I promised a birth story and am not sure if this beat’s Lo’s experience with delivering the Shmoo. We’ve been comparing notes in a fun and slightly competitive manor.
This is a long one, so if you are interested enough to read through it, kudos to you! I promise some photos at the end as a reward….or you can just cheat and scroll down to the end.
The birth story started over the weekend. The OB was still concerned about my blood pressure and had me do a 24 hour urine test and blood test over the weekend.
At 7:30 pm on Sunday night, I received a phone call from the OB saying that they received my test results and are leaning towards inducing me earlier than planned, i.e. have our hospital bag packed and be prepared to go to the hospital from our Monday morning appointment.
We dropped off the Shmoo at Lo’s parents on Monday morning and prepared for the long haul. The doc was honest about the timing. I was over 39 weeks. Nothing was an emergency, but the numbers wouldn’t get better the longer I was pregnant. It seemed logical to proceed with inducing and we were ready.
Lo and I went out for a quick breakfast and were checked into the hospital by 11 am. I got settled into a delivery room and they inserted the cervix ripening agent at 12:15 pm. Within an hour or so, I started contracting.
It was weird to me that I didn’t really notice the contractions for the first hour. As they got worse, it was really more like my regular period cramps – which are pretty bad.
I had called my mother in the morning to update her and she didn’t answer her phone. She is friends with our governor and I knew she was at an event in her town that the governor was at. Lo and I spent the next few hours joking that my mother was too busy hobnobbing with her buddy than answering the phone when her daughter was in labor. (It turns out that her secretary didn’t give her the message until after noon or so).
We didn’t have anyone in the room when Shmoo was born. I didn’t think I wanted anyone in the delivery room for me either. Just Lo. When Lo was getting worried about how helpful she’d be, we planned on trying to get my best friend in the whole world (Nurse J) to come up from Pennsylvania to be there for the delivery. But when I didn’t go into labor over the weekend, we never thought Nurse J was going to be able to get off work to be there. Somehow, she was able to change her schedule for the afternoon to be on the road by 3 pm and make it to Connecticut by 6:30.
When my mother called back, she asked if I wanted her to come. I figured it couldn’t hurt to have someone to keep Lo company. (I never in a million years thought I actually wanted my mother in the room for the delivery) I didn’t think my mother would be there for the long haul. But it turned out that having my mom, Nurse J and Lo there was a perfect team of people for the delivery room.
From 12:15 to about 9 pm, time moved at a snail’s pace. My mom and Nurse J both didn’t arrive until after 6:30 or so. Lo was bored out of her mind and I was getting fairly bored as well. It took about that long for me to go from 1 cm to 2 cm. The cramps were about my normal period level cramps, which are not exactly comfortable. But it felt like things were going to take forever.
We were introduced to the 2 nurses that were in for the long haul night shift with us. They were both wonderful (D and J). We told them about Lo’s birth story and how the anesthesiologist on duty that night was in an appendectomy and Lo never got drugs. At about 6 pm or so, the nurse D announced that the same anesthesiologist was on that same night and had an appendectomy scheduled. We all laughed at the irony but we were all pretty sure that I had plenty of time to get the epidural.
Now, the rest of this story is pieced together by my random recollections (kinda like piecing together an evening of blackout drinking) by comparing notes with Nurse J, my mom and Lo. Most of the night was a blur.
They started the Petocin at 8:30 or so. I think the doctor came in around 9 pm to check on me and I was maybe 4 cm. Nurse J, Lo and my mom ordered a pizza and there was a pretty light hearted atmosphere in the room. Both nurses on staff were very nice and everyone seemed to be having fun…except for me.
We spent a lot of time trying to keep the stupid machine on the baby’s heartbeat because he wasn’t staying still. I was incredibly uncomfortable and due to my blood pressure, they wouldn’t let me walk the halls. The only thing I could do was sit on this damn ball and try to force my cervix to open. That, plus the increasing contractions, just sucked.
The contractions were getting worse and my doctor showed up to check me. I think everyone thought I’d deliver around or after 3 am or so. My contractions were getting worse and I was losing my ability to focus on breathing. They turned off the Petocin because the anesthesiologist was still not available.
The pain was getting really bad and while I wasn’t screaming, it was becoming more apparent to everyone in the room that when a contraction hit, I no longer was smiling or communicating with everyone. Then, the nausea hit.
A little before 11 pm, I think everyone realized that I might be getting far along. The Petocin had been off for a while it seemed that I was “transitioning”. The doc checked me and I was 7 cm.
This may have been about the time the anesthesiologist showed up. I just remember one of the nurses telling me in advance to make sure I respond “yes” to the long list of things the anesthesiologist goes through with me. When the woman stood in front of me and started her long list of “pros and cons” and “do you understand?” questions, I was so on point with my “yes” and “uh huhs” to keep this moving along. I stopped her at one point so I could try to get through a contraction. I really wanted to just scream at her, SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GIVE ME SOMETHING.
Not sure what happened in which order, but someone realized I was too far for the epidural. All of a sudden, I felt like I had to push. I may have farted (lovely, right). One nurse was right in front of me and I was no longer breathing how I was supposed to and was just grunted some primal grunt. The nurse asked “can you push?” with a surprised look on her face and I just said “I really think so.”
They got me to flip on my back and checked me again.
9 cm.
The anesthesiologist was in my face again. I wanted to slug her. She mentioned something about being able to give me something else for the pain. And she started talking a lot again. I was on my side, grabbing at the bed rail when I interrupted her and said “if you are going to give me ANYTHING, it has to be RIGHT NOW.”
She disappeared from view and I waited for some prick in my back. I don’t think anyone was in the room at that point. Maybe Nurse J and my OB and one nurse. That was it. Lo and my mother had left because I was supposed to be getting the epidural.
When I didn’t feel a prick in my back and could feel the beginnings of another huge contraction, I huffed in frustration, flopped over onto my back, looked at my OB and said “I am going to push.” She stood there for a second with a look of shock on her face. She still had her sweatshirt on and hadn’t even put scrubs on.
The contraction came and I pushed a fairly ineffective push. After I relaxed from that, the room went into a frenzy.
Lo and my mother appeared from outside, both nurses were at my side, the anesthesiologist was right by my head again and everyone was being told what to do. People grabbed my legs, someone told me that I need to put my head down (I think someone actually grabbed my head and forced it to my chest) and I was told to have a good long push for a count of 10.
The contraction came and everyone counted to 10 as I pushed my little heart out.
Everyone in the room expressed a little shock when that push produced a head.
The doc looked up and Lo and said she couldn’t cut the cord (it was wrapped around his neck). They all made me stop as she struggled to cut the cord from his neck. A few seconds after she did that, another contraction came and everyone counted while I pushed again. The rest of him was out.
2 pushes. Less than 3 minutes. There he was.
It was brutal.
And I never got the f’ing drugs that I was waiting for all day. All day I had just quietly dealt with the contractions because I knew I’d have relief when I got the epidural.
After he was born, they put him on my chest and he was blue and not crying. I think Lo and I both said at the same time “why isn’t he crying?” and one of the nurses whisked him away. It seemed like a really long time while they worked on him before I heard the cry. Then everyone just surrounded him and I was left there on the bed looking at my OB.
Thankfully, my doc was a surgeon before she changed her specialty to OB. Because she looked up and me with a ton of sympathy in her eyes and informed me that I had done quite a bit of damage and she would have to take some time to make some repairs. Ouch and yuck. It was apparently really bad.
It probably took more than an hour and several shots of local to stitch me up. All the while, my birthing party was handing around the newest arrival to the party and snapping pictures trying to avoid getting shots of me in the background.
The doc was the same one who delivered Shmoo, so Lo and I did compare notes a little about whose delivery was worse. The next morning, when the doc visited me in the hospital, she did tell me that I earned bragging rights after that one. I think she was irritated with the anesthesiologist and felt pretty badly that I never got pain meds. But at least I got a good story.
And this little man is pretty perfect, I mean he wasn’t even in the birth canal for probably more than 5 minutes or so.
We just need to come up with a nickname for the little guy.
And here he is…
Here is my mom with her 6th grandson (no granddaughters). I think he looks like my mother’s family.
Btw – Shmoo has been A-MA-ZING as a big brother. I am still just so stunned about how wonderful he has been this week. I will update more later.
Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Other than trying to get through the recovery of this whole delivery, everything has been just perfect!
