Labor and Birth

After one hour I was in so much pain I could hardly move. I told my boss I was going to start my maternity leave now, as I considered taking it early anyways and I figured the pain was just my body stretching to its limit. It just felt like time to call it.

I layed in bed the rest of the day while my husband took his afternoon through late night shift at work. He'd usually be home by 3am and I'd be asleep, but at 2am I was awake in pain. It was getting worse and worse. Again, I thought it was a bruised rib and thought I'd go to quick care tomorrow to find out. I waited eagerly for him to get home to help care for me and our energetic dog who was under a year old at the time.

At 2:30am he calls to tell me he has a flat and no spare. He waits an hour for a tow and they don't have the bed to tow his lowered modified Q50. So he waits another hour and is finally home around 5am.

At 10am I wake up and quick care is open so I have him drive me around the corner. Quick care directed me to the ER with general concerns & to be on the safe side, but with no diagnosis.

At the ER, husband and I are beat! We go into a shared room with curtain privacy to monitor baby and me. After a few hours, I'm cleared to go home and told it's just pregnancy pain. Right before I go to leave I use the bathroom and see blood. 

It's now 3pm on Saturday and the nurse is swabbing to test for amniotic fluid. The test returned positive and I was admitted. The pain I was was a tear in the upper amniotic sac and my side was filling up with fluid. My water hadn't broke, but the fluid finally began to drain out. Once the sac opens the hospital makes the mother stay until birth for risk of infection. If after 48 hours the baby isn't born, they usually have to C-section to reduce risk of infection. This was what I was told, anyways.

We were so not ready! I was hardly full term and we didn't even have a hospital bag packed. Our friends went to our house to pack some clothes and essentials. They also took our dog to a sitter from Rover which we had planned for to take care of her on short notice. We left our dog at the sitter's for two extra days after we returned home and that was the honestly best thing we did to help the whole change of coming home with a new baby. 

By Saturday night my husband and I were in a private room and super tired. We both just wanted sleep. The night nurse came into my room every two hours or more to convince me induce birth. When I told her I needed sleep she said, "You're not here to sleep, you're here to labor." Yeah. I found out later she was a travel nurse and was actually asked to give a review of her post birth. I didn't cut her a break.

So I was told that I wasn't allowed to go home, but my body was not progressing naturally. I wasn't dialating even after taking their stupid induction pill late Saturday night from that night nurse. They tried a balloon method where they pump air into a balloon in the cervix. I was on a birthing ball and walking... nothing.

By Sunday morning 7am I was open to full induction. The morning nurse was nice and explained everything really well so I felt like I had a choice and this was the right (only) choice. They pumped Pitocin through an IV for me to induce labor.

Pitocin is an artificial form of oxytocin which is the love hormone that mom produces when she's giving birth. It gets naturally stronger as the contraction do and it's a natural pain reliever through the contractions. Pitocin l, because it's fake, mimics the work of oxytocin, but doesn't help the pain. In fact, it makes the contractions twice as painful for the mother. The procedure is to pump Pitocin in ML doseages, increasing every 30 minutes until birth happens. 

The max ML is 30 and I reached it without dialating more than 1cm. I got from a 1 to a 2. I had very small contractions, but it was nothing more than period pain. By Sunday afternoon I was pretty confused and discouraged about how this would go from then on out.

My husband was with me the entire time, he didn't go home once. I had visits from my best friends, mom and sister. My mom and sister were supposed to be with me for the birth, but it was taking so long that we decided they should go home until it was really time. 

The nurses took out the Pitocin and let it rest without giving me anything else for about an hour. Then they did the whole procedure again. This time I got up to 15 or so ML and my water finally broke! I felt the pain of dialating to a 3 and I decided I was going to epidural my way through this! The nurse at this time (nurse shift #3) had 3 kids of her own and told me about her first time. 

After getting the epidural I wasn't allowed to leave the bed, I couldn't feel my legs. My mom brought with her a super relaxing Spotify playlist and a night sky light for me to gaze at. We had researched different sensory things to help with pain and though I was numb, I loved having these kinds of things in the room and will use them next time too.This is the skylight I'm talking about. 

I already have low blood pressure (I'm 95 over 62 on a good day after breakfast) so with my body relaxed my BP dropped often. The nurses filled an IV with electrolytes almost every hour throughout the night. I was asleep the whole time, I slept like a rock while my body dilated to a 9. My poor husband woke up all night from the BP machine beeping and nurses coming in and out. He stayed in a stiff couch next to my bed. 

Finally, at 7am Monday morning, I was ready to start pushing. I called mom and sis right away. The morning nurse (nurse shift #4) came in full of energy for me! She told me how to push and I thought it was almost all over. No, I was so wrong. The hardest part was just starting. Even with an epidural I was so stressed. 

I could still feel the pressure of everything moving and stretching. I could feel a tingle in my legs from time to time which scared me to think I'd regain feeling so I pressed the epidural button to inject more meds to my back. I pressed that thing many mire times than I thought I would.

I was stressed from my dad and step mom trying to enter the birthing room when all I wanted was my spouse, sister and mother. I was asked multiple times by nurses who said that they kept trying to come in and a fear built inside of me that they'd pop up in my room.

After two hours of pushing on and off as my body told me to, because I could still feel the need to push or not despite the numbing, I was really wanting to get this baby OUT! Finally my midwife, who I'd met with several times during the pregnancy, came in and I yelled at her! I genuinely thought she was my dad and step mom barging in the room and I yelled, "You can't come in! Get out!" She just laughed and said, "Yup, I'm in the right room." I quickly apologized and told her I didn't know it was her. I was so happy to see her! 

For another hour I pushed before my baby finally came out. That last hour was the hardest of all. I remember feeling panicked and I started hyperventilating because I thought (and said aloud) "She's going to be stuck there forever, she's never going to come out!" I had to shut up and calm myself to control my breathing to those slow big breaths. I remember thinking in those bigger pushes how bad I wanted this baby out and this whole ordeal to be over with! 

Her little 6lb 6oz reign of resistance eventually ended and I was sooo relieved! Beyond all of that, we spent two more days in the hospital, the food was crap and we went home. I wrote about my early breastfeeding journey and the lactation nurses I met in mybreastfeeding post.