my 40 hour birth story (bradley student)

just realized this board was here, and i never did post my birth story, even though DD is 10 months old. I had written it out from my bradley class (I *wanted* a natural birth, preferably a water birth, but it was nothing like I planned it)

Here it is:

I had a 41 week appt on Wed, Dec 17th. Everything looked great with the NST and ultrasound, so they went ahead and scheduled an induction for Sunday, Dec 21st that way I could be home for Christmas with my new family if it came down to it. I was relieved that they were giving me more time for my body to go into labor on it's own. Apparently, Hannah heard the news and it was enough to make her decide to make an appearance. I actually lost my mucous plug and had bloody show that same night. I called Kristen's office the next morning to see if that was indeed what I thought it was and the nurse assured me it was (at that point I thought it could have just been from my internal or something). So on Thursday, Dec 18th I decided to walk around the mall with my friend to see if I could get things going. I had a few really strong contractions there, so I was getting excited that labor was near and that we were probably going to have the baby without having to be induced. When Jared got home from work, I told him I had a feeling that labor could happen at any moment so I asked if we could go on one last date. I'm glad we did - we went to Texas Roadhouse and I had a huge steak dinner, which was my last major meal for days.
 
On Thursday night, I felt pretty energetic but made myself go to be at 10 pm because I was still having contractions here & there and knew labor could happen anytime. I woke up at 11 pm with really strong contractions and knew it was the real thing. However, at this point they were just about 15 mins apart so I didn't want to wake Jared until it was time. I labored in the tub til about 2 am, just relaxing and breathing through contractions. By the time I woke him up, they were 6-8 minutes apart and really needed some help because I was having a lot of back pain with each contraction. I layed in the tub for 2 more hours, and every time I had a contraction I would roll over on my side and Jared applied counter pressure to my lower back and I was able to get through each contraction. He was so great and helped me through. He lit a bunch of candles that he placed around the bathroom and sat on the floor next to the tub all night with me. We were busy timing contractions and working through them, but they stayed at 6-8 minutes apart for forever! We waited til about 7 am and called Maureen (my bradley instructor) to ask if there was anything we could do to get things going. She suggested getting some rest, but at this point I was having pretty bad back labor and knew that wasn't an option. I just wanted to get the ball rolling so I could get to the hospital and have this baby! Maureen said that if I was having back labor, the baby was in the wrong position, and that we should try some different positions to get her turned. I tried the "texas roll" and pelvic rock for probably 2 hours, as well as walking in circles around the house. By about 9:30 am, the contractions were 4 minutes apart, so we called to see if we should go to the hospital. The receptionist said to just go to the hospital and they would page Kristen (the MW) when we got there.
 
This was all in the middle of the ice storm, so it took us awhile to get things ready to go to the hospital. Our back door was frozen shut, and there were thick layers of ice on our cars that took forever to clean off. Because of the weather, we actually took Jared's truck in to town and figured we'd come back later to get the car with her car seat. We arrived at the hospital around 11 am (12 hours in to labor), and got checked into triage. By this point, my contractions were 2-3 minutes apart but I was only 3 cm (I had been 1 cm dialated at my 41 week appt 2 days before but I have no idea when I went from 1 to 3) so they called Kristen to see what I should do. The baby had also moved back up in my pelvis (didn't know they did that but maureen said she was probably repositioning herself since she was sideways). She told me it was up to me..that if I stayed, nurses would try to augment my labor which she knew I didn't want, but going home was also not ideal because of the weather. So she suggested that I get up and walk around for an hour and come back to triage. If I had progressed to 4 cm, then I could stay and if not, I should go home. I walked around for an hour, but still felt unsure about what to do so again, I called Maureen for her advice. She said again it was up to me but that regardless of whether I went home or stayed, I needed to keep doing those positions to get the baby turned so my labor would progress.
 
I went back to triage after just over an hour and I asked if I could stay in triage for awhile without checking in to see if I could try some of those positions to see if they would help. The nurse tried the towel trick that Jennifer mentioned (very painful!) along with the texas roll again. Both were incredibly painful but the baby still didn't turn. They checked me after another hour though, and I was 4 cm. At this point, looking back, the nurses made a hasty decision which I didn't realize at the time. Without paging Kristen (which I thought they had), they went ahead and checked me in to the hospital. I called Maureen to let her know we were staying in the hospital, and she said she wanted to stop by and give me a big hug because she knew I was getting discouraged because things were not moving along very fast at all. Once they checked me into my room, my contractions became more sporadic, and were anywhere between 3 and 5 minutes apart. I had an awesome nurse at this time, and told me she was going to help me get through this without drugs and that when she left, she'd make sure that they gave us a nurse that would also help us through it. At some point, Maureen stopped in which was SO nice of her (we did not hire her as a doula because we wanted it to just be the two of us, but looking back, we should have had her the whole time!) and basically gave me a pep talk and some advice on how to relax through contractions.
 
The nurse then suggested we get in the tub to get things going. I labored in the tub for what was probably a couple of hours. I was really able to relax and breathe through the contractions at this point still, but I realized that my contractions seemed to be fizzling out. So, I got up on my hands and knees and tried doing the lunge position, and pelvic rock. I was getting really bummed out though, because although the positions were painful, they did not seem to be turning the baby or helping my labor progress. Around this time, Kristen had called and expected me to be ready to push, but instead I was barely having contractions anymore! She suggested getting up to walk around, but they hooked me up to a monitor for quite a while, and I never had a single contraction that whole time. SO...they gave me my options..to stay and get pitocin, or go home with a sleep aid to get some rest and hope that labor would pick up on it's own soon. At this point I had been in labor for 20 hours and was very exhausted and discouraged. The one thing I had in my favor was that my bag of waters was still in tact. Being GBS positive, I would have been forced to stay at the hospital regardless, not to mention I would be "on the clock". I remembered Cassandra's experience and decided to take the sleep aid and head home, as disappointing as it was. I cried the whole way home, which is a long drive, because i couldn't believe how things were going. I was so scared that my body wasn't going to do this on it's own and that I would have to wait until Sunday and go back to get induced, and/or end up with a c-section. On the way home from the hospital (go figure), i actually had some really awful contractions that threw me out of my seat. I don't know if they got that much worse or if my fatigue was just making me unable to cope.
 
At 8 pm, I layed down and took my ambien, hoping it would make me sleep for at least a couple of hours. I never did fall asleep, and had a horrible contraction at 8:12 PM that again, threw me out of bed. I called Maureen shortly after all of this began to ask her what I should do and she said that unfortunately, there's not much I could do except work through it if I didn't want any interventions. I tried going back to bed, but I was actually hallucinating at this point from the Ambien (a wonderful side effect that they mentioned could happen if i was that far in active labor, but since my contractions had stopped they assumed I would be fine to get some rest) but I was unable to sleep for longer than a few minutes at a time because I was having horrible contractions. At this point, my back pain was excrutuating, and radiated into my hips and I had a sharp pain shooting down my left leg with each contraction.I called kristen again to see what i should do.
 
She didn't seem surprised that the ambien didn't work (looking back I wonder if it was a test to see how far along in labor I was) and told me that if that didn't work, I still needed to get some rest and the only thing that would work would be to come in to the hospital and get the epidural. I was really really upset about the idea of getting one, but I knew she was looking out for my best interest. She said that since it had already been over 24 hours, I should get the epidural to allow me to rest for a few hours so I could have the strength to get through the rest of labor, otherwise I'd have the dreaded c-section. We arrived at the hospital around 1:30 am and was 5 cm, and I got the epidural around 2 am. I was SO scared of the epidural, but the insertion did not hurt at all! I did, however, have shooting pain down my left leg when he was putting it in (the same pain that I had when I was having contractions). I was so bummed about having to be hooked up to a monitor, and confined to the bed. That was pretty much everything I didn't want. But I knew it was my best option under the circumstances. I knew the water birth option was out, but at least I still had hope that I could have a vaginal birth. After a little bit, I was able to actually sleep for maybe 2-3 hours. Kristen also hooked me up to low level pitocin to get my body going again. When I woke up, they checked me again and I was 8 cm already! The epidural was doing the trick!
 
When Kristen ordered the epidural, she wanted it to be a dose that was just enough for me to get some rest, then to wear off so I could be in control of my labor, which I really appreciated. So when I woke up, I was feeling my contractions again, but after some rest I was able to breathe through them again and they weren't bad at all. At around 6-7 am, my water finally broke. They checked me again after a few hours and said I was fully dialated but she wanted me to wait until I had the urge to push so I didn't waste energy. I kept feeling increasing pressure and finally told the nurse to go get Kristen. when i told kristen i needed to push, she checked to see how the baby's head was turned. She had her hand up there and asked me to push like 3 times, and she had this really puzzled look on her face and said "everytime you push, the baby turns their head a different way so i have no idea how they will come out...but the good news is they're coming out!"

I was so excited about finally being able to push!! It was the first time I felt in control of the situation. It took me a while to get the hang of the correct way to push. They ended up getting me these little straps for my knees so I could pull myself up to push, which was extremely helpful. Jared was doing such a good job, holding my leg and feeding me ice chips the whole time. After about an hour of pushing, I was begging to PLEASE push in the squat position because I knew it was more effective and that laying flat on my back was the worst position to push in. Kristen, however, said there is no way after nearly 40 hours of labor that I would have the strength to push (looking back she was very right - it was all I could do to push in the position I was in!). I tried resting between contractions ONCE but it hurt soooo bad when I didn't push! I pushed and pushed and after an hour or two, she got another puzzled look on her face and said "is that another bag of water??" and sure enough, there was another bag that she broke, which really helped her move down. then about 30-45 mins before she actually came out, they drained my bladder which also really really helped her drop down. After nearly 40 hours of labor, including almost 3 hours of pushing, we finally had our baby!

Let's just say I had all kinds of crazy stuff going on - and when she finally came out, she was facing sideways! and to top it all off, her fingernails were so long from being 11 days overdue and she actually scratched me when she was coming out! I also forgot to mention that I did unfortunately tear (Kristen said it's not that bad but I didn't ask details) but only needed a couple stitches. I feel bad because Kristen was working the entire time I was pushing by doing perineal massage and applying oils but I still tore. I assume it's because of the way her head was turned when she came out.
 
I was sooo exhausted and overwhelmed that I just fell back on the bed and Kristen asked Jared what we had and lifted her little leg and Jared cried out "we have a little girl!"  Everyone, including us, guessed we were having a little boy so we couldn't have been more surprised! 
 
My labor was so much harder & longer than I ever imagined it would have been. I am quite sure that without all the information I got from the Bradley class, Maureen's help, and the best and most patient midwife imaginable, I would have had a much worse experience, and probably ended up with a c-section. As upsetting as my experience was, I know I did the best I could with the cards I was dealt and we ended up with a beautiful healthy baby girl!

HANNAH KATHRYN

Born Dec 20th, 2008

2:47 pm

7 lbs, 10 oz

19 1/2 inches long