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August 14, 2008
Havin’ a baby
I’ve been meaning to write down mr. baby’s birth story but it’s taken a while. You know, bein’ busy with a baby and all is pretty time consuming.
you better sit down: THIS IS REALLY LONG.
To start the story let’s back up a few weeks before my due date. Two weeks before I went my usual Thursday appointment with the midwife. She asked if I wanted to be checked to see if I was dilated. I said yes. She also asked if I wanted a membrane sweep. I was nervous about her doing a this because the last four women she had done a membrane sweep on had gone into labor the same night…. I said yes, since I was about 3 cm dilated and 80 – 90 effaced. That afternoon I had convinced myself that I was probably going to go into labor. I started having mild contractions/Braxton hicks a while after I got home. This lasted most of the night… we went to the store and walked around a little. At 11pm corey told me to go to bed because most labors start at night and I should get rest. I was able to fall asleep but woke up throughout the night wondering when the contractions would get worse so I could finally have the baby. They never got worse and the next day I was fine. And I continued to be fine for the next week until my next appt.
At the next appt. (on a Thursday) the other midwife checked me again and said that I was 4 cm and 90 – 100% effaced. HOLY SHIT! She did another membrane sweep and I went home and felt lots of contractions and general uncomfortable-ness the whole night. And again I went to bed and nothing happened and I woke up fine in the morning. …
On saturday and we tried some other “natural labor inducing methods” which I won’t go into details with…but you can figure it out what it was (hint: it wasn’t eating spicy foods and it wasn’t taking a long walk or drinking castor oil…) this immediately started up contractions again which were really uncomfortable. Like , I wanted to call the midwife but kept holding off because they couldn’t be timed. I walked around the apartment a lot and eventually went to bed. THEN: Monday June 2nd.…. I don’t really remember what I did during the day. I picked corey up from work and we stopped at the store to buy rice crispys and marshmallows because I wanted to make rice crispy treats. The check out girl made a comment about my gigantic pregnant-ness and I said that my due date was the next day. We left and ate dinner. I made rice crispy treats. Corey fell asleep on the couch…bla bla bla.
At around 10 I decided to take a bath. My back kind of “hurt” only not really. I sat there for a while and then got out and decided to read a book. I found “the Giver” on the bookshelf and went into the bedroom to lie down and read. I read for a while and then was like ‘I should go to bed, it’s getting late’. while lying there trying to sleep I started to feel the sensation of dripping…like my water was about to break. I jumped out of bed and ran into the bathroom to stand in the tub because I didn’t want to make a mess. Right before stepping in the tub I felt a gush of water. I took my pants off and saw that the water was a greenish color. I knew this probably meant the baby had passed meconium already and I was a little panicked but tried to not freak out. I yelled to corey in the other room to get up because my water broke. I called the midwife and the hospital to tell them I was coming in. this was about 12 am. On june 3rd, which was the baby's due date. we gathered up all our crap and thank god my mom told me to put a garbage sack to put on the car seat in my bag in case my water broke, because I kept leaking stuff all over. I called my mom as we drove to the hospital. We got to the hospital and they had a room all set up. The nurse put a monitor on my tummy and we gave her the birth plan which said that I wanted to use the birth ball and dim lights. She brought the ball in and I sat on it while she started telling corey about how to operate the tv and lights. By now I started to feel contractions and it really annoyed me that the nurse was telling him about the tv. At one point the monitor wasn’t doing what it was supposed to do so the nurse came over to fiddle with it. I was sitting on the ball and said “I think I’m gonna barf” and she got up and brought the barf bowl over to me and I promptly puked my guts out. My contractions were getting more intense and I walked around the room and didn’t really know what I wanted to do to get more comfortable because I didn’t seem like anything would help. I went into the tiny bathroom because I felt like I needed to go but couldn’t. the nurse checked me and I was 6-7 cm dilated. I walked around more and went back to the bathroom and stayed there. Every time a contraction came on the only thing I could do was hold on TIGHTLY to this bar on the wall and rest my face on the shower tile which was cool. Corey reminded me to breathe which was helpful. I told the nurse I really wanted to go to the bathroom and she said I could if I needed to. What I meant was that I was feeling the urge to push. After a while the midwife got there the nurse told her I had the urge to push so she checked me and said I was “ready to go!” so I got into the bed and they set up the squatting bar. For the next two hours I pushed with the bar, on my side, on my hands and knees…. The pushing part actually felt really good, I’m not sure how to describe it, but I liked it and dreaded when the urge stopped because the non-pushing part was uncomfortable. At some point they gave me oxygen to breath which was also nice. After a long time of pushing and not much happening the midwife said they were going to get the dr. to use the vacuum extractor to get the baby out. I kept pushing while the dr. came in and she told me what she was going to do and I was like “okay, whatever…just do it” she gave me a numbing shot and had to use the manual vacuum thing because the electric one wasn’t working (??) as soon as she ‘vacuumed’ the baby came out and his umbilical snapped. The midwife was all “clamp it! No, not her, THE BABY” and then mr. baby started crying and they put him on the table to clean him and to get him back to normal since he had lost blood when the cord snapped. i can remember thinking “ omigod, it’s OVER” and looking at him on the table and he was just really cute and I was so glad that I wasn’t pregnant anymore. He was born at 4:22 morning. I really couldn’t believe how fast it happened.
The first couple of weeks after this I would recount the situation in my mind, or to other people and would often “forget” details of my labor. If corey was there, he would remind me that this or that happened and I would be like ‘oh yeah….’ Even right after , while the nurse was cleaning me and need to give me a catheter (ew gross, the worst part about the whole thing, ) I asked her if it would hurt and she was all “what? You just gave birth what do you mean ‘will it hurt’?” I was like “um, I already don’t remember that…”
Another thing: to get myself through the contractions without drugs I told myself that each contraction was getting me closer and closer to the pushing stage and it would all be over soon. I honestly can not remember what having a contraction feels like, I only remember feeling “foggy”. Looking back, it was like I was having an out of body experience. Kinda weird.
Posted by alison at August 14, 2008 02:47 PM