Birth Story

mrs.sheller · March 2009

Since I can't seem to sleep and both DH and the baby are sleeping, I thought I would sit down and take a minute to share my birth story with you all!I had a doctor's appointment on Monday February 23rd, and I was 2 cm and 50% effaced. So, the doctor wanted to "stir things up" and stripped my membranes. Don't really know if that did any good, but you never know! Wednesday on my ride home from school I started having what I thought were bh and never thought anything of it. I had felt the same way after having my membranes stripped and just thought it was nothing.They started out 10 minutes apart, but they weren't really strong at all. I had called the on call doc two nights before about contractions, and she told me that I should call until they made me cry. Nice. After the first hour at 10 minutes apart, they were pretty regular at 5 minutes apart. So, I decided to ask DH to go for a walk with me to help move things along if I was really in labor.?The walk was at about 6:30. We came back inside the house, I sat down on the couch to rest my feet for a few minutes. I decided I needed to go to the bathroom, and when I stood up there was a small gush of liquid. I knew that my water had broken, there was no doubt in my mind. It didn't feel like I had peed my pants, and it was really easy to tell the difference.I decided to take a shower and then packed my hospital bag (yea, I'm a?procrastinator). It was nice to have the time to just relax before the whole ordeal. Then we called the on call doc and she said to come in and see if my water did break. We went straight to the hospital and as soon as they checked to see if it was my water that had broken, a whole lot more fluid came out, so that was pretty much it! We were having this baby!I had really regular but tollerable contractions when I first got to the hospital. They just weren't doing anything to help me along. Since I knew it was going to be a long time before anything happened, I decided to ask for an epidural. By the time I got the epidural my contractions were pretty regular and painful. The epidural really slowed things down for me and at 9 am the next morning I was still only 2-3 cm dialted. Very frustrating.So, the doctor decides that he wants to start pitocin. That didn't help very much and it took forever for it to start giving me regular contractions. And to add to the fun, my epidural was pretty unsuccessful and stopped working when I got to 8 cm!!! I was so scared and in a lot of pain. I knew the epi wasn't going to be great when it took the doctor 4 different attpemts to put it in.So, after all of the long hours of laboring, it was FINALLY time to push! This was at about 1:45 and I was 10 cm and never thought it would happen. To start pushing through all that pain was SUCH a relief to me, it wasn't that it wasn't painful, but it made things better to be able to have an end in sight!The pushing was the worst part. The stopped my pitocen when I got to 10 cm, BIG mistake. My contractions slowed down to 10 minutes apart and were doing nothing again. So, I was doing all the work and the contractions were slowly going away. They needed to start the pitocen back up and it took a while for it to start working. Once my pushes were closer together I was starting to make some progress with getting her out. And toward the end the doctor did an episiotomy to help me get her out, and it worked wonders because she was out in the next push!At 4:59 pm, after 3 + hours of pushing, and 26 hours of labor, Addyson Mae was born. She was born February 26th, exactly on my due date. She weighed 7 lbs 8oz and was 20 1/2 inches long. The pain was very quickly forgotten when they put my little girl in my arms. I'm just so in love with her. She's breast feeding like a champ, but it isn't easy. Recovery has been great. I'm sore from all the pushing, but nothing else really bothers me. I just feel like I had the work out of my life! And the two things I was most worried about were pooping on the table and the first time going after giving birth. I don't even know and don't care now if I pooped on the table. The nurses were actually telling me to try!! They were so great. And going after giving birth was not bad at all (just take baby wipes with you because the toilet paper is like sand paper!!!)?Thanks for reading, if you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them!!Good luck to all of you with your babies.?