Monday June 4th was my due date, which started out as a normal day. I wasn't expecting much because I had been having irregular contractions for weeks at that point. As you know I was an avid runner throughout my entire pregnancy, although by that week I was mostly walking. We went for a 3 mile walk and everything continued as usual. That evening we went to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory with my family. We were seated, ordered our food and waited. Right as the waitress brought out my food and set it in front of me I felt a "pop." My first thought was that the baby kicked me, but it felt really low. Immediately then I felt a GUSH of fluid which was unmistakably my water breaking! I know some people have a small trickle....well my shoes got soaked, this was no trickle. This was at 8:15 pm. We immediately got our food to go and went home. I was not having contractions yet so we sat down and ate our food. Michael called our nurse midwife and told her the situation and that we were going to stay home as long as possible and rest, she approved of this.
The contractions started around 10:00 pm but weren't hard yet. We went to bed. I lay awake for a while and just as I was relaxing and dozing off, my contractions picked up enough to keep me awake, well that and the endless trips to go to the bathroom. I lay there dealing with them for a while before waking Michael and saying that we should try timing them. They were never consistent, I would have them 3 minutes apart, but the next would be 4 minutes and then 5 and then maybe nothing for 15 to 20 minutes. This continued for hours, however my contractions kept getting stronger and I found them very difficult to deal with. We were having a hard time deciding when we should head to the hospital. At around 3 am we ate some cereal and listened to my relaxing labor mix CD. The music helped me deal with the contractions but after an hour we decided to go lay back in bed to get a little more rest. Around 6 am I felt really sick to my stomach and rushed to the bathroom where I puked my guts out. I felt a lot better after throwing up but my emotional sign posts were much more serious and Michael decided it was time to head to the hospital and fortunately he had already loaded the car with everything we needed, so I didn't have to wait for stuff to be ready. Michael called the nurse midwife to let her know that we were on our way.
We arrived at the hospital a little before 7 am and I was asked to fill out some stupid paperwork even though I had already preregistered. After that they took me into triage, which I could only describe as torture! I waited alone for about 15 minutes before a nurse came in and hooked me up to the fetal heart rate monitor. She made me stay on my back for this, which was incredibly uncomfortable. She began asking me a endless number of questions. When my midwife came in to check me, I was happy to hear that I was dilated to 7 cm and 100% effaced. After 45 minutes they finally let Michael come in. After another round of a billion questions they finally let us go to our L&D room where they continued to mess with me more. The nurse did a horrible job of trying to get my hep-lock in. She had to poke me in both arms to try and get it in. She also came in every hour to strap me up to the monitor and always made sure it was nice and uncomfortable.
Labor continued for hours. I never found a comfortable position to labor in but we did try quite a few. I started feeling the urge to push, so we had our midwife come and check me and I was only about 8 cm. I spent a few more hours laying on my side as the need to push continued getting stronger and impossible to fight. The next time my midwife checked me there was a lip of cervix left on one side so she had me change the side I was laying on (apparently I had not switched sides at all). About another hour passed and when she checked me again there was still a small lip of cervix left so she decided to hold it out of the way while I pushed the baby's head past it. I was excited to finally be able to push! I used the squatting bar for a while but I guess my midwife could tell I was extremely tired so she had me switch to laying on my back to push. Around this time a new nurse came in and she turned out to be very helpful by coaching me through the pushing. They had me feel the baby's head as it started crowning. I got excited thinking that the end was near, however I was very wrong. Her head crowned for about 2 hours (but I didn't tear or need stitches thanks to the patience of my midwife). I felt the "ring of fire" and I kept thinking that it couldn't get worse but with every push it did. Finally her head finished coming out and it was just a few more pushes and her whole body was out!
Zelda Eden Shaw was born at 3:53 pm weighing 7 lbs 6 oz and 18.5 inches long!
I look back on the whole experience and I find it amazing! I'm proud of myself for doing it without any drugs, just like I planned from the beginning of my pregnancy!
Great story! I'm so proud of you! I learned a lot from reading this but I need clarification on some things. Emotional sign posts? Hep-lock? These are foreign terms to me haha! What are they?
ReplyDeleteKristin
Ah Good questions. Emotional Sign posts is a term used by the Bradley Method to describe how a woman is feeling and acting as labor progresses. These sign posts can give you an idea of how labor is progressing and help you decide when you go to the hospital (because it's best not to go too early, i.e. before you have dilated very far). I can't remember all of the sign posts but it basically starts with Excitement progressing to Seriousness.
DeleteThe Hep-lock is the I.V. they put in your arm so that if they need to they can quickly hook you up to fluids or medicine. "Hep" is short for Heparin which prevents blood from clotting.