Because everyone loves a birth story, no?….
We checked in to the hospital just after midnight, so I suppose technically it was the wee hours of Friday, September 7. I had not been able to sleep at all in the afternoon or evening leading up to the excitement, and I was already on an emotional buzz when we got there.
They got us in to a room in pretty short order, had me get in a gown and hop in to bed. After some paperwork and a brief question/answer session with the nurse, my lovely nurse prepped me for my IV. Oy, I’ve never had less fun with an IV in my life! This wonderful lady could not for the life of her find a decent vein. And that’s not for lack of digging and DIGGING. I felt beads of sweat come down my forehead as she was rooting around. At one point she said out loud, “I just don’t feel very confident about this.” She pulled another nurse in, who also made a rough go of it. Finally the second nurse found a vein, but not after spilling a shocking amount of blood all over my arm. I, being the complete geek I am, simply said, “I hope this isn’t a harbinger of things to come!” My husband suppressed his laughter at my use of such a random word as “harbinger” and the nurses just shuffled away.
The night doctor came in to examine me, and I found out the hard way that this guy meant business. As he’s checking my cervix, he simply says, with no warning, “Hmm…I think we could make you a 2,” then proceeds to shock me into a pain that made me want to hit the roof. Apparently quite satisfied with himself (and with me whimpering from the rough treatment), he tells the nurse ”She doesn’t need anything but pitocin! Let’s get this moving!” I’m glad he was so excited at all, but geesh, take it easy, ok?
Sometime just after 2AM they started my drip of pitocin. My husband stretched out on the pathetically limp pad of a bed they had for him, and I tried to “relax” as I was attached to the fluids, the pitocin, the blood pressure cuff, and the baby heart and contractions monitors. Every 20 minutes or so the nurse would come in to up the drip of pitocin, and by about 4am I was starting to feel some regularly spaced contractions.
My husband and I had discussed the option of an epidural, especially since my blood pressure was such an issue, and the experience of pain was only going to make that worse. With my first three labors, I had no pain relief whatsoever, though the labors were very quick (4-6 hours). With my fourth labor, I had an IV of stadol, which I absolutely HATED. I didn’t realize that stadol isn’t precisely pain relief, but more of a relaxant to help you rest between contractions. So basically, you still feel the pain AND you get a psychedelic experience at the same time. That fourth labor was about 15 hours long from first contraction to delivery, and I often wish I had done things a little differently. So…this time we decided to go the epidural route.
I was VERY nervous about the procedure, I have to tell you. I asked the anastheseologist (shout out to Dennis!!) to tell me absolutely every step of what he was doing, since I’m a better patient when I know what to expect (I wish the dr who examined me had known that!). When Dennis told me that the most painful part of the procedure was the local anasthetic, I thought “Oh, I can handle that.” He explained it would sting and burn. OH NELLY! Sting and burn indeed! I was not expecting just how much, and I immediately grabbed the nurse’s hand and squeezed for dear life. Then the first needle that Dennis inserted didn’t “work out”, or something like that, which made me a little nervous, and I could feel a line of blood trickle out of the insertion point. He made another go of it, then got the catheter in and the medicine injected.
My experience with the epidural can be summed up in one phrase: ME LIKEY.
Everything from my belly button down felt like I was soaking in a nice, warm tub. It was so relaxing! My husband continued to monitor my contractions on the screen, and it was so surreal to hear him say, “Did you feel that one?” and me respond with “Huh, what?” The warm sensation in my legs gave way to funky pins and needles, but it was just a numb wierdness, nothing more. It did make me giggle incessantly whenever the nurse wanted me to shift to one side or another, or whenever the dr wanted to check me, because I had NO control over my legs whatsoever. I had to have the nurse and my husband move me around, because my knees would just flop uselessly from side to side. The nurse said that this lack of control really bothered some ladies, but again, it just made me laugh a whole lot. I mean, it was a really comical scene!
The dr had warned me that the epidural might slow things down a bit, and that’s exactly what happened. Everything with my contractions kind of plateaued for a few hours, which was fine with me, because then I got to rest. My water hadn’t ever officially “broken,” although when the dr came to take care of it, he said there wasn’t much fluid left anyway. Taking care of that seemed to move things along a little swifter, though, along with a huge increase in the pitocin.
By 8:30 we were able to get our 13yr old daughter to the hospital to join us for the delivery. She was uncomfortable with the surroundings at first – she said that she was surprised at how many things I was hooked up to, and yet also surprised that I wasn’t writhing in pain. My husband also didn’t quite know what to do with himself – usually he has to coach me through the contractions, but instead he and my daughter were the only ones fully aware of what was going on with my body. We hung out – the three of us – until about 9:45 or so, when I started to feel much more pain and pressure.
The nurse offered to have my epidural “topped off” if I wanted to. Angel that she was, she asked, “Why feel any pain at all if you don’t have to?” I agreed that after four other labors with no significant pain relief, I really had nothing left to prove. I had them send another shot of medicine into my epidural, and laid back down for a little bit.
Then….then the action started. The dr checked me at one point, and I was only 6cm. The nurse fussed around with the monitors, did some more paperwork, chatted with my husband and daughter. I said (legs all tingly and numb again) “Hey, you know, I really feel some pressure down loooooow.” But since it wasn’t really painful and the dr had just checked me, we left it alone. The nurse was getting ready to go on a 15 minute coffee break, when the dr came back in and said – just for kicks and giggles – let’s check her again. I think maybe only 10 or 15 minutes had passed since I was 6cm. The dr was checking me and got a funny look on her face, and I said, “What, no change, right?” And instead she said, “No, I think your nurse shouldn’t go on her break. In fact, get a back-up nurse in here, please, we’re having a baby.”
My daughter suddenly retreated into a far corner of the room as everyone manned their stations. The dr had my husband hold one of my very floppy knees (again, all I could do was laugh!!) and she simply told me to push. The joy of the epidural meant that I felt nothing at all – in terms of pain, that is – and I just got to push to my heart’s content. One push, there’s the head. And there’s my daughter cowering in the corner. The back-up nurse – a very cute, blonde, young thing who seemed to be the only one paying attention to my daughter – told my daughter that she’d always regret not seeing the baby born, so she coaxed her out of the corner and told her everything was ok. The dr told me to push a little more, and *POOF* there he was!! Our new baby!!
My husband and daughter cried and cried and cried. Our son was very blue at first – he had the cord wrapped around him twice – and I remember someone say, “Ok, let’s cry, let’s cry, let’s cry,” as they laid him on my chest. And then he just let out a huge scream. He got real pink in a hurry.
What can I say? It was total bliss to finally meet him. I just kept saying, “I love you! I love you! I love you!” It seemed like everything was over and done with before I knew it, and the dr was closing up shop and congratulating us on a great baby. You may not care to know, but I didn’t need one single stitch, and that has been a HUGE blessing in terms of recovery! The one thing I found a little unfortunate was that because I had them top off my epidural so close to his actual delivery, I was a little dopey right when he was born. I couldn’t move very well at all, except to nurse him right away, so I had to hand him off and have my husband take him until I felt more sturdy. Unfortunately, it took about three hours for my legs to come back to life, but once they did, I felt really great.
He was born at 10:43 on Friday, Sep 7. I stayed the night at the hospital, and although the dr and nurses suggested we stay another night (they said that most moms stay two nights), we went home Saturday afternoon. My husband had to fly out for his new job on Monday, and we wanted all the time we could get with the new baby at home. Besides, I was eager to share him more fully with the other kids, since they’ve been waiting just as long as we have to meet him.
That reminds me: one very sweet story. My husband brought the kids to meet Elijah at the hospital on Friday afternoon, and when they walked into the room and saw him, my 9yr old daughter Abby just burst into tears. She’s such a tender soul – she’s been the one kissing my belly every morning and night since we told her I was pregnant. She cried at seeing him and said, “I can’t believe he’s finally here! I can’t believe we have our baby!” She was overwhelmed with love, and it was a genuinely profound moment that made the rest of us cry, too. She told me before they left that she was so proud of me. I am grateful to be bringing our new son home to so much love!
Filed under: Family Time, Motherhood, Pregnancy
Oh, yeah for epidurals that work! (mine didn’t!).
This wee one is well loved, and that’s a great beginning.
God bless you and your family. I’m teary eyed thinking of Abby and her reaction. Laughed quite a bit about your woobly legs!