Betsy's speedy labor and sunny-side up delivery (long)
scoutkate
member
Elizabeth Everett ?Betsy? G. was born on June 4, 2010 at 10:58am, nine days early. I had a feeling throughout my pregnancy that she would come early, but her appearance ended up being much more sudden than I anticipated!
Thursday afternoon, June 3, I had my 38 week appointment. I was 2 cm and 90% effaced, which was a little bit of progress from the previous week but nothing to get excited about. I woke up early Friday morning, a little after midnight, after having vurped in my sleep and then choked on it, as was happening a couple of times each night. I got up to get some water and when I stopped coughing, I noticed my panties were soaked. OK, that usually does happen when I cough. But as I was standing there, more and more fluid starting coming out. It was not quite a stream so it didn?t occur to me that maybe I coughed my bag of waters loose?I thought I was peeing on the kitchen floor. But I did notice that I could not really control the flow.
I cleaned up and went back to bed, but after about 10 minutes I felt another little flow. I got up, changed panties again, and put in a panty liner, which I soaked through in about five minutes. So I woke Winslow and told him I thought my water had broken, but that he could keep sleeping for now. I took a shower, packed our toiletries into our hospital bags, and finally got the bright idea to call the on-call doctor about a hour ? after all this started. By the time I called her, I was having cramping that felt like diarrhea pains, but nothing timeable, and I was still leaking fluid and pieces of my mucus plug. She told me to go on to the hospital, and they would be expecting us. I finally woke Winslow up for good at around 2:00am. By the time we left the house I had stopped leaking fluid but my contractions were now regular and about five minutes apart.
The triage nurse checked me around 3:00am and the fluid test was inconclusive; in addition, I was still only measuring at a little more than 2 cm. I thought for sure we would be sent home, but the triage nurse wanted me to wait for my doctor just in case. By the time the doctor arrived a little before 4:00am, my contractions were very painful and about two minutes apart. She checked me out, and I had progressed from 2cm to 5cm in a little less than an hour! At that point we knew we would not be sent home.
By the time I was moved from triage to L&D, I was vomiting and in a great deal of pain from intense back labor. The nurse was concerned that I was progressing too quickly for an epidural. Thanks goodness I finally got the epidural at around 5:30am and I was 8cm?another 3cm in an hour and a half. After that things got better. I think I hit 10cm around 7:00am but I couldn?t feel a thing and it was heaven.
The baby was still at -1 station and sunny-side up, so I hung out at 10cm for quite awhile waiting for her to drop so I wouldn?t have to push as long (ha). I started with practice pushes at around 9:00am, and they decided to weaken my epidural so I?d be able to feel the contractions and push more effectively. After that I could feel the pressure of the contractions but not the pain.
I pushed for two hours. My pelvis is very narrow and LO got stuck behind the bone. They had me push in a variety of different ways, but nothing was happening. Eventually, as we were approaching 11:00am, the mood in the delivery room completely changed. Everyone got really tense all of a sudden and Winslow and I started to get scared. My doctor explained that, although LO was doing fine, I had spiked a fever and they were worried about how long I?d been pushing with no progress. A c-section was a possibility, but they wanted to try an episiotomy and vacuum first. I remember being much more scared of the episiotomy than the c-section because I was afraid my epidural was starting to wear off.
The last few pushes were awful. I knew when her head came out because I felt
myself tear. I truly didn?t think I could push out
her shoulders. But my team was wonderful
and I pushed her out in the end. I was
sobbing from the effort and pain and it didn?t even register that I had an
outside baby. But eventually they handed
her to us and all was fine! I ended up with a 2nd degree tear in addition to the episiotomy, but recovery so far has been far easier than I expected.
She was bigger than any of us expected at 7 lbs, 6 oz?Winslow and I were both 6 lb babies and we are both small people. But she is beautiful. She was born with a little bit of light brown hair that is now growing in white-blond. Her head was not misshapen despite having to be vacuumed! She scored 8/9 on her Apgar which they tell me is good. She also took to nursing like a champ and latched on right away. She is the cuddliest baby ever and wants to do nothing but snuggle with me and Winslow. That is the most challenging part so far as she will not sleep unless someone is holding her. I guess there are more difficult things to deal with than an extra-sweet baby!
Re: Betsy's speedy labor and sunny-side up delivery (long)