Liam Kai
Liam Kai
For three weeks I felt contractions but was only 1 cm dilated at all my midwife appointments. At the 39w6d appointment the midwife suggested that I try the herb blue cohosh to get things started. My mom and I went to the mall and walked for two hours, then went to the health food store and got the cohosh. I took one dose when I got home around 4pm, played Wii bowling for a couple hours then took a second dose about 10 pm and went to bed.
At 1:30am I was woken up by a very strong contraction that felt different than the ones I?d been having. At 3:00am when DH got up to get ready for work I told him that I thought he should stay close to home so he called out. I spent a couple hours in the tub and dozed off and on for a while on the couch. My doula came up around noon and we just hung out and watched movies until about 3:00pm when she suggested that DH and I try and take a nap.
We laid down for about a half hour when the contractions were coming about every 3-4 mins and I started throwing up so she suggested that it was about time to head to the hospital. We got there about 4:00pm and went to triage. When they did an exam we found out that I was only dilated to a 2. I just about cried! The midwife said that since I was planning on going natural and was only at a 2 that I most likely would be sent home.
During this time Liam?s heart rate was causing the nurses some concern. During contractions it would drop, but in between it was not moving enough. They gave me an IV to try and see if it would perk him up a little bit. The contractions were so strong and were coming 2-3 mins apart that I began to seriously doubt if I could make it natural. My doula was amazing! She kept reassuring me and helping me breathe through each one. Finally we decided to get something to take the edge off (Nubain in my IV), since I was hurting horribly and was still only at 2cm. The nurses kept us in triage for about three hours and then checked again and decided that I was a ?tight 3? and that they wanted to keep us.
At 7:00pm we were moved into a delivery room and I was a 3, by 11:00pm I was a loose 9 and starting to feel the urge to push. At 11:33pm after about 20 mins of pushing Liam Kai came surfing out with his entire head and body coming out in one big push. It turns out that my water had broken at some point earlier, but his head had blocked anything from coming out. So when his head came out all of the force of the fluid just pushed the rest of his body all at once. Liam weighed 7.7 and was 20.5 inches long with a full head of strawberry blond hair.
The delivery was the hardest thing I have ever done, but it is true that there is some kind of amnesia that happens. The moment he was delivered all of the pain of pushing and the discomfort of the last few months just disappeared!
