Hellobee

This story was originally written in August 2014.

Sunday July 20th, 2014 started off like a normal day. We went to a church we’d been checking out at the time and everyone made comments about how I looked very close to giving birth. In the back of my mind I was thinking it was going to be another week at least since I had just hit 39 weeks. When we got home Mr. Cookie mowed the lawn, I did some blogging and took a nap. We made one of my favorite dishes for dinner, chicken sausage and red potatoes, and then we sat on the couch to watch some TV.

I went to the bathroom and noticed I was losing some mucous plug. Within an hour I started having minor contractions so I called my family to let them know something could be happening tonight, and I told Mr. Cookie we should go to bed early (around 9 PM) in case we had to go the hospital in the middle of the night. He decided to watch one more episode but later told me we should have gone to bed when I first suggested it, haha!

I tried to sleep for an hour or so, but was too excited/uncomfortable to get any rest so I went to the couch to time my contractions and read birth stories online. Eventually I woke up Mr. Cookie to help me time contractions and at some point decided to take a shower. Afterwards I bounced on my yoga ball to pass the time and work through the discomfort.

4:00 AM

As the contractions got closer together we called my OB’s office and they suggested we stay home a bit longer, but around 4 AM I decided I was ready to head to the hospital.  I sat in the backseat on our drive there and looking back, even though I was contracting, I was waaaay too comfortable.  I could have waited a bit longer at home but in my head I kept thinking how fast my mom’s labors had gone (4 hours with me, her first kid!) and I wanted to be at the hospital just in case.

When we arrived I abandoned my original idea of laboring in my own clothes and threw on one of the hospital gowns. They checked me and I was dilated to 1 cm. How deflating! Shockingly, instead of sending us home they told me to walk around for an hour to see what happened. They checked me again an hour later and I was a stretchy 2-3, which totally surprised us. We also found out pretty early on that my bag of waters was BULGING, and we all assumed my water would be breaking relatively soon on its own (we were wrong).

6:00 AM

By 6 AM I was admitted to a labor room, but not before I puked up our evening’s dinner. Needless to say that is not one of my favorite meals anymore. I’ve had a strong fear of vomiting ever since I was a kid, so of course I ended up being a labor puker. I threw up two more times that day which led to my dehydration because I couldn’t even keep water down. I also ended up with a rash on my face that only appeared during labor and mostly disappeared a week later. Birth is so glamorous isn’t it?

8:30 AM

At 8:30 am I was at 4 cm. I spent the next few hours in a haze laboring in bed, holding Mr. Cookie’s hand, laboring in the shower (unfortunately all the rooms with tubs were already occupied), laboring on the birthing ball, and laboring against the wall/ledge. Time went insanely slow but at the same time it cruised by because I was so focused on the pain.

2:00PM

I passed 5 and 6 cm and when they checked me again at 2 PM, I was at a 7. It was a relief to hear that and I was sure I would dilate to 10 in less than two hours and I’d have a baby by early evening. Oh, how wrong I was!

I decided to lay down in bed and began dozing between each painful contraction. The problem was my contractions were getting farther and farther apart instead of closer together. They FELT like they were on top of each other because I was so out of it, but Mr. Cookie assured me there was a good 5+ minutes in between each one. I guess I would pass out in between each contraction, only to be woken up by the next one which would have me reaching for Mr. Cookie’s hand to hold all while keeping my eyes closed.

They checked me again two hours later, still at a 7.  I kept waiting to reach transition and in the process of anticipating it, I was probably psyching myself out. My sweet and supportive (but realistic) nurse kept telling me I would be able to tell when I was in transition so I kept waiting.

7:00 PM

Around 4:30 PM, I finally begged them to break my bulging bag of waters. There were no other OB’s on the floor to break it and it couldn’t be done by a nurs,e so we waited until my OB arrived from the office and by that time it was 7 PM. When she checked me I was still at 7 cm. At this point, I started to panic a bit; I had been sitting at a 7 for five hours.

My OB mentioned we would probably have to start pitocin soon and some random nurse who had come in to help my nurse said in a quiet voice that wasn’t very quiet, “She’s going to want the epidural now.” Honestly, it totally threw me off but deep down I knew she was right. I had really wanted to go med-free but after almost 24 hours of contractions and no end in sight, I was too tired to push through. I was bummed at first but birth is so unpredictable, and it really doesn’t matter in the end.

7:30 PM – The Epidural

At that point since I’d been laboring without an IV they had to poke my hand, put one in, and get two bags of fluid in me before they could administer the epidural. It was around this time that they noticed I was getting a fever due to dehydration and fatigue.  I was so grateful to see the anesthesiologist walk in around 7:30 PM. I began to feel relief within a few minutes.  As the contractions started to fade, I was finally able to open my eyes fully and chat with my family who came in to say hi but had been at the hospital since lunchtime.

After the epi had taken affect they added pitocin to my IV and then it was time to wait. Every hour they rolled my body from one side to the other side with this huge peanut shaped yoga ball in between my legs. It was such a weird feeling and the new nurse was surprised I could still sort of lift my legs to assist in the rolling.

1:10 AM – Pushing

At 9 PM I was still only 7-8 cm but by 11 PM I was at 9 cm. This when the constant shaking began and I was feeling warmer and warmer, so my nurse brought in a fan. At midnight I had finally reached 10 cm, but they wanted me to labor down for an hour to give baby boy some time to descend on his own.  By 1:10 AM I was on my THIRD nurse and I was ready to push!

Pushing was difficult for me… really difficult. I quickly realized I’d have to give 110% on each and every push but I only had the energy for 48%. But I was ready to meet my son so I pushed as close to 110% as I could and felt miserable doing it. My entire labor was 31 hours from start to finish and that included two nights of no sleep. I felt pretty weak by the time it came to push.

I was given oxygen to help me take deeper breaths and eventually some antacid in liquid form to stop me from burping and gagging. My heartburn was awful during pushing! Mr. Cookie did great though; he was my counter and his voice would follow the action. For instance, when we were getting close to seeing baby boy’s head, his counting got louder and more excited which helped me push through to the end of 10 counts. I also had a great cheering section that helped keep me going when I wanted to give up. My sister and BFF watched the birth of Crumb and they both agreed it was an amazing miracle.

The worst part of pushing was feeling all the pressure down there. Like I said earlier, my epidural hadn’t made me totally numb. The good part was this meant I was in control of the pushing because I could tell when a contraction was happening. When they asked if I wanted to look in a mirror I said, “Sure, why not?” It was really fun to see his head come down, but it was really depressing to see his head go back up. I watched for a while, but then decided it was making me frustrated so I asked them to take it away. By the time he was close to being born I was screaming in between contractions because the pain was so intense.

3:40 AM – The Birth

It took 2.5 hours to push out our beautiful 7 lb 13 oz son. The reason for his slow decent was attributed to one of his arms being up by his head. I guess there was a moment of panic when he was born and a ton of extra nurses rushed in to help. My OB had to literally yank his one arm out because he was stuck and I would find out later at my six week appointment that he had shoulder dystocia. I was so out of it but Mr. Cookie and my sister tell me it was a scary minute, and unfortunately Mr. Cookie didn’t get to cut the cord as planned.

Crumb was born covered in meconium so they had to clean him up before putting him on my chest. But the moment they handed me my son for the first time was one of the most surreal moments of my life.

Full disclosure: I can’t say the moment was 100% joy filled, because there was so much going on in my head. I also felt relief, frustration, fear, happiness, confusion, and utter exhaustion. I had been so excited to meet him for months and months but during labor and pushing, I was so focused on getting through it that I forgot to anticipate holding him. Consequently, his birth almost surprised me if that makes any sense at all.

I had a baby. He was mine. It was overwhelming and beautiful and everything in between. My face says it all.