Micah's Birth Story

saltedcaramel518

Micah was born on 5/18/16 at 8:57 pm, weighing 8lb7oz and 21 inches long. 

I went to bed around 10 on Tuesday (5/17) night. Right when I got into bed, I felt a small gush of fluid. I went to the bathroom to see if it was my water breaking, but ultimately decided it was either discharge or pee. I woke up around midnight and felt that my underwear was pretty damp. I went to the bathroom and couldn't decide if it was my water or not. I put on a new pair of underwear and a pad and got back into the bed. Soon after that, I started having contractions. 

I timed the contractions, and by 1:30 am, they were 4-5 minutes apart. I went to the bathroom and checked the pad, but it was dry. I woke DH up and told him I thought I was in labor. He was super calm and tried to help me get everything together. Neither one of us had a bag packed, so I tried to throw as much stuff together as I could.  

We headed to the hospital and got there at 2:30am. I got checked in and was taken to an L&D room. The nurse hooked me up to the monitors to watch my contractions and baby's heart rate. I told her I thought my water had broken, but I wasn't sure. She tested it, and the test strip showed it was inconclusive. She tested again a few minutes later, and it was negative. The discharge was super watery, and the nurse even commented that she was surprised it wasn't amniotic fluid. She did a cervical check, and I was 1cm, 50% effaced. They decided to monitor me and check again in an hour. I was still the same an hour later, so the nurse called the doctor on call. The doctor said to check again at 5:45. Still no change at 5:45, so they sent me home, but told me to keep the OB appointment that I already had scheduled at 8:45. 

So, DH and I went home for a couple of hours. I took advantage of this time to shower and get something to eat. I was still having contractions when I got to the OB's office. She checked my cervix, and again, no change. She noticed the watery discharge and says my water must have broken. She checked it and again, nope, it wasn't amniotic fluid. She had me go to an ultrasound to check my fluid level, but it came back normal. At this point, she says I could be in early labor and have a baby in a few hours, or it could be false labor and I wouldn't have him until another 2 weeks, but she did think we would meet him sooner rather than later. She gave me a prescription for Ambien and told me to go home and rest. 

At this point, I had gotten 2 hours of sleep and had been contracting steadily for 9.5 hours, so I welcomed the idea of rest. I took the Ambien, got in bed, and fell asleep pretty quickly. An hour and a half later, I had a dream that a waterfall was coming out of my vagina. No, wait, that was actually happening. My water broke in a huge, flowing gush all over the bed. DH had to do some coaxing to get me to get ready to go because I was so out of it from the Ambien. 

We got back to the hospital and got settled into L&D. I was 3 cm at this point. I went ahead and asked for an epidural, and it was inserted around 20 minutes later. I couldn't feel any of my contractions after that. All the praise hands. After an hour, they started me on a low dose of Pitocin to speed up my contractions. I was checked again a couple of hours later and had only progressed to a 3.5. I thought we were in for a long night. The nurse had me lay on my right side because there was one side of my cervix left to efface. My parents and MIL had arrived. I told them to go get something to eat since I thought this would take a while. I was dozing on and off and DH was napping as well. 

Suddenly, I felt something come out "down there." I immediately paged the nurse, and she looked and told me that my fore bag of water had broken. She checked me and said I had dilated to an 8 or 9. It was only 8 pm at this point, so I was surprised I had progressed so quickly. The doctor came in and checked me, and she said it was go time! I started practice pushing, and in the middle of that, DH finally woke up (he is a HARD sleeper), and he was like, "Umm, were you guys gonna let me miss this?!" 

I started the real pushing a couple of contractions later, and I surprised myself at how efficient I was. I just kept thinking "The harder I push right now, the less time I have to do this." The contractions were coming in 1 minute apart, so I had barely any time to rest in between. After about 30 minutes of pushing, he was out! The cord was too short for him to go on my chest, so he was placed on my stomach while they let the cord pulse for a few minutes and DH cut it. Then he was taken to be weighed and cleaned up. When they said he weighed 8 pounds and 7 ounces, I was shocked! I didn't expect that from my 37-weeker. I delivered the placenta (gross feeling) and got my second degree tear stitched up. We spent some time skin to skin, and then we were moved to a postpartum room. When it was all said and done, I couldn't believe that I had just had a baby. I am so thankful that he is healthy and has been breastfeeding well. 

My advice from all this? Try not to time your water breaking 1.5 hours into Ambien-induced sleep

I seriously love being this little guy's mom. 

businessmama

He is precious!! Congratulations!

Bellodomani

Congratulations, he's so cute! This same thing happened to my best friend during her labor- they gave her an ambien and sent her home and 2 hours later she shook me awake and said "I wet the bed" then went back to sleep- convincing her to put pants on and go back to the hospital was no joke! Glad your husband was able to get you up and going

cortney626

Congrats!!

hellogoodbye2

I love that you had a dream about your water breaking while it was actually happening. Congrats, he is so handsome!