Birth Story - a long labor and long birth story!

The pregnancy to birth story of Carys Catherine (the loooong version!)

On February 4, 2009, we found out that we were going to be parents with the help of 3 pregnancy tests!! Two that showed the very faint pink line and one that stated ?PREGNANT? as clear as day! The beginning of my pregnancy was pretty good. I had the mildest form of morning sickness possible. I felt nauseous in the morning but not to the point where I had to be within 10 feet of a bathroom at all times. At 16 weeks I began to feel the little one moving, my favorite part of pregnancy. At 19 weeks we found out that ?it? was a ?she?! The next few months flew by. October came and I was sure that she was going to stay in there as long as possible. I just knew it was too good to be true that she would actually come early. Throughout my pregnancy I had said how much I LOVED being pregnant! But once October came and I began to feel and look like a hippo, I was ready for her to get here. On Monday, October 12, 2009 I went to work then went straight to school and was home by 10:30pm, a normal Monday. We went to bed and in the middle of the night I started to feel contractions. I woke up knowing that it could be the next day or so and she would be here. They continued all night. I woke up about 3 times and I even felt them in my dreams. It was only a matter of days, right? Wrong. I woke up Tuesday morning and the contractions were about 10 minutes apart and didn?t feel bad at all. So I packed up the car with the things that would go to the hospital (just in case) and went to work. By 1pm they were at 8 minutes apart pretty consistently. I worked until around 4 pm when the hubby begged me to finally come home. It started to rain that day but I was determined to walk to get labor moving. I got home, ate dinner, and the husband and I drove to the drier and walked underneath the sheds where we wouldn?t be drenched by rain while the workers were whizzing by us in forklifts moving raisins. Raisin water and rainwater make for a slippery situation. There was almost a catastrophe on numerous occasions. We walked for about 45 minutes and went home. By 10pm the contractions had changed from the manageable contractions with a tiny bit of discomfort to plain uncomfortable contractions. They were still between 8 to 10 minutes apart. I went to bed but woke up during each and every contraction. Lying flat in bed made them worse so I put my pillows on the floor and slept there for a few hours. And by sleeping I mean tiny rest breaks between each one. By lying on the floor I was able to roll over during each contraction and lay on my side or get on my hands and knees which made them feel somewhat better. So basically I would lay on my back, begin to doze off, feel the onset of the contraction about 9 minutes into my tiny little nap, crawl onto my hands and knees (which isn?t easy with a humongous belly), cringe through each 30ish second contraction, and then roll back over onto my side for the next 10 minute break. All night long. Morning came and hubby stayed home with me. The rain stopped and we walked up and down the driveway for about an hour, played wii to try to get something to happen, and then walked some more. The contractions were between 5 and 7 minutes apart and getting more painful. We decided to go to Fresno to walk up and down the mall. We thought that would do the trick. That only made us look crazy each time we would pull off to the side inside the mall each time a contraction would start. I had lean forward, wrap my arms around hubby's neck, and lean on him through each one. We decided to go to the hospital to see if we could convince them that I needed to stay. They hooked me up to a monitor, which tracked my contractions and Carys?s heartbeat. I stayed there about a half-hour before the doctor came in and told me I was only at a 2. SO frustrating. She said we needed to go home, walk, drink lots of fluids, and engage in some extracurricular activity (none of those sound fun when you just want to sleep!). The contractions continued at about 30 seconds long and anywhere from 4 to 10 minutes apart. I didn?t sleep on Wednesday night with the exception of a few little naps in between the contractions. I tried to watch television, walk around the house, and lie in different positions. Nothing helped. The next morning I started to feel sick. It was now Thursday, I had been breathing through contractions since Tuesday, and I was done. I tried to eat and drink but felt too sick. I drank as much water as I could. The pain was getting worse so hubby decided to start the bath to see if the warm water helped. Halfway through fillinging up the bath the hot water ran out. Being the awesome husband he is, he boiled 2 or 3 pots of water to warm up my bath. I started to feel like I was running out of gas. The pain is bearable but only for a certain amount of time. Days of it without sleep really wear you out. We went back to the hospital around 2pm. They hooked me up and the doctor came in and said, ?do you know how I know you?re not in labor?? I wanted to cry. ?How?? I said while trying not to cry. He said, ?You?re not screaming?. Not screaming! I can scream, believe me. I definitely feel like it! He said I was at a 2 ? and they won?t admit me until I am at a 3. He said I was majorly dehydrated and if I didn?t eat and drink that I would not dialate further. I told him IM THROWING EVERYTHING UP! He told me to go home and keep trying to eat and drink then gave me a shot of Demerol so I could sleep and regain my strength. That shot did nothing. On the way home I felt like I was just out of it but I could still feel everything. Hub's stopped somewhere on the way home and got me soup. The soup stayed in my stomach for about 10 minutes and then ended up in the garbage can next to the bed. I laid on the floor for a few hours and cringed through each contraction. I gave up on timing them. I thought it was never going to happen. Around 6:00pm I got in the shower and laid on the floor for what seemed like hours. My husband came in the bathroom and told me that we are going to the hospital and not letting them send us home. He got me out of the shower, dressed me in his clothes and put a rubber band in my hair. My body started shaking and I felt as if I was going to lose consciousness. We got in the car and I couldn?t even talk. I watched the clock and the contractions were about two minutes apart. I knew something was happening. We got to the hospital and they hooked me up to the monitors again and left me there for 45 minutes. Each contraction was getting worse and worse. The nurses kept coming in telling us that the doctor was going to be in to see me. He never came. I finally told/cried/begged my husband to get the doctor. He came back in with a nurse who said, ?Well my friend, you are dialated to an 8!? Finally! All of a sudden there were 4 or 5 nurses in the room that hubs and I had sat alone in for almost an hour. They moved me to my delivery room and hooked me up to an iv for fluids since I had almost nothing in me. My husband told them to give me an epidural. A nurse asked me what my birth plan was and I said, ?I was planning on trying to go without an epidural but now I want one? The doctor finally came in along with all of the nurses and tried to talk me out of getting the epidural since I had gone so far already. I told them that I couldn?t do it anymore, hadn?t slept in days, and that I needed to rest.

The anesthesiologist came in and told me to sit on the side of the bed and told hubby to go to the other side of the room. He wasn?t allowed to watch. I was just praying that she didn?t start to put the needle in in the middle of a contraction because it is almost impossible to hold still. She put it in and said she was done before I knew it. I couldn?t feel the epidural at all compared to what I had been feeling. Within fifteen minutes I felt amazing. It was midnight now we were finally able to rest. My family came to the hospital and came in to visit with us throughout the night. It took me 5 hours to dialate from an 8 to a 9 and at 5:00am they broke my water. Everything was moving along extremely slow. We rested a little throughout the night but were pretty excited. At 9:00am, the nurse came in to ask if I wanted to start pushing or if I would rather let it ?happen naturally?. I thought that the ?letting it happen naturally? option sounded the most..obvious, I guess! So I told her that I would like to wait it out just a little longer to see if it would happen on its own. She left and came back within 15 minutes to inform me that the doctor wanted me to start pushing. So the nurse turned down/off the wonderful medication flowing through the epidural in my back and we started the pushing. As soon as I felt a contraction coming on (every minute to two minutes) I would give hubby the ?okay? and he began to count 1,2,3,?10 as I pushed and held my breath to that magical number 10. My husband counted to 10 and I pushed 3 to 4 times through each contraction. This went on for hours and hours but it seemed like days. Pushing started at 9:15am and by noon I felt as though it would never happen. I started to hear a few comments from the nurse about a possible c-section but I just ignored it and kept pushing while hubs continued to count. The nurse was pretty absent throughout the entire pushing process. She was in the room most of the time but was doing something on the computer. She would walk over to us about every 15 or 20 minutes to check how things were going. Not much help at all. Slowly but surely, things were moving along. The nurse came by to check on us and told us that she could see her head and that she had a lot of hair! She asked my husband if he wanted to look and I said ?no!? but he said, ?Yes!?. So that was it. My plan that hubby would only see the top portion of my body went out the window. Then she asked if I wanted to feel her head. That gave me a huge adrenaline boost. Pushing continued even more aggressively. I now tried to add in an extra push with each contraction since I had extra motivation and pushing made the contractions hurt less. The nurse soon asked if I wanted a mirror to see what was happening. Oh my gosh, no way, I said, ?ahhh, nooo, I don?t think so.? Hubby said, ?Yeah, come on!? So I agreed. Wow, that was pretty interesting. It did help though. I pushed and pushed and my husband coached and counted away. Then the nurse picked up the phone and paged the doctor. The doctor, and two more nurses came in my room and ?oooh/aww?d? at how close she was. They cheered me on but I tuned it out. I was pushing so hard that it felt like my eyes were going to burst. Then it happened, she entered her way into the world and changed our lives forever. The second she was born I remember my husband on his toes with so much excitement and he turned to me, touched my arm, and said with a shaky voice and tears in his eyes, ?She?s here!? The doctor asked if he wanted to cut the umbilical cord (he previously had no intentions on cutting it) and he said, ?Yes!? It was finally over and it was now the three of us as well as the doctor finishing things up and the nurses doing their tests on her. 6 pounds 15 ounces and 20 ? inches long. Perfection.