Monday, August 24, 2009

Birth story

Since my little girl arrived July 31, 2009 I haven't had a chance to go online between the baby & family coming to visit. Hopefully I can get my "birth story" in before she wakes up, she's sleeping in my arm so typing will be slow. I hate reading long blog posts so I like to make my posts short, sweet & to the point.
Thursday morning I went to the hospital to be induced. It was 1 week after my due date & I really wanted my OB/GYN to deliver her. She would be going away the following week & she was covering the L&D unit Thursday, Friday & Saturday so I knew I would have her there. When we got there at 6:30am they put me in a crappy room where the TV didn't work. We asked if they could give us one of the really nice rooms if it was available (there's only 2 of them) & they did!
The doctor checked me before starting anything & I was 1cm dilated, -2 station & cervix was still thick. They started an IV at 10am & by 11am they put the Cervidil in to soften my cervix. By 3pm I started feeling VERY slight contractions so they gave me another dose of Cervidil-- still only 1-2 cm dilated but 50-80% effaced (2 dif drs checked w/ dif results). I was so uncomfortable laying in the bed but since I was induced they wanted to keep me hooked up to the monitors. By 5pm I just couldn't take laying in that bed anymore so when the nurse came in I told her I wanted to sit up in the chair. Around 9pm they started Pitosin which made the contractions more painful & closer together. The doc wanted to break my water but since I was in a lot of pain she waited until I got the epidural. Got epi at 1am & she broke my water at 1:30am. Epidural was a dream! Getting it really stunk because I felt it going in. Either he didn't wait for me to be numb with the local anesthetic or he didn't give me enough. I kept jumping & he was getting mad at me. But once that epi was in & working.....heaven! She came & broke my water & it was a lot. Even my doc was saying to everyone that I had a ton of fluid. She has even said she didn't notice that much fluid on the ultrasound I had a week before. At 3am I was still only 3cm dilated, 50% effaced & 0 station. Then again at 5am I was still only 3cm. By 7am I was finally 4cm & this is when things changed...I started puking. She had said that I should dilate a cm per hour so we were hoping to have a baby by 2pm-ish. WELL,when she came in at 9am I was ready to push! Of course my husband had stepped out of the room a few minutes before so he had no idea. He had been with me the entire time & of course when it was time he was gone! Thank god for cell phones. I called him & said get your butt up here ASAP it's time!! He was shocked!

I'm now kinda worried cuz I never did take that child birth class or Lamaze so I had no idea what to do. I'm also now worried because my epidural was lasting every hour & half to 2 hours & I was due for another dose but they prefer you feel what's going on down there so you know when to push. My doctor just told me to push like I was going to have a bowel movement & that's exactly what I did. When I felt a contraction or when the monitor said I was having one I pushed. My husband was great, I guess he was really watching those episodes of "A Baby Story" or "Birth Day" from TLC (that I had on all the time) because he grabbed my leg & started counting to 10 when I was pushing. After about 45 minutes of pushing I was getting real tired. When I started feeling like I couldn't do it anymore I hear the doctor say the head was right there. They told me to look down & I just couldn't. I was afraid to see what was going on, I thought it would make me be in more pain if I actually saw blood & stretching. All that kept going through my head was that if I just pushed real hard a few times this would all be over & that's exactly what I did. I then remember the doc putting numbing injections down there so she can give me an episiotomy. I never made up a birth plan & we never spoke about that-- at that moment I did not care, do whatever you had to to get this baby out! Then after a few more pushes her head came out. They suctioned her & they said the shoulders needed to come out. That was actually the most painful to me than her head. I guess because I knew that's what was coming out at that moment & I didn't really know when the head was coming because I didn't want to look. I can remember feeling each shoulder then her body slide out. What a strange feeling. They asked my husband if he wanted to cut the cord & he did (I wasn't sure if he would). They put her on me & I was in shock! She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen! Perfecto!


She weighed 7 lbs 14 oz & 20" long.

So glad I finally wrote this. Hope it makes sense, it's taken me days of stopping & starting again.