Nathan's birth story is maybe a little less graphic than Hudson's but still probably not something you want to read on your lunch break.
Saturday night I got up to go to the bathroom and noticed some, well, leaking. Just trickly, though, so I grabbed a pad and went back to sleep. The next morning the super absorbent overnight pad made it hard to tell if I was still leaking so I waited a while and then told Jeff that I thought my water might have broken but wanted to wait another half hour to see before calling the doctor. He thought that was a good plan and we made some french toast.
At 11:30 or so I called my doctor who said it sounded like my water had broken. She said it was totally up to me if I wanted to go to the hospital right then and there or try to walk some and see if that brought on some contractions, first, since once I got to the hospital it would likely be induction city which meant laboring in a hospital bed instead of at home. She advised going in a few hours regardless.
I consulted the internet and became more convinced my water had, indeed, broken and so took the dog for a walk. Which did not bring on any contractions so I decided to wait another hour and a half and then go in. (Just enough time to watch the movie Clueless, thinking perhaps my son would want to come out and ogle Alicia Silverstone.) Jeff and I packed and I felt pretty calm heading into the hospital- part of me thought they would send me right back home and it was maybe all in my head, and the other part of me figured I was scheduled for an induction anyway, so what difference did it make when it was?
We walked into the Emergency entrance around 3, which I was dreading, because my past experience with emergency rooms has been nightmarish. However, not if you are a pregnant lady! The first person who saw us, the security guard, asked if I was in labor. I said, "Um, I think so?" and he grabbed a wheelchair and immediately someone was whisking me up to labor and delivery. The nurse in triage immediately told me I should have come in IMMEDIATELY when I thought my water had broken but she also said they would have to do a cervical something or other before they could be sure it had. I got into a hospital gown and almost as an afterthought she said, "Oh, we can just try swabbing you first, if any fluid is still leaking it will turn the swab blue." The swab was the same color as a Smurf and there was to be no examining of my cervix for another 6 hours- they called my doctor and since I had been effaced on Wednesday, a high-dose pitocin drip was ordered immediately.
First, though, they had to put an IV in me. And I nearly passed out. At the time I wondered why they were making such a big deal of it- I felt fine a minute or so later, but they were slapping on an oxygen mask and hovering over me-- but apparently my blood pressure drop had caused the baby's heart rate to plummet. (In my prenatal excessive reading of birth stories, there seems to always be one moment where it seemed like the baby could die- I guess this was ours, but it did not seem that dire since I didn't find out about it until later, at which point the baby was doing fine.)
I couldn't feel any of the contractions for the first six hours or so, although they kept bumping up the pitocin dosage and according to the nurse my contractions were "rolling" or "booming." Finally at around 9 I started feeling them and they quickly got kind of painful- I am a bigger baby than I thought as by 9:30 I was ready for an IV dose of fentanyl. At which point they also checked my cervix and the midwife on duty was shocked to find that I was already dilated to 4 centimeters--- which meant we could get moved to the fancy labor and delivery room. By the time we got there and got settled the Fentanyl had started to wear off- the contractions were pretty painful, but the nurse said I had to wait another ten minutes for more fentanyl (which would be less effective than the last dose) or she could go ahead and order the epidural. I went ahead with the epidural since it would take at least 10 minutes for the anesthesiologist to get there. It was a no-brainer except in 10 minutes the contractions were so painful I was not sure I would be able to sit still for the epidural-- the nurse suggested that I take the second Fentanyl dose which took the edge off long enough for the epidural.
I had been pretty anxious about the epidural and Jeff held my hand but it was not painful at all, just a little weird feeling, and once it was in and working all the pain of the contractions was gone- I still felt each one, but just as pressure. My doctor arrived and found I was dilated to 8 centimeters (again wowing everyone, who thought it would take longer) and that my bag of waters hadn't fully broken after all- so she broke it (which apart from the gush I didn't even notice) and all that was left to labor on and get the baby to move down. I was a little nervous that the baby wouldn't move down, after all that, but was also able to sleep for a while, so I slept from 11 to around 1 and when they checked again the baby had moved down quite a bit. By 2 the nurse had called my doctor to say that I'd be ready to start pushing by 3 or so. (At some point in here they put on an oxygen mask, too, since my blood pressure was low again but this time the baby,took it well, At 3:15 my doctor arrived and we started pushing- and I was surprised to hear that I was actually doing well at it, since I couldn't feel too much. The baby's head was turned sideways but the doctor thought it would turn around as it continued to move out. I was even more surprised when they wheeled the mirror out and I looked and let it stay so I could watch- I had thought I would never, ever, ever, want to see anything like that but it made pushing so much easier, seeing the head move down.
I was also surprised by the head since it had a shock of dark hair. I kept pushing and Jeff kept encouraging me and suddenly I saw the baby's head do a 270 degree turn (when 90 would have sufficed) before sliding out at 4:11 AM. The next thing I knew they were telling Jeff to take pictures and handing me a smushed up little baby who was staring at me like I was supposed to know what was going on. Despite the fact that he looked more like a Soviet dignitary, all wrinkled and mottled,he still looked beautiful to me. And I couldn't believe it- I had kind of thought I was likely to wind up having a c-section, and as it turned out I had impressed even my no-nonsense doctor through labor, delivering an 8 lb 4 oz boy in under an hour of pushing. She kept saying, "We need more Texas women." I think the epidural deserved more of the credit, quite frankly.
After hanging out a while with Nathan, he got whisked off to the nursery with Jeff and I took another nap. By 7 we were all in the post partum room. I called my mom, who I thought Jeff had texted when the baby was born (they had been texting all night) and found out he had texted my parents home number. She was a little annoyed to learn that she had had a grandson for almost four hours and no one had told her (and was also a little worried that I had been pushing for four hours, since right before 3 was the last time we had contacted her) but I think she is over it now.
All in all, though, labor was SO much easier than I ever anticipated. Again, probably because of the drugs and also because of good luck, I imagine. The labor nurse was one of the nicest people ever (or maybe that was the drugs, too) and my doctor was phenomenal. And I couldn't have had a better support person than Jeff- he was just the right balance of loving and encouraging and supportive. So this whole thing, which I had been dreading, was over in about 13 hours, only maybe 1 hour of which was truly painful.
As it turns out, labor was especially a piece of cake compared to the next few days- coming next, why I idiotically sent my husband home the first night! How rooming in was a way more agonizing decision than getting the epidural! How we found out we were in the same room Courtney Cox gave birth in, circumcision drama, and more.
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