The birth story, finally! PIP

Mrs.Jocelyn2007

Dear all,

Sorry I dropped off the face of the Bump and wasn't around to congratulate practically everyone on the February board. Belatedly, congratulations!! Our son Graham Isaiah was born about a week and a half early, January 26, happy and healthy. And things have been absolute MADNESS since then. (How have any of you even had time to sign into the Bump?!?) I finally wrote out the birth story and I hope you enjoy it. It's really long so the Cliff Notes version is: woke up at 2 am on delivery day with painful uterine contractions, but no pain from the back so I didn't know whether it was "real" labor, tracked the contractions at 3-4 minutes between 7:30-9:30 am, got to the hospital at 10:30 and was 3-4 cm dilated, used a TENS and the nitrous oxide during contractions, was 8 cm dilated in an hour, had the baby without epidural (yikes), everyone is happy and healthy.

 

 

If you want the full nitty-gritty:

For the previous few days leading up to the delivery, there had been signs that labor was impending -- I was 1 cm dilated and 50% effaced at my 38 week check-up, my mucous plug was clearly coming out after that internal check for the next few days, the Braxton-Hicks contractions were becoming more noticeable -- almost painful! -- and my mother kept telling me to keep my legs shut until she arrived Thursday evening (sorry Mom). I had a check-up the day before delivery -- after being up since 4 am with somewhat painful, at least "obnoxious", contractions -- and I was still only 1 cm dilated, but 75-90% effaced, and the one BH contraction that I had when on the monitors registered at a healthy 50 (0-100 scale, and painless BHs were normally around the 20s and 30s, while functional contractions were supposed to start around 60). The nurse predicted I wouldn't last the week; my doctor said I might. Apparently I lasted 24 hours!

The delivery day started early -- I woke up at 2 am and couldn't get back to sleep, as I was feeling the contractions about every 15 minutes. Let me just preface it by saying that I never once felt "pain radiating from the back", which is what everyone told me differentiated BH contractions from the real thing -- so I really did think these were still "fake" contractions. Still they were obnoxiously noticeable, and after emailing my parents to let them know that something might be happening, I woke up my husband around 5 am in frustrated tears because I was uncomfortable and tired and didn't know what was going on or what to do. He made me a relaxing bubble bath and then went back to sleep, while I laid in it for a while and relaxed somewhat. But when I got out of the bath around 6 am for our usual breakfast time, the contractions came back with a vengeance. They seemed close together, and I didn't have much of an appetite for breakfast. My husband's aide, of course, called in sick, and he felt compelled to go into school at least to get things set up for the rest of the day, so off he went, after putting the TENS electrodes on me ("just in case"), setting me up with a website that helped you chart your contractions (by pressing the start/stop button) and promising to check in with me in an hour.

It soon became apparent, as I used the website from 7:30 to 8:30 am, that the contractions were 3-4 minutes apart -- but because I wasn't feeling back pain (perhaps due to using the TENS?), I didn't know whether they were "real" or not. Yet obviously I knew that when you are having contractions this close together, at this stage of pregnancy, you should go and get checked out at the hospital anyway. So when my husband called at 8:30 -- I had been walking around this whole time, getting the hospital bag finished -- I told him we should go into the hospital to get checked regardless of whether they were real. And he said, "Okay, I've just got another hour of work here to get everything squared away, and then I'll be home." "Another hour?" I said doubtfully. "Well, at least a half an hour," said my darling husband, "but I'll be home in an hour for sure." "Ohhhhhkay?" I said.

Within a half an hour after that, I was definitely regretting my "Ohhhhhkay". The contractions definitely felt harder and more painful, like SOMETHING was moving DOWN. They were still coming every 3 minutes and lasting for around 45 seconds to sometimes over a minute. I finished the hospital bag and walked around getting everything straightened for my mom's visit (looked like she was going to be one day late!), breathing hard during the contractions, and thinking that this had better be "real" labor, because if it were fake, I would be getting an epidural IMMEDIATELY upon real labor as I had no idea how bad the pain would be! Of course my husband wasn't home after one hour, so I called him in the middle of a contraction. He picked up saying, "Oh, I'm just leaving school now!" and I bellowed out, "GET. BACK. HERE." and hung up the phone. He says that this was when it finally sunk in that he could have a son that day.

Anyway, my husband got back, packed up his hospital stuff, and off we went to the hospital, arriving around 10:30 am. They instantly got the wheelchair out for me and wheeled me up to a monitoring room while my husband did the paperwork. And it turned out I was 3-4 cm dilated and definitely having functional contractions every 2-3 minutes! So I guess it was "real" after all!

After this checkup, they moved us into a delivery room and hooked me up to an IV to hydrate me. Although at first I didn't like the idea of being "stuck" in the bed, it turned out the contractions were so regular and so painful that I didn't really want to get up anyway! I was continuing to use the TENS and also started using the "gas" (nitrous oxide) during the contractions. My husband says the best thing about the gas mask was that it muffled my screams! I'm not sure if the TENS and the gas did much for the pain, but they did provide distraction and a small sense of being able to control SOMETHING. Still, the contractions were so painful (up to 100 on the 0-100 CTG monitor!!) that I finally looked at my husband and started having the "epidural conversation," where basically I was like, "This pain is pretty intense, and if it's going to go on for a lot longer and get even more painful, then I probably need to have an epidural just for some rest" -- and believe me, the idea of not having to feel this intensity for a bit of time sounded great right around then. But then the doctor checked my progress -- and informed us that I was EIGHT CENTIMETERS dilated! This was around 11:45 or noon -- only a little more than an hour after checking in at 3-4 cm! So no wonder the contractions hurt? but it also meant that there was really no point in an epidural? I was going to be doing this "drug-free."

At this point, I started to freak out a little and "think" about things too much. The nurses kept telling me to tell them if I felt like I needed to push, but in fact I felt the opposite -- I didn't WANT to push. I accidentally (!) visualized what I was going to have to do re: delivery and then had to calm myself down from starting to cry and hyperventilate. My husband was very very supportive this entire time, boosting the TENS for me during contractions, holding my hand, encouraging me -- he says he was disappointed that I never had a "I HATE YOU, YOU DID THIS TO ME!!!" moment, but I never once went there -- it was incredibly comforting having him there and he did a great job.

Finally I felt an unmistakable pressure and I let the nurses know that I was feeling like I could start to push (not that I was going to!) and that if my doctor wasn't here yet, I just needed any doctor because this baby was coming! Luckily my regular ob-gyn arrived just at that time -- she came in on her day off for me! although clearly she wasn't expecting me to progress so quickly -- and after that things got pretty intense. They broke the bed down into the delivery mode and there were people on every side of me, holding my legs, elbowing my stomach down, stretching me out -- you know what I mean, it's the most intense and invasive thing ever. At every contraction -- a minute apart at this point, or less? -- I was told to push, and the pushing did NOT come naturally to me because of the weird breathing/pushing combo (chin down on chest, deep breath in and then breathing it out with my mouth closed while pushing down toward my butt). I couldn't get my mind to stop thinking about what was actually happening down there, which was freaking me out. I kept thinking, "Other women have managed to push a baby out, I can do it too!" but after several tries and the head still not out, I really got scared, just thinking that I would be stuck there forever, that I'd never be able to get the baby out, that it would cause fetal distress and I'd be rushed to an emergency c-section, etc etc. So even though my doctor knew I didn't want an episiotomy except as a last resort, she said to me, "Look, you're narrow and your baby's head is big, if we do a small cut then he'll come out much faster," and at that point I just wanted it to be over with. Everything was too painful and too intense and too scary. And I would make the same decision again even with the recovery process, looking back on it, as soon after the cut, thankfully the baby's head came out -- then I was thinking "oh my God, the shoulders are next!!" -- but they came out pretty quickly afterward and the absolute best feeling in the entire world was that of the umbilical cord coming out -- because I knew if THAT was out, then the baby attached to it was out too!

They immediately put Graham on my chest, which was great for my husband and I to be able to see him and touch him -- he was crying so we knew he was okay, but he was blue because the umbilical cord had been wrapped around his neck (another reason I'm glad we chose to do the episiotomy), so my husband had to quickly cut the cord and then they whisked him off for cleaning and monitoring. We found out later that his Agpar scores were 9/10 in the first minute and 10/10 after five minutes, so he was a real trooper through all of this. They must have given me the Pitocin shot to get the placenta expelled quickly, because I found myself shivering/shaking a bit and the placenta came out right away.After that they were just sewing me up and cleaning me off as my husband and I looked at each other, trying to comprehend what just happened. We stayed for two hours in the room for recovery, and soon Graham was brought back to us -- in some random hospital baby clothes because we hadn't even had time to get the bag out of the car! -- and we were able to cuddle him and hold him and he even started breastfeeding right away (he is clearly his father's child). My husband got him an outfit from the car and we just sat there holding him for the next couple of hours. This is also when we realized that both of us had absolutely NO credit on our cell phones -- mine ran out after talking to my parents for two minutes -- nice planning on our parts!

For the rest of our (cushy) three-day hospital stay -- we were upgraded for free to a two-room private suite with two full bathrooms, couch beds, sitting room area, lamps and artwork on the walls, mini-fridge, etc etc -- we had Graham with us all day long but had him in the nursery at night so he could be watched and we could get some sleep (a good call considering the sleep patterns we've had since bringing him home?). He did a great job at breastfeeding right away, so my milk came in over the third night -- that was an insane feeling -- and it seems like he's been getting plenty of nutrients ever since. 

So that's that -- congratulations again to everyone on this board, and I'll see you on this board and the 0-3 months!

katkat74

congrats--he is a doll!