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AW: First day of maternity leave (birth story)

coconuthoneycoconuthoney
in 3rd Trimester

Last Tuesday was my first day of maternity leave at 38 weeks. Everyone (including my doctors) had been predicting a late baby, so I was worried about being bored at home for another 2-4 weeks. I have a really demanding job so I decided to put off all my baby prep/reading to those last few weeks. Big mistake. Huge.

I went in for my 38 week appt and my doctor decided to have the hospital monitor me because my blood pressure had been steadily creeping up. I went in thinking I would be tethered to a blood pressure cuff for a few hours. The doctors in the hospital decided that since I was full term and they were worried about me developing pre-eclampsia that they should go ahead and induce. That hit me like a ton of bricks. I was not quite ready emotionally for a baby let alone all the millions of things at home I still needed to do! I hadn't even finished listening to my hypnobabies CD's! I actually asked the nurse if that meant I would be leaving the hospital with a baby and when she confirmed it I still wasn't sure I believed her. They decided to give me Cervadil and then Pitocin so there was going to be nothing natural about this birth and I was sure it was going to end in a c-section.

Tuesday night I had my final pregancy meal and then they put Cervadil on my cervix to get things started. That one takes about 12 hours to kick in. Apparently I had contractions all night, but I couldn't feel them. After 12 hours there was almost no progress so the doctor decided to insert a foley balloon and start the pitocin to help me dilate to 3-4 centimeters. I decided to go for the epidural before that procedure, and I think that was the scariest part of the entire birth process (but still wasn?t that bad). That took us to Thursday morning. Early Thursday they checked the balloon and it worked. I was dilating. They pulled out the balloon and to my great astonishment my water had broken and I felt a big gush on the table. At first I thought I had peed and was shocked when they told me my water broke. At that point I started to believe that a baby was really coming. Somehow on Thursday I got myself dilated to 10 centimeters and pushed the baby out.

I had my mom and my husband by my side. Pushed for about 45 minutes and at 5:50pm on Thursday May 28th Max Joaquin made his way into the world. He was 6 pounds 2 ounces and 19 inches long. He gave out a couple of hearty cries and then immediately settled down when they put him on my chest. He has been a very serious but mellow baby. He is easy to soothe (so far!) and came out WAY cuter that he has a right to be!

Max has been doing very well, but the hard part has been my recovery. I hadn't anticipated the pain I'd be in, what engorgement would be like, not being able to eat for 48 hours, dealing with post partum high blood pressure, and I was not quite ready to be taking care of a newborn. Luckily my husband is a natural with our little guy and it gave me some time to get myhead together.

 So here is the part where I give out my unsolicited advice: read up and do the major errands first (like installing the car seat so your dad doesn't have to do it while at the hospital). I was so sure I'd have weeks to prepare and I only had a few hours. I'm a planner by nature so that's what threw me off.

Oh, and keep the throw up bucket handy after delivery or administration of pain meds. :)

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