(ellendee) Little Dee is here! Going into labor @ work, & how the 12 Days of Christmas helped.

spocker · May 2014

Short version: Daphne Elizabeth was born Wednesday April 23, 2014 at 11:56 AM after about ten hours of labor. She weighed 7 lb 14.5 oz and was 21 inches long, and she has been my world ever since.

Longer version: I was at work. I’d been crampy all evening Tuesday but just figured I needed to rest and catch up on fluids. In hindsight my contractions started to get more regular and consistently feel like heavy period cramps around 2 AM. I did not want to be in labor, I wanted to be well rested. But alas, it was not to be. Around 5 AM I lay on my side to rest in an empty room (at the encouragement of the nurse I was working with, who is a friend and was eyeing me suspiciously) and the contractions got steadily stronger to where I was vocalizing with each one. I tried to time them with my Contraction Master app and they were around 8 minutes apart and lasting at least a minute and a half. Eventually my friend must have heard me vocalizing because she poked her head in and said “They’re not going away, are they?” She did an exam for me and told me I was 7-8 cm, so I agreed it was time to be admitted. This was around 8 AM.

I phoned my husband and asked him to bring The Bags, and told him it was fine to take his time, don’t break any speed laws! But by the time he got there (about 9:30), it was full-on transition and my brain kind of went into a fog. After he arrived, I wanted to get in the tub, so just before I got in my midwife checked me again and told me I was 9-10 cm with a bulging bag of water. By this time the contractions were not the main thing on my mind, it was my HIPS. Excruciating, crushing pain in my HIPS that lasted forever (it seemed) after the contraction itself stopped. The tub helped with the pain, no question, but it was still terrible. My husband was so great, he was right there to hold my hands/let me grip them during the contractions. Another thing that really helped me was actually singing (to myself in my head, my husband said I never sang anything out loud) the longest verse of the 12 days of Christmas. It was like a countdown, I knew that the worst part started around 8 maids a milking, but by the time I got to 4 calling birds it would be letting up (and only the HIPS were left). This was around 10:30 AM or so.

My midwife actually had me push before I was all the way to 10 in hopes that I could move the baby to where she wouldn’t put so much pressure on my hips. It worked – but the pain moved to my BACK. And it stayed for what seemed like so long after a contraction. She offered to break my water to help the pushes be more effective in bringing the baby herself down past this painful spot, and I agreed. So she had me get out of the tub and back to the bed for this. By this time I only had a little cervix left in front of the baby’s head, and my midwife held it out of the way while I pushed through a couple of contractions. Then the back pain was gone, and baby was low, and I pushed with all I could.

It helped me to have everyone coach me verbally with the pushes. They had me turn onto my side when the baby was close to crowning to minimize my chances of tearing, and they used warm compresses and coached me through a slow crowning, but I still tore a first degree. My midwife asked my husband to come help her catch, and he did! I was so pleasantly surprised that he agreed to – he said later it was not his plan, it was just something he decided in the moment. Then they laid her on my lower belly, and she was so warm and so real.

We had a couple of names we were tossing around, and we were planning to pick one after we met the baby. After we were left alone for a bit (after the placenta which seemed to take forever! and after I got stitches), we decided that she looks like a Daphne.

She’s almost two weeks old now, and I was finally able to type this up today without bursting into tears. OK, maybe I am just a little teary-eyed now. The baby blues were definitely there, but are getting better. It’s just so amazing to think that this time last year, I was going through HSG testing and had multiple rounds of Clomid and then injectable meds under my belt. I’m so very grateful.