shift the heart rate monitor but my butt ached from staying in one position for so long. Also finally real contractions started but they were really inconsistent - for those who are curious - for me, it was like a menstrual cramp combined with a bellyache when you've eaten something bad. I noticed that if I just laid there on the bed, the contraction hurt more than when I moved off the bed to sit on the ball. Of course, then I started wondering if I didn't feel as many contractions while sitting on the ball, did it mean I wasn't making any progress? The things you ponder when you have all the time in the world sitting there in the dark. The labor nurse assigned to me would periodically come in and nag me about not being asleep since she said I needed to get all the rest I could get. Urgh. It's not like I was staying awake on purpose! I sort of felt like I was in this state of killing time since the nurse made a passing comment that my contractions didn't seem to be progressing that much (from looking at the monitor).

Finally around 2:30, I asked the nurse if she could check my dilation since I hadn't been checked at all since I got admitted. Apparently if you just say you feel like pooping, then they are required to check you. She was a little hesitant until I threw that in. She was surprised to see that I was dilated to 4cm and said I would probably deliver around 9 or 10am estimating 1 cm an hour until I got to 10 cm. After this check, I was a little more hopeful that things would go faster now and finally made the connection that I was having back labor - I was blaming my back pain on laying on the bed for so long. At around 3am, I woke C up to help me with my lower back pain and the contractions were starting to come together really fast - sometimes 1 minute apart and sometimes 2 minutes apart. Another nurse came in telling me they were going to dial back the pitocin - apparently I was getting a little too much which wasn't good for me nor the baby. Lovely.

It was at this point that I asked the labor nurse if they could call my midwife to come in and they reported back that she wanted to first have a trainee doula come by and help me before she showed up (I think they were still thinking it would be hours away). ETA for this mysterious doula (labor coach) was about 30 minutes. Of course right before the doula showed up, I suddenly had a strong uncontrollable urge to push and told the nurse who discovered I had dilated from 4cm to 9cm in 2 hours! They called my midwife immediately and told me to make sure not to push even though I really really really wanted to. Two contractions later, I was dilated to 10cm and I was dying from the urge not to push so the nurses suggested that I could have the OB on call deliver and I quickly said "yes please whoever. Just let me push".

A slew of nurses and the OB showed up in my room quickly to get ready for pushing but luckily my midwife appeared right when I was ready and 30 minutes later, the baby was born!