Birth Story- loooong

Since this is my blog and I get to talk about whatever I want, I want to tell you about my birth story.  Feel free to not read =)
And I am sorry ahead of time: TMI!!!


Friday morning: J and I went to our 40 week appointment. I was up on the table and the doctor is asking me all the normal questions. One of them was are you having any contractions, to which I replied "Nope! Not a thing!" And the doctor was feeling my belly making sure of his position tells me that I am currently having one. Apparently I had been having contractions and not feeling them! Wow, I felt dumb! The appointment goes on, and I ask him to strip my membranes in hopes to get things going. I'm pretty sure that he wasn't able to do anything because even though everything was thinning out and moving in the right direction, but I was still pretty high (I think? Maybe). So I am not really sure if he actually stripped my membranes or not.
Since the doctor pointed out my contractions to me, I kept time of them all day. All day long they were 5 min apart. Never painful. Towards the end of the evening, they would get closer to 3-4 minutes apart, but still weren't painful. This stressed J out a little bit because he knew we were "supposed" to go to the hospital when contractions were less than 5 min apart. But I just knew that this wasn't it. In fact I was SURE that our little ninja was going to stay happily in my belly for at least another week.

Saturday: Contractions all day long. Still nothing painful. I would time them throughout the day and they were between 5-8 min apart. But I knew it wasn't time. J and I went for a walk, (3 miles!) hung around the house, and just had a relaxing day. Looking back, I wish that I had cleaned my house a little more this day!!! Not that it was dirty, but my bathroom needed a good scrubbing that I decided to do the day I came home from the hospital (not a good idea).
I casually mentioned to J that I bought caster oil to try and see if that would start labor but I didn't want to use it until after my due date. And I figured, if nothing else happened at least it should "clean me out." J said why not try today (my due date was the next day) and see what happened. I took 1Tbs of caster oil in a glass of orange juice at about 7pm.
*FYI* My doctor was actually a little ticked that I took it and surprised that it "worked" and I am not certain that this started my labor or if it was just his time.

From about 7-9 the caster oil cleaned me out. Not that I was uncomfortable or running to the bathroom but just moved things out in a timely fashion. At about 9 I started to feel sick. Tired, tummy ached, and just generally icky. I went to bed and J stayed downstairs playing xbox.
12:00 on the dot I wake up to a painful stomach ache. I get up and go to the bathroom. After a little bit the ache goes away. A minute later, it's  back. Thinking this is a little weird I grab my phone and start timing the pain on my contraction timer. *Thank you Auntie for telling me that you thought you had a tummy ache too when you went into labor!* I don't have to go big potty and these contractions are about 2 min apart though I only timed a few of them. I head downstairs where my husband is fast asleep on the couch, wake him up and tell him I am actually having contractions that are only a few minutes apart. In his sleepy haze he tells me to lay down with him and he will rub my back. Um, okay, but they are TWO MINUTES APART is what I was thinking! So, I lay down while he rubs my back. We stay like this for about 5 min when I tell him, okay so they are two minutes or LESS apart, what should we do. This is when he FINALLY starts to freak out a little. I call the hospital, talk to a nurse and she says I can either labor at home for awhile and see if they get closer together (um, two minutes apart is EFFING CLOSE!) or if they become too painful to come in and get checked out. I pass along all the info to J and we decide to wait for a little bit since I am still convinced that my little man is not coming out any time soon.

After about 10 min, I decide that this is too painful and I need to go to the hospital. This is when J goes into freak out mode, which for other people probably looks like nothing. But he is rushing around the house, pulling on clothes, asking me a million times if my hospital bag is in the car, is the diaper bag in the car, and am I okay. We make it into the car where my sweet husband drives very quickly to the hospital. I can't really talk thru the contractions, but am keeping up conversation when I'm not in pain. Contractions are still 2 min apart holding steady.

We get to the hospital at about 1:00. I see the same nurse who I talked to on the phone. She lets us into a room and checks me out. The three of us are pretty sure she is going to send me home before she even checks. I was dilated to about 1.5 cm. She tells us that our options are walk around the hospital, go home, or my water needs to break. She is still talking to us, hooking me up to a machine to check the contractions and the babe. All of a sudden I feel two pops and a GUSH of water. I turn to the nurse and was like, uh....I'm pretty sure my water just broke! Sure enough, it has and we get admitted to the hospital.  This is about 1:15 am on Sunday.

J and I have decided that I must block out pain because I only remember tiny bits of what happened between 1:15am and 6:30am. I remember getting checked after my water broke and I was at 3cm. I remember asking for an epidural sometime around 3:30 and getting a shot of something into my IV. I remember feeling some relief for awhile after that first shot and I could talk to J again. I got 2 more shots into my IV between 3:30 and 6am that dulled all of two contractions each time. Other than that, I really don't remember anything. J said that I just held onto his hand and pretty much didn't move. He would occasionally get up to go to the bathroom, but other than that, he stayed holding my hand the whole time. Finally around 6:30 the nurse says the anesthesiologist has arrived. They sit me up and have me lean over onto J. I remember telling him I just can't do this any more. I am in too much pain. I can't handle it. I am pretty sure I was crying at the time too. Thankfully, the epidural kicked in pretty quickly after that and let me tell you I was a new person!!

The anesthesiologist and my doctor must have arrived at pretty much the same time because he came in to check me after I had my epidural. And let me tell you, I am sooooo glad that I got checked after the epidural because I was dilated to a 9cm with only a tiny lip to go.

At 8am they start talking about pushing. I am still chatting away with the nurses and the corpsman. J and I are watching the news. I am a happy camper. The corpsman is talking about bringing me breakfast after the baby is born. Everything has progressed so easily and quickly that we all just assume that pushing will be a breeze.

9am I am ready to push. We push for about an hour and the babys heart rate starts dropping. The doctor tells me they like for his heart rate to stay above 100, his is in the 90's. They start moving me around for the pushing. Laying on one side, laying on the other, on my hands and knees. This probably goes on for about an hour and a half. All the while the baby's heart rate is staying fairly low, I am praying like no other. I am sure J is praying the same way. They are telling us they think that the babe is either laying on the cord or it's possibly wrapped around his neck. Finally his heart rate starts to perk up again. He's off the cord!

After 3 hours of pushing, the babe is still stuck in my pelvis. His head can't get thru. The doctor starts talking c-section. The one thing I have been wanting to avoid. And he tells us that it will not be an easy c section. They will have to push the babe up the birth canal, there is a higher chance that my bladder all other inner parts will tear. I am crying my eyes out (the epidural is wearing off) and am so scared. The doctor decides to let me have a break (I look like death warmed over...nice little oxygen mask and all!) and he will come back in 30 minutes to see what we have decided. Since the epidural was starting to wear off, I could feel the urge to push a little bit so I do while we are waiting. J and I make the decision to go ahead with the c section. I am just to tired to push for even for another half hour. I knew that even though it wasn't what we were planning, I just couldn't continue to push even if I wanted to. I didn't have the energy. The doctor comes back in and we tell him that we are going to do the c section. He decides to check me again just in case the baby has moved at all.

HE MOVED! His head was just enough past my pelvis that we could keep pushing if we wanted to! I asked for another epidural and between that and the 30 minute break I had just enough energy to give it another go. So I push push push for another 30 minutes. And still the babe does not want to come out. They ask if they could try vacuuming him out and I say, YES, GET HIM OUT OF THERE! So another 30 minutes and lots of vacuuming later, my baby boy is born.

They laid him on my chest and I cannot describe how amazing that was. All of the pain, totally worth it. All the exhaustion, worth it. I was so incredibly happy. He is not really crying at this point so the nurses take him to clean him off and check him out. They have J cut the cord and comment on how short the cord it. No way it could have been wrapped around his neck, it was tiny! The doctors (I ended up getting 2 doctors, the doctor that was on call and then the doctor that I saw for most of my pregnancy ended up finding out I was there and staying for my delivery) start to stitch me up. Let me say, thank God for epidurals because had I not had one, the stitching would have SUCKED. I was trying to not pay attention to what they were saying while they were down there because they were not terribly excited about everything. So I watched my babe get cleaned up and his first bath. Finally, after an hour of stitches later the doctors were done. My little man got to eat, which went surprisingly well, the nurses showed me how to burp him, I asked a million questions, and just generally stared at this amazing baby that we made.

Thankfully the nurses let us stay in the birthing room for way longer than normally allowed (Normal is maybe 2 hours, we stayed about 6). While my little man was getting checked in the nursery and getting an IV (we both had a fever at delivery) the nurse wheeled my bed into the recovery room and helped me into the recovery bed. J brought the little man back and we settled into the room. I was on 24 hours bed rest from the rough labor so J did all of the diaper changes and brought him to me so he could eat. We ended up staying about 2 and a half days in the hospital so I could recover and so H could get all of his antibiotics. Thankfully, we are both okay.

My little Hyatt was born about 2pm after 14 hours of labor (4 and a half hours of pushing) at 7 pounds 7.5 ounces and 19.75 inches long. And he is amazing. Worth every second =)

My little boy is now 5 weeks old. It's amazing how fast time flies! He is already in 3 month clothes. Can he please slow down now?

So if you've made it this far, that's our story. I found out two things thru this experience: 1) I am very good at being pregnant. Not so great at giving birth. And 2) apparently 4 and a half hours of pushing is impressive. I was watching the video of the nurses giving H a bath and you can hear them say how crazy I was for pushing that long and they couldn't believe it didn't end in a c section hours ago. And how impressed they were that no only did I push for forever and a day, but my eyes were still open and I wasn't sleeping yet!

I'm hoping our second child is a little easier on me!

Love,
L