Birth Story

M asked if I would send him SJ's birth story because he wanted to know all the details he missed.  I told him I'd write one up and put it here so that he could see it, but also because I want to remember the details too.  It ended up being the longest thing ever.

SJ was born at 9:20pm on August 11, but the story started about 2 1/2 days earlier.  I woke up to use the restroom sometime around 3 am Monday morning and felt like my water may have been leaking.  After using the restroom, it didn't stop, so I was pretty sure that it was indeed leaking.  It never was a huge gush, so it wasn't really broken, but I thought I probably had a high leak and it wouldn't be too long before labor started.  I sent M a message telling him that I thought my water was leaking, just so he would be expecting a message sometime in the near future that I was in labor.  I also left a note for my dad on his bedroom door just to let him know what was going on.  I wasn't sure if he'd want to go to work and then come home if I did go into real labor, or if he wanted to stay home and wait and see what happened.  I had my 39 week appointment later that morning, so I didn't bother to call the office.  At my appointment, I mentioned the leaking to my midwife.  She checked the fluid, but said that it wasn't amniotic fluid and I shouldn't worry about it.  I didn't really believe her, but I had still not begun having anything more than a contraction here and there, so I wasn't too upset.  Most doctors and hospitals have policies requiring the baby to be delivered no more than 24-48 hours after the water has broken, and since I really wanted to avoid being induced or given Pitocin, the fact that she said it wasn't amniotic fluid was good for me.  Since labor didn't really seem imminent, my dad decided to go to work for the afternoon and nothing else happened.

Tuesday morning I was woken up at 4 am by contractions.  I began timing them right away and they were about 5-7 minutes apart but not horribly uncomfortable.  Again I sent M a message to give him a heads up and I debated whether or not to get up and tell my dad before he went to work.  I decided against that because I didn't want another false alarm.  I laid in bed trying to go back to sleep for about 2 hours, but to no avail.  The contractions hadn't slowed or strengthened, so I decided to get up and see if movement would change anything.  After I got up, they slowed significantly.  We went about our usual activities and I think I may have gone grocery shopping later in the morning.  Later in the afternoon I was feeling pretty sleepy since I had been up since 4 am, so I laid down to take a nap.  About an hour later, I was again woken by regular contractions.  These were a little stronger than the ones that woke me up in the morning, but still completely manageable.  Again I got up and the contractions slowed.

At about 9 pm as we were watching a Phillies game, the contractions started back up again and this time they didn't go away when I got up.  We decided to try to go to bed because I was thinking I probably wouldn't be able to wait until morning to head to the hospital.  As soon as I laid down, the contractions got much closer together and laying still was not an option.  I got back up again and went downstairs to try to find a comfortable position.  I sat on my exercise ball and watched TV for a little while, wrote M an email, and walked around the house for a few hours.  The midwives had told me to call then when my contractions were five minutes apart lasting at least a minute, once they had been that way for at least an hour.  By 1 am, my contractions were very close together and I was starting to have a hard time walking and talking through them.  My brother is mostly nocturnal, so at that point I went up to talk to him for a while.  He could see that I was really starting to feel the contractions, so he decided it was time to wake up our parents.  Being the excited little brother he was, he stormed into their room and announced that it was time to head to the hospital.  We called the midwife and told her what was going on, and she recommended waiting at home for at least another hour or two because I didn't really want any pain relief at the hospital.  We waited for about an hour and a half, and then headed to the hospital a little after 3 am.

We got to Labor & Delivery, where they put me in a triage room, examined me, and determined that my water was leaking.  Since I hadn't noticed any change since I first suspected the leak, I was not at all surprised by this diagnosis.  Because my water had broken, I was admitted even though I was only three centimeters dilated and technically not in active labor yet.  They hooked me up to the monitors and started my IV [which I had been hoping to avoid].  After several minutes on the monitor, the nurses were amazed at how frequent and strong my contractions were.  They told us they would have to closely monitor the baby's heart rate and that they may have to give me something to slow the contractions.  Thankfully, SJ was super strong and didn't have any trouble handling the contractions.

After the initial monitoring, I was moved to an L&D room.  I think it was at least 4:30 by that time.  I don't exactly remember all the specifics of what happened next, but I spent the next 8 hours or so trying to find a way to get comfortable and help labor progress as quickly as possible.  I walked around my room for a little while and then one of the nurses offered me one of the labor tubs that the hospital had.  I was looking forward to using that to hopefully relax, so I gladly accepted.  She went to go fill it, but another nurse came and said I couldn't use it yet because they were a little concerned with SJ's heart rate.  It was beating just fine, but wasn't responding in any way to the contractions.  Usually they look for it to accelerate and decelerate, but her's was staying pretty much constant the whole time, no matter what I was doing.  I don't know how long they made me stay in the room while they watched her, but after what seemed like an eternity to me, I was finally allowed to use the tub.  What great relief!  I was so comfortable in there, I even started to doze between contractions [which were still about 2 minutes apart at this point].  I desperately needed the sleep - I had been awake for over 24 hours at that point and having regular contractions for over 9 hours.  I have no idea what time it was when I got in the tub or how long I stayed in, but at some point while I was in there, my midwife, C, arrived at the hospital.  Eventually I decided that I had to use the restroom and she said she wanted to check me again, so I regretfully got out of the tub.  C checked me and said I was at four centimeters.  I was so disappointed!  I was exhausted and felt like I wasn't making any progress.  C asked if she could break my water to see hopefully get things to progress quickly, but I was afraid to have her do that.  I was having a hard time working through the contractions as it was, and I knew that they would get more intense after my water broke.  I was so comfortable in the labor tub though, I decided to go back to it.  I got back in, but unfortunately I didn't find the same kind of relief I had found before.  I couldn't find the same position I had been in, so I tried to find another comfortable way, but was unsuccessful and finally decided to get out.  I went back to my room and tried to lie down to rest, but the contractions were too strong and close together for that to be any comfort.  I found some relief leaning on the labor ball against my bed, and I walked around my room for a while.  M was able to call several times during that period, but I wasn't really able to talk to him.  My contractions were strong enough that I couldn't talk through them and they were lasting over a minute and were only two minutes apart, so I really didn't have much break in between.  Honestly, I don't remember much of what happened during that time period; I know one time he called the hospital because he couldn't get a hold of any of us on cell phones.  My mom answered and held the phone to my ear, but all I could muster to say was an "I love you". 

Sometime in late morning, C decided to check me again and found that I had only progressed to 5 cm.  I was getting extremely fatigued by this point and the slow progress was hugely discouraging.  I was really beginning to doubt my ability to labor naturally, or even at all.  I spent the next hour or so talking [and crying] to C, the nurses, and my parents about what my choices were.  I [and they] were concerned that I would be to exhausted to push when the time came if things kept progressing as they were.  I strongly didn't want meds of any kind for a variety of reasons, but finally let them persuade me to get an epidural.  It was a little before 1 pm when the anesthesiologist came to administer the epidural.  I made sure that he and his staff knew that I did not want to see any of the equipment they were using and I just prayed and focused on breathing through the whole procedure.  It wasn't nearly as bad as I expected it to be, and I had no bad side effects from it, thankfully.  C examined me again after they gave me the epi and then I let her break my water.  She found that there was meconium in the water and let us know that we'd have to have the NICU team present at delivery and there would be precautions taken to ensure that SJ did not inhale any meconium.

The epi gave me almost immediate relief on my left side...in fact the relief was too good and I ended up not being able to move my left leg at all!  My right side was barely numbed at all, however, so they helped me roll onto my right side.  After some time [again, I have no idea how long], I began to lose the feeling in my right leg as well.  There was one spot in my lower abdomen toward my right leg that was never successfully numbed though, and I could still feel the contractions there for the rest of my labor.  There was enough relief though, that I was finally able to take a nap.  I think I slept for an hour or two.  When I woke up, I was feeling the contractions pretty strongly in that spot that didn't numb, so the anesthesiology resident came in and gave me a bolster [I think that's what they called it, but I forget] of the epi medicine.  It helped for a while and definitely took the edge off, but never actually numbed that spot like the rest of my lower body.

At about 3 pm, C came back to say that her on-call day was over and K would be taking over for her.  She examined me one more time before she left and said that I was 5.5-6 cm dilated.  Shortly after, K came in and examined me yet again, just to "get to know me" since she hadn't seen me yet.  It was only a few minutes after C left, so I hadn't made any more progress.  Since I had the epidural, I was unable to get out of bed at all.  At some point, one of the nurses said that I needed to try to empty my bladder into a bedpan.  Since my entire lower body was numb, I really couldn't control those muscles and was unable to do so.  Sadly, that meant I had to get a catheter, but thankfully I was numb, so that wasn't a big deal!  After that, I spent most of the rest of the afternoon just laying in bed talking to my parents and brother.  The nurses kept checking on the monitors and kept commenting on how great SJ was doing through the contractions, which weren't changed at all by the epidural. 

Sometime around 6 or so, I started to get really uncomfortable and couldn't quite figure out why.  I kept asking for K to come back and check me again because I felt like something had changed drastically, but there she had two other patients who were also in the end stages of labor.  She finally came in sometime around 6:30, checked me, and announced that I was almost there!  Then she left again and I realized that I was feeling intense pressure.  I still couldn't really move my left leg, although the epidural was wearing off.  Because of that, I was getting very uncomfortable and I was unable to move to try to find a more comfortable position.  After the other two babies were delivered [and I felt like I had been waiting forever], K came back and checked me again.  I think it was around 7, but I really have no idea.  She said I was at 8 cm [which really made me wonder what "almost there" meant an hour earlier!] and that I should start pushing since I was feeling the urge.  I had no idea what I was doing, but after a few pushes I guess I started to get the hang of it because she said to keep doing that.  I guess she had me push through the last two centimeters because I went from 8 to 10 in almost no time.  Then she had me pushing for real, although from my perspective there wasn't really any difference.  I pushed and pushed and SJ was finally born nearly two hours later, at 9:20 pm.  As C had told me when she broke my water, SJ was immediately placed on my stomach and K cut the cord.  No one stimulated her to try to make her cry and she was taken by the NICU team to be examined.  Once they had a chance to suction her mouth and nose, she cried just a little and they got her breathing and she pinked up pretty quickly.  They checked her over and weighed and measured her.  I wasn't told them right away, but did find out that her APGAR scores were 8 and 8.  I did have a pretty big tear from the delivery, so K stitched me while the NICU team was working on SJ. 

After we were cleaned up a bit, they gave her back to me and she nursed for about 40 minutes.  She latched great right off the bat.  A little after 11, the nurses came back in the room and had me get out of bed and walk to the restroom while they gave SJ a bath and her hepatits B vaccine.  I was a little unsteady, but got my strength back pretty quickly.  It was after midnight by the time we were transferred to a postpartum room and my inlaws were finally able to come in and see us.  I was exhausted when we were finally able to get to bed around 1 am Thursday morning.

All in all, labor was the most physically and emotionally demanding thing I've ever been through, but it certainly had the biggest reward at the end.  There were many times that I doubted myself, simply because I was so exhausted.  Nothing about my labor matched up with anything I had read in preparation and nothing went the way I had expected or planned.  I'm a little disappointed that I wasn't able to go completely med-free, but I think that if I hadn't been so tired, I would have been able to do it.  The pain was never really the issue for me, it was just the physical exhaustion that I couldn't handle.  Due to the length of my labor and my exhaustion, I am fairly certain that I would have had a c-section if I had been seeing an OB rather than a midwife, and it certainly would have been an unnecessary c-section [even if I would have jumped at the chance in the moment!].  The midwives and nurses at the hospital were absolutely wonderful, and although I hope that M never has to miss the birth of another child, I would love to be able to deliver at this hospital again.  Even though I'm so sad that he has missed all of this, I'm so grateful that things have worked out the way they have.  My prenatal care and the whole delivery experience were wonderful and I was so much more comfortable with this hospital and these midwives than I would have been had I stayed in Hampton Roads after M left.