Birth Story from a lurker (longish)

Alysonni · October 2010

I pretty much just lurked on this board, but thought I would share my birth story because I always enjoyed reading everyone else's.

My mom and I went Christmas shopping for LO to Toys R Us on September 12th (2 days past my EDD) and right before I got in the car I had a small, but noticeable little gush, but thought it was just watery discharge because it didn't continue for the rest of the night. The following day a few more of these incidents occured, so I decided that I should go to L&D to get checked out. DH came home from work and we headed to the hospital at 12:30. From there, we went to Triage and they hooked me up to the monitors and checked to see if my water broke with that swab that turns to blue if you're leaking and as soon as she pulled it out she said "Blue!" and DH looked so confused and said "what does that mean?" at that instant the rest of my water broke, so I let him know exactly what was happening. He had the biggest smile on his face, like a kid on Christmas.

At 2 p.m. we were finally in our room, but because I was only 1.5 cm the nurse encouraged me to walk for a while. DH and I walked the halls for over an hour, including lunges to get the baby to move down since I was still high. The nurse came back to check on me, I was only 2 cm and still high 80% effaced. The doctor wanted me on Pitocin to get things moving, so they hooked me up. I have to say that I was fearing Pitocin, but for the first 4 hours I didn't feel any contractions, then BAM! I was in contraction hell. They were lasting 30 seconds-1 minute with less than 1 minute in between them. I did the breathing that we learned in lamaze (I was pretty impressed with myself). Then I asked for the epi, which was always part of my plan. I asked for it at 10, but then there was an emergency c-section, so I was told it would be about an hour...come 11:45 p.m. I was 4 cm and I heard the cart coming into the room and the epi was put in. Heaven!! The cranked up the Pitocin and I felt nothing. Then all of the sudden I had three nurses in my room and they were moving me from side to side because LO's heart rate was decreasing (this happened about 3 times), so they turned the Pitocin off and let my body contract naturally, which it did better without the Pitocin. I went from 4-6 cm in two hours, then complete another 2 hours after that, but the baby was high, so they let me labor down for a while. I started pushing at 4:30 a.m. and at 5:25 a.m. Colin was here. He was 6lbs., 8.9 ounces, 20 inches long and got a 9/9 on his APGAR. The moment that he was put on my chest screaming his lungs out was the best moment of my life and this whole pregnancy (not my favorite 40 weeks) was worth it. He came out with one arm up by his head and tore my labia on his way out, so I required 2 long stitches on my left labia. Recovery was so much better than expected. I was sore getting up and down for about 4 days and felt back to normal by a week post partum.

Good luck to all of you ladies that are waiting on your outside babies. It will be the best moment of your life when you get to hold your LO.