My very short med free VBAC birth story

jenfromnj · March 2009

Alison Grace Tamedl was born 3/3/09 at 8 pm. She was 6 lbs 11 oz and 20 inches long (that's 2 lbs smaller than Ben, for those of you keeping track)!
I was in labor when I woke up yesterday morning but didn't feel the need to let anyone know until about 4 pm. At that point I really needed help taking care of Ben so I could concentrate on the contractions. So Aunt Nora came over to color with Ben, and I called Brian to let him in on my secret so he could leave work. By the time he got home around 5, my contractions were about 4-5 minutes apart so we waited 30 mins and called the midwife, who suggested we head to the hospital. We took our time getting out of the house and driving up to Morristown, so it was about 6:45 by the time we checked into our room. The nurse checked me and I was only 3 cms, which REALLY depressed me. The hooked us up to the monitors and noticed right away that Alison's heart rate was decelerating with each contraction. The midwife said she would not have normally worried, but being a vbac could mean it was something with my incision scar which was too risky to wait around on. They started giving me IV fluids and oxygen and decided to prep us for a c-section to get her out ASAP. Unfortunately, the OR was occupied so I had to labor in
bed until they could get me in. There was no anesthesiologist available to get me any pain meds, so I was suffering quite a bit. I was shaking a lot and was generally just very panicked about getting the baby out ASAP. I was planning on a med free birth, but I was NOT planning to have to labor in bed in one position. Thankfully the epi doc was busy with someone else b/c otherwise I would have wound up with another section! After about 15 minutes like this my water broke and the midwife decided to check me again. Much to everyone's shock I was 10 cms and they decided to have me push her out! I pushed for about 15 minutes and out she came! It was very very surreal!