Oscar Henry's (very long) birth story!

rissa_n · June 2012

My birth story:
I woke up at 2 am on Monday June 11 with contractions 10 minutes apart. They stayed that way for about 2 hours but weren't getting stronger or closer together, and were manageable, so in between I cleaned my bathroom and caught up on work email etc. (I'm sure my coworkers thought I was insane sending them emails at 3 am!). Eventually they subsided and I was able to go back to sleep for about 2 hours, waking up to a contraction every 30 - 40 minutes. I was disappointed as my due date was June 10 (though my dr. office had June 12, I was going by mine since I knew the date of conception) and was ready to get this baby here! Monday morning contractions returned, and I had them all day about 15 minutes apart, along with bloody show most of the day. I felt like crap all day and was frustrated and discouraged that labor wasn't starting. I tried to rest at home and went out for lunch and a long trip to Target with my mom and sister, hoping to get things going.

By evening, I was exhausted and irritable since I'd been contracting for 18 hours with no active labor or end in sight. By late evening, they finally started to get closer together and the intensity picked up bigtime. We called my other sister to come stay with my daughter at about 10:30 as they were now about 7-8 minutes apart and getting stronger, and were also causing horrible back pain and a lot of pressure, so much so that I was afraid my water was going to break on my couch. My mom and husband were coaching me through them but I was starting to lose my grip, the exhaustion was really making it hard for me to focus and breathe. By 12 am they were 5-7 minutes apart and getting too intense for me to handle effectively, I was starting to cry and tense up badly with each one and my mom said that's it, we're going to the hospital (L&D didn't want me to come in until 3-5 min. apart for 1-2 hours...my mom said no way to that plan, thank goodness!)

We got to the hospital around 12:45 am and checked in, which took forever (found out later they misspelled my name so couldn't find my preregistration, my mom was about to freak out on the staff which is totally out of character for her, she's usually the nicest, sweetest person in the world but I think seeing me in so much pain & stress was really hard for her). Once we got to the room and got settled, the nurse checked me & I was 4 cm, contractions were 3-5 min. apart and I immediately tossed my plans of trying to go med-free and asked for the epidural (kudos to you ladies who make it through delivery naturally, my hat is off to you!) They had to draw blood and wait for the lab to send results, so it took a while to get it and working through the contractions was horrible. Got checked again around 1:30 while waiting for the epi and was at 5 cm, I started to panic they would run out of time and I would have to go through delivery without pain relief which scared me. Finally got the epi finished and started feeling relief at about 2:15, was at 6 cm and nurse decided to let the on-call doc know to be ready to come to the hospital as she thought I would keep dilating quickly. We started to get excited and made predictions on time of birth (DH said 4:15, my mom said 4:40, and I said 5:15). By 3:00 I was 7-8 cm and the doctor decided to break my water, she had a hard time getting the sac to break and when it did, nothing came out at all, which concerned me but the doctor didn't think it was anything to worry about at that point.

The next time the nurse checked me at 4:00 I was complete and ready to start pushing around 4:30. I had a hard time pushing at first as I was really numb and couldn't tell if what I was doing was working at all, so I asked them to turn off my epidural and shortly after I was able to start feeling pressure and could tell when the contractions were happening so that helped a lot. I pushed with the nurse coaching me for about 30 minutes until she could see the head descend past my pubic bone (she said "he has a ton of hair, if I could just grab onto it I could pull him out" lol) and then she called the doctor and pediatric nurse in. I was really afraid of an episiotomy, as the doctor kept looking at the head and then at the instrument tray, but luckily she just stretched me a bit and didn't cut, and I only ended up with 1 stitch for a small abrasion. I was able to feel the pressure (but not the pain) of the baby crowning, which was really motivating. He was sunny side up which explains the back labor I was having.

Finally I felt his head come all the way out and Oscar Henry was born at 5:13 am on 6/12/12! He weighed 7 lbs 3 oz and measured 20 inches long, and scored 9/9 on his Apgars. He was born with a slight fever but it resolved right away, so he was very healthy and looked great. I was able to have him on my belly right after delivery while they cleaned him up and DH cut the cord, and he latched on right away and BF'ed for a good 40 minutes, which was great as I struggled with BF'ing initially with my daughter. The only scary part was that there never was any amniotic fluid coming out, it was completely gone; and once I delivered the placenta the doctor said it was really "aged" and starting to calcify even though I had just hit my due date, so it was not effectively nourishing the baby. I am terrified to think of what might have happened to my sweet baby if I went another several days or a week without going into labor, but am so lucky that everything turned out ok. All in all it was a great delivery and I'm so lucky to have a perfect, healthy baby.

Recovery has been a little harder this time, the nurses warned me that the cramping would be worse than the first time and boy were they right...I only took 1 painkiller in the hospital with DD but this time I've had to take prescription ibuprofen up until today for the pain. Oscar had borderline bilirubin levels when we were discharged on Wednesday so we've had to take him in for blood tests every day since, but he was finally cleared today so now we're all doing well!

I've loved reading everyone else's birth stories and seeing pics of all the adorable babies, and good luck to all the moms still waiting to meet their Junebugs!

Here is my little Oscar at 4 hours old:

My favorite of Oscar & I: