Samuels birth story (water broke,pain med free)

So.....On Saturday, April 10th around 5PM (39 weeks and 3 days) I was outside grilling with DH, DS#1 and my father. We were playing in the yard and just hanging out when I felt a small gush (maybe a few tablespoons worth). So I went inside to change my pantyliner, as soon as I went to leave the house again...another small gush. Changed panty liner again. I then went and told DH I thought my water was leaking and I was going to call L&D and ask if I should come in to get it checked or wait for active labor. I was GBS negative so I knew they wouldn't rush me to get there. I called and told them what was going on and they said I should have it checked out but not to hurry as it sounded like I probably wouldn't be going back home. Well since I had been having contrax every evening for the last week or so I wasn't sure that the contrax I was having were just some more of what I had been having or if they were picking up. I ate a baked potato as I thought I wouldn't be able to eat at the hosp and I chugged some water. I finished packing my bag and getting last minute things in order. I wasn't in any pain and was leaking water more and more the more I moved around. Within an hour I was completely sure it was my water and knew I wouldn't return from the hosp without my baby being born! YAY! DH didn't seem convinced, I think that he thought I should be having worse contrax if my water had broken.

At about 6:30 pm we headed to the hosp. We got there and went straight to L&D (yay for skipping the ER) they got us into a room and I peed in a cup and got all my vitals checked. they monitored me for about 10 minutes while having me lay on my side so the amniotic fluid would pool in my whoha so they could check it. I was having contrax but they were not that strong and they were fairly irregular. Within 5 minutes I told DH he could just grab the nurse as we didn't not need to wait for the water to pool, it was streaming out of me. So that made things easy. So she came in and said she was going to test it but was sure that was what it was and wanted to know if I would like some water and something to eat. WHAT...something to EAT AND DRINK??? Wait maybe I was dreaming. I asked her if she was serious and she said yeah if your body doesn't want it in there it will get rid of it and since you are low risk and your water has broken and things seem to be going the way they are suppose to be going you can eat, drink and even take a bath if you want (yes a bath, even though my water had broken). When I asked he about the bath she said "well people have water births don't they?" I thought, "wow good point". so she went to get me some toast and some water and we settled in and made some calls. They didn't really wait for the test to come back to contact the Dr, as it was pretty obvious that my water was no longer intact. The Dr. said I could monitor intermittantly and do wahtever I wanted but I was staying and they would let me go til 6am without giving me pitocin to get things going more.

So DH and I went out and walked the halls and the contrax would really get going but as soon as I would sit down or relax they would slow and decrease in intensity. This went on for a few hours and we (dh and I) decided that either way, if they picked up on there own or we ended up needing the pitocin to help things along I was going to need some sleep, even if it meant that the contrax would slow way down. So we went to bed. I woke up to some contrax off and on but nothing that was doing much. I was checked at 6am and I had effaced some but had not dialated anymore. I  told the nurse that we could start the pit now. She could see the disappointment on my face and assured me that even though I didn't want it she believed I was making the right choice and with how much progress my cervix had already made it wouldn't take much. (I was already almost 4cms and about 80% effaced, I think, when we got to the hosp).

So at about 7am we started the pitocin at the lowest setting, over the next few hours we increased it a little and the contractions started picking up though I felt like they weren't strong enough. At about noon I decided I wanted to labor for awhile in the tub and see if that would help, my back was really starting to hurt and leaning over the squat bar was helping but only when I stood up and I needed to get off my feet while still getting some relief.

 The nurse checked me and said there had not been much progress and thought also that the tub was a wonderful idea. They gave me this wireless monitoring thing so that I could be in the bath and still be monitored. I hadn't eaten for quite sometime so DH went and got me an apple, which I ate between contractions in the tub.Over the course of the next 20-30 minutes I had 4 or 5 contractions that increased in severity with each one. The last one I had in the tub was a bit much and I knew if I stayed in there that I would have a hard time concentrating and breathing through the next one. So I got out and they wrapped me in a hot blanket as I had started shaking. With the next contraction (between the bathroom and the bed) I had a very hard time standing up and DH just held me and whispered to me how amazing I was doing and how he could tell by my face that our baby boy would be there soon. I cried and shook and suddenly felt like I had to poop, bad, and I really did need to but LO was also coming down the birth canal at a fast rate. They told me to get int he bed and I said "no I have to poop". The nurse proceeded to tell me to lay on my side and she would check my cervix and if I pooped then that was fine....she said she thought I would be disappointed if baby came out in the toilet and I agreed I would have been too. I layed down on my side and she quick checked me and I was at 8cms. Over the course of 20mins and 6 contactions I went from 4 cms to 8cms and fully effaced.(and yes I pooped and could've cared less, it felt great.) The nurse called my Dr. who was 20 minutes away and informed him that by the time she got offt he phone with him I would probably be pushing, she called the resident in.

This next part happened over the course of about 20 minutes but felt like forever.I so far had done everything with no drugs and couldn't have been prouder, but with the next contraction I started begging for drugs and trying to convince everyone that I couldn't do this, all while my body was pushing baby down the birth canal n its own, i had no control over it. Before now,  baby had not dropped at all. DH was so cool and calm. He was my hero and encouraging me through every second. At this point I was laying on my left side with my head at the edge of the bed holding DH's hand with our heads against one anothers and during one contraction I actually started to bite his knuckle, he flinched a little but was going to actually let me do it but as soon as I felt him flinch I realized what I was doing and backed off of his hand.   It was like he had done this a hundred times. He could see that I was no longer concentrating on my breath and started talking really slowly to me about how I needed to slow my breathing and look at his eyes and think about only one contraction at a time. THIS MADE ALL THE DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD. I started to breathe alot slower through the contractions and really fixating on the fact that I got a rest after it was done. DH was wiping my forehead with a cool wash cloth and that was like heaven. I would take in a long deep breath  and then blow it out through my mouth forcfully but slowly and controlled and I finally felt like I had a little more control over the situation and stopped begging for drugs. No one was ever going to give them to me anyway! My Dr. comes racing through the door has me roll over and says "Theres baby's head, start pushing"! With my first real push baby started to crown and they could see that the cord was up over babys' head (sort of like a headband). My Dr. pretty much pushed the resident out of the way so he could pretty much pull baby out with the next push. Up until that point my Dr. was letting the resident do a majority of the delivery. The Dr. told me to push even though the conraction was over. I pushed again and out came the head, one more bit of a push and the shoulders and everythig else came out too. They put baby up on my stomach and DH and I were surprised at how small he was, (DS#1 was 9lbs 12 ozs,delivered vaginally with no tear or episiotomy ) I asked the Dr. if I tore and he said "of course not". Baby Samuel let out one big cry and then just laid there looking around with his eyes wide open. Dh cut the cord. About 2 minutes later the placenta came out and my Dr. was starting to get out of his scrubs when he noticed that I was still bleeding and I could feel the blood gushing out of me. Everyone pretty much started beating on my stomach to try to get my uterus to clamp down but it wouldn't. The Dr. was all up inside of me trying to figure out what was going on, at first he thought my cervix had torn but that wasn't it. He went over and reexamined the placenta and that was intact and couldn't figure out why I was hemmoraging. They opened up the line of pitocin to its highest setting and the dr. proceeded to basically sucker punch my stomach with one hand while he had the other one up in me (your uterus is suppose to contract and harden up right away after birth and they will usually push on it to help it along but this was taking it to another level) and then he put in 2 suppositories, not cool, of some hormone to try to get the bleeding stopped. As much as everything hurt, it was all very surreal...I was so elated that it was over and Samuel was here and at the same time there was this flurry of activity going on around us that almost seemed blurry and  everyone else but DH, me and Samuel kind of disappeared into this fast forward motion around us as they went into crisis mode. I was experiencing so many strange emotions. This went on for about 15 minutes. I  felt really scared for DH as he looked very pale and worried. Then suddenly, like I came out of this cloud, I asked the Dr. if I should start breatfeeding, which I wanted to do as soon as possible anyway, to help the situation (breastfeeding right away causes the uterus to contract and clamp down) the nurse was like "wait until you can sit up bettter and get the right latch" but the Dr. said "to hell with the latch, she won't be feeding him at all if we don't get this bleeding to stop" he then looked at me and said "yes please start to breastfeed him". With the help of dh holding babys' head ( I was not in the right position at the time to be able to do this myself) we got him onto the breast (not the most ideal latch) and he started to breastfeed. Within 1 minute my uterus started to clamp down and the bleeding slowed way down....I had done it, I stopped the bleeding! The Dr. looked at me and winked! He thanked me for being so calm and helping the situation. I think I was more proud of that then the fact that I had just given birth naturally w/o any pain meds.  As the next 10 minutes went on they cleaned me up and told us that baby could stay with me as long as we wanted and they would hold off on everything until we were ready. I loved it there. After about 15 more minutes I had them wrap up baby so DH could hold him.  It was wonderful and DH looked so proud and relieved that all the chaos was over. Poor thing! 

About 2 hours later they came in and weighed him and measured him, 7lbs 13 ozs, 20 & 1/2 inches long. PERFECTION!!!! The nurse finished up measuring him and asked me how I was doing...I was very weak and sort of dizzy,barely able to hold my head up from all the blood loss not to mention I just had a baby. I told the nurse I was really warm and she decided to check my temp....100.3...oh boy, now what. She said she wasn't sure why I had a fever and had the dr. come in and check me out. They couldn't figure it out....they pumped me full of fluids and had me take a bath, DH stayed in there with me the whole time while holding baby cause I was so weak and dizzy. He took such good care of us both, he amazes me so much.  About 12 hours later the fever went away. They ended up thinking that it might have just been the extra hormones they had to pump me full of  (which also caused my blood pressure to go up a bit) and that they were leveling out and giving me hot flashes and messing with my immune system. Anyway they did some blood work and did a uninalysis to rule out an infection and those came back normal. Now I am just a little anemic and tired.

Well we got the Dr. to let us get dicharged the next day as I couldn't wait to be home with me other son, who I missed desperately. I called him right after we had the baby and told him "Sammy is here, he came out of my belly" and he said "Sammy came out? Ahhhh, our family is here" I started bawling. What a little peanut.

So we came home on Mon and things are going well....Samuel has days and nights mixed up and likes to scream instead if cry....he sounds like a little chicken...he sort of sqwauks. DS#1 Dexter is having kind of a rough time adjusting but it is better each day. It seems like he really likes Samuel but doesn't want us to like him. LOL! Thanks for reading and good luck!