William Myers has made his debut! (birth story)

caitie2002 · January 2012

Sunday night, my husband and I layed down to go to sleep around 11. I never did get to go to sleep, because I started having contractions. At first I thought they were just stomach cramps and I was up and down using the restroom. By about 12:30, I decided to call the hospital because the cramps were getting worse and closer together. I was so afraid to go to the hospital for no reason again (we had went Saturday because I started bleeding- turns out that it was my bloody show and I was not in labor at the time). Around 1 or 1:30 a.m., we left the house. They admitted me and sent me up to a labor room to check me. I was at 2 cm at first (had been 1 cm on Saturday). The nurses told me to walk around as much as possible to get the labor process moving along. I made tons of laps around the hospital floor, with my mom and my husband taking turns walking with me. I had to stop and breathe every time I got a contraction- they were steadily getting stronger.

After all this walking, I had them check me again and I was up to 3, almost 4 cm. They had been waiting to see if they should call my doctor or not (a different doc was on call and they didn't want to wake my doctor if this was a false alarm). They wanted my doctor to be the one to give me my epidural, so I had to wait until about 7 a.m. when he arrived. I am seriously in awe of anyone who can have a baby without an epidural.. The first 8 hours of labor without one were about as much pain as I could take. The epidural went so well- the doctor said I had good "spaces" and I was a very easy patient to give one to. After the epidural kicked in, my contractions were becoming a little less intense and a little farther apart according to the monitor. So they made the decision to start a low dose of pitocin. It really helped move things along. I even got to take a short nap while all of this was going on. Those few hours are kind of a blur.. I was just very relaxed all over from the epidural. Around 3 or 3:30 p.m. they checked me and I was at 10 cm. They told me it was time to start pushing. I had like 15 family members at the hospital waiting with me (many of them had been there the WHOLE TIME). The nurses asked them to leave the room, and it was just me, my husband, my wonderful nurse who I'd had with me all day, and a nursery nurse.

My nurse explained to me how to push, after she and my husband had lifted my legs (that I could not feel!- such a weird feeling- but totally worth the fact that I couldn't feel labor pains!) onto the stirrups. It took me awhile to really get a hang of how to push, so the first few pushes were not effective at all. I probably pushed for about 45 minutes total. More nurses kept coming in to help them- apparently I just needed lots of cheerleaders. If they hadn't have been so encouraging, I could not have been able to keep going. It was really, really hard work! But finally they told me they could see his head and one of them called my doctor. I continued pushing, and I heard the head nurse come in and holler, She's doing so good! She just needs an episiotomy and she'll have him! About 5 minutes later my doctor came in and performed the episiotomy and just a couple of pushes later I was able to deliver him.

William Myers arrived at 4:26 p.m. on Monday January 9th. He weighed 9 pounds even and was 21 inches long. They got him wiped off and handed him to me to feed him. He latched on great and has been doing great with feeding so far. We got home from the hospital yesterday afternoon. Last night was pretty rough- but my mom stayed with us and gave us a break for several hours so we were able to rest. We just love our little man and are in awe of how cute and sweet he is.