So, for most everyone, I'll start with the Reader's Digest version:
Wednesday, 8/25
1:30pm Weekly Dr's Appt
2:00 Admitted to Birthing Center
5:00 Start induction
10:30 Pain StartsThursday, 8/26
1:30am Epidural!
4:30am Start Pushing
8:17am Parker makes his appearance!
Saturday, 8/28
3:00-ish Finally make our way home.
But, if you want all the sordid details, here you go...
At my 39 1/2-week check-up, the Dr. checked my progress, I was at 2-3cm dilated, and she was confident that I would go into "spontaneous labor" "soon". I've heard enough baby stories to know that "soon" could mean any time between now and September, but she seemed confident that I would have the baby in the not to distant future. So, I went home, and I waited....and waited...and waited for the pain to start. I didn't know what was actually happening, but if there was one thing I'd learned from the classes and countless books, labor hurts, and you'll know it's the real deal when it hurts.
So, the time comes for my 40 1/2-week appointment. I decided that Keith should probably come to this appointment. I was having what seemed like almost constant Braxton Hicks, but I hadn't had a single painful contraction, so I obviously was a LONG way from spontaneous labor. So I thought it would be good to have Keith there so we could start the induction discussion. I drove downtown to pick Keith up from work and we headed over to the hospital. When we got there, my blood pressure was high, not crazy-high, but a little high for pregnancy, and certainly higher than my normal just-high-enough-to-keep-you-alive level. When the Dr. checked my status, I was a full 5cm dilated. Dr. Warwick wasn't really sure why/how I was so dilated without being in labor, but she thought it would be a good idea to have me admitted for some monitoring, and probably inducing to get the contractions started. All of a sudden, it was much more real, we’re having a baby today!
We headed upstairs and before you know it, I was hooked up to a baby monitor on one side and an IV drip on the other. Once the monitor was up & running, we discovered to everyone's surprise that not only was I already in-labor, my contractions were only 1-2 minutes apart and fairly consistent. We met with the on-call Dr who decided to get the show on the road. My blood pressure wasn't going to hurt the baby, but there wasn't any compelling reason to keep me pregnant at that point. So, just before he left for the day (around 5pm), they started the Pitocin drip, and we continued to wait for the pain.
There is something very strange, and not at all as described in the books, to be sitting in a hospital room, just waiting for the pain to start. I had tried to keep an open mind as to what my labor & delivery would look like, but never in a million years would I have included, "sit painlessly in the hotel room for six hours, eating dinner and watching Transformers". Every once in a while, the nurse would up my Pitocin level, so by 10 or so, we'd gone from 1 to 6. I still wasn't feeling anything, but the contractions were much more consistent (at least according to the little read-out). Mostly, we sat around listening to the baby’s heartbeat on the monitor, until he moved, and then the nurse would have to re-position the monitor. I think she spent 50% of her time re-positioning the baby monitor since he kept moving. I think she must have used an entire tube of that gooey stuff on the monitor, if only it cured stretch marks, I’d have a perfect tummy!
Finally, around 10:30, I started to feel the contractions, and when they came, they came with a bang. In the time it took to do one lap around the hall, the pain had gone from non-existent to the level that I couldn’t walk. Once the pain started, they did another exam to check my status, as of 10:30, I was still at 5cm, but the pain was ramping up. By midnight or so, the pain seemed like more than I could handle, during each contraction I came to the absolute decision to get an epidural, but then during the brief down time, I'd decide to hold out a little longer. I felt pretty wimpy to be asking for pain meds only an hour after the pain started, but I just wasn't sure I could handle what I was experiencing then, let alone once labor really "got going". Finally, around 1, I told the nurse I was ready to talk about pain meds. We tried the bathtub, which helped a tiny bit, but not really enough to notice. The nurse started discussing my options and the pros & cons of narcotics to "take the edge off" during the middle part of labor. I really just wanted to skip all the intermediate stuff and go straight to the epidural. Not only was I not so excited about the side-effects of the narcotics on myself and the baby, I didn't want to take the edge off, I wanted the pain GONE entirely. I'm not convinced how tactful I was in expressing this thought to everyone around.
Before we started any drugs, the Dr's did an exam, just to check my progress. I was expecting to be around 6-7 or so, but I was 90% effaced and 9cm dilated. Suddenly, the pain level made more sense; I'd gone almost all the way through Transition in under 2 hours. So, they called the Anesthesiologist and she got started setting up...slowly. By this point my contractions were right on top of each other and I was in so much pain I couldn't see straight. I understand enough about anesthesia to know that even once she starts the meds, it will be 15-20 minutes before the pain subsides, and I wasn’t sure I could survive another 15-20 minutes like this. And that count-down wouldn’t even start until she GOT THAT STUPID NEEDLE IN MY BACK, which seemed to take FOREVER. It took all the willpower in my system not to scream “JUST PUT IT IN, PUT IT IN!!” (Afterwards, I was talking with my dad, when I told him who did the epidural, he said, “Yeah, she’s good, but she’s slow.”, so I guess I wasn’t making it up). But eventually, the drugs started working and the world was a little rosier.
By this time I was almost 10cm dilated, and mostly effaced, but there was a small section that still needed to thin out before we could start the pushing. According to the Dr, the baby’s head was still bobbing around a bit, so they didn’t want to break the waters for fear that something could slip in underneath. So, they decided to just pierce the waters bag and let it drip, to see if his head would push down enough to finish opening the cervix. At this point, Keith & I both took a nap and had several hours to catch up on our energy for the “big event”. I woke up around 3 or 3:30, I wasn’t feeling pain, but there was definitely pressure, so hopefully the baby was getting closer to ready. I was 10cm and pretty much completely effaced, so the Dr broke my water. (Turns out Parker had had quite a pillow, judging by the volume of water that came out, the Dr even got wet). We did a few “practice pushes”, and at 4:30, we woke Keith up to start pushing. The contractions weren’t painful (praise the Lord for epidurals), but I could feel them, so I knew right when to push. We tried several positions, but I preferred the squat bar. My left leg was complete dead weight due to the epidural, so I had to tell Keith to lift it up for each contraction when I was just on my back. With the squat bar I could control things a little better on my own (pretty much everything was out of my control at this point, it was nice to have SOMETHING I could control).
Eventually, they upped my Pitocin level to get the contractions a little closer together & stronger. About two hours into it, I felt like we hadn’t yet gotten anywhere. The contractions were getting MUCH more painful, and I was exhausted from the pushing, but it seemed like the baby’s head was just moving back & forth & back & forth. I could actually feel his head come forward when I pushed, and then retract back again after. We had a 1st year Resident from the UW working with us through the delivery (no one could ever remember her name, just that it “rhymed with spaghetti”), with every push she’d say “I can see his head, he has a lot of hair”. Of course, I was convinced she was lying because 1. NOTHING was happening, she was just trying to make me feel better, and 2. How could she see his hair, it was supposed to be blonde!
But eventually, after hours of pushing to the point that I was beyond exhausted, we were almost there. I was vaguely aware that they were getting ready, the room was slowly filling up with people and equipment, but I wasn’t really aware of anything outside of myself. The contractions were so painful (even with the epidural) that I couldn’t see straight, and I was so exhausted that I couldn’t even open my eyes. Keith was a great trooper holding my hand and trying to help me out. Unfortunately, I was too exhausted to really care who was there or what they were saying. Fortunately the epidural was working well enough to keep me from telling him that! But finally little (or not so little) Parker was born, I could feel when his little head finally popped out, I had to hold there for a little bit, then they let me deliver the rest of his body. It was the most amazing and exciting thing to see his squirmy little body put down on my chest, and his full head of dark brown hair (where did that come from?!?!). He seemed a little purple, and he wasn’t making much noise, but I thought that no one else seemed too concerned about it, so I figured it was fine. After a couple minutes, the baby nurse took him away to get him cleaned up and make sure he was okay, and then I noticed that his cord was cut already. I wasn’t sure how I had missed that point, but it didn’t really matter (only later did I hear that his umbilical cord had been wrapped around his neck fairly tightly, so they’d had to cut it before I could deliver his body. This was probably why it had taken so much pushing, and also information that it was better that I didn’t know until several hours later when Parker was sleeping peacefully next to me). Once they got Parker to let out a good cry (they put him on the cold scale), they did let Keith trim the cord. Good thing we weren’t too married to our birth plan!
I remember in my birthing classes they said “you won’t even notice when you deliver the placenta, you’ll be too distracted with the baby”. Well, I was distracted with the baby, but I wouldn’t say that was entirely true, it was still fairly painful, but still nothing compared to the 14” head I’d just delivered. But eventually, I was all stitched up, Parker was pinking up, and we were free to spend a little time together as our new family.
We expected that we’d be sent home the next morning (Friday), but we actually were kept at the hospital until Saturday afternoon. Parker was having a hard time getting the hang of the whole eating thing, and I wasn’t supplying enough food to keep him going, so they kept us there until we had a plan working to keep him fed. We were eager to get home, but it was good to have that extra night of help from the nurses to get him feeding better. I’ll never again joke about how hospitals kick you out practically before the ink is dry on the birth certificate. The hospital really did a great job of taking care of us and setting us up for success in feedings (even though it still has proven frustrating to no end).
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