We took our last pregnancy picture, stood in the living room & hugged for a bit to relish the last time in our home as a family of 2 & darted out the door. I of course grabbed the bag of animal crackers on the way out the door to stuff my face until I stepped into labor and delivery. I mean you cannot tell a pregnant woman who wakes up every night about the chew her arm off that she can't eat for possibly 24-32 hours & expect her to not stuff her face until the last possible moment.
Once we checked in they directed us to the waiting room to wait for our nurse. Everyone there was clearly waiting for a baby to be born because they had minimal items. Blake & I on the other hand traipsed in there with a rolling suitcase each, my purse, his book bag & a pillow for each of us. We looked like the classic Full House episode where Jesse & Becky take their first outing with the twins. Our nurse came & got us shortly & we went & got all checked in.
Once we were settled it was time to get started. I was supposed to take a pill to help efface my cervix but first she had to check me. I had been dilated to a 1 since 36 weeks & had tried every trick in the book to get this boy out but he was still as high up as he could possibly be so I made the joke I was probably at a -1 now. We both about fell over when the nurse said well you're actually in labor now & dilated to a 3. Who knew?! I thought he was pushing against my stomach a lot, surprise those were contractions! My cervix wasn't effaced but the contractions were coming too close together so they had to slow down labor & give me medicine to help get things ready. She turned out the lights, said "get some rest, I'll be back to check on you every hour" &, walked out the door. Let me just say as a pregnant woman being hooked up to every machine under the sun & having to go to the bathroom every 10 minutes because you have fluids running through you doesn't allow for much rest & relaxation. Bless Blake's heart I can't tell you how many times he got up, unplugged everything & got me to the bathroom & then plugged it right back in. Again, the man is a God send! Not once did he complain. In fact, he woke up one time and caught me trying to do it in my own & got on to me for not waking him up to help.
At 1am they came in & started pitocin. I was ready. I heard there was no greater pain than contractions with pitocin. I was shocked when still I felt nothing except for the overwhelming need to go to the bathroom every 5 minutes. It's safe to say, I didn't sleep a wink that night. At 1am they also started penicillin because I had tested positive for Group Strep B. No biggie, just another IV bag. Approximately 15 minutes after she left I got the overwhelming feeling of choking & not being able to breath. We called the nurse in there I drank water & it slowly went away. The nurse was in & out every hour checking on things. The next time she changed my IV bags & left it started again, the overwhelming choking, inability to breath. This time I could feel my airway starting to close. We were so scared. Blake called & frantically said my wife's having trouble breathing & not 2 seconds later a whole slew of people came rushing through the door. After some discussion we realized I was allergic to the penicillin. Once they rushed some medicine & flushed the IV we were back to smooth sailing.
Dr. Tran came in at 8:00 Thursday morning to check on things. I was still dilated to a 3. Surprise! I swear that boy wanted to live in me. She broke my water (OUCH!!!) Then told me how the day would go. I made the comment of "oh well I've been having contractions all night & haven't really felt them." I stupidly was thinking man I might be able to handle labor, maybe I'm just someone who won't feel them. Boy was I naive!!! She told me it should pick up & said we needed to have some pain to get things moving but I could ask for an epidural any time after that. Remember that part now where I acted like labor was going to be easy & possibly little pain? I was about to be humbled. Seriously not 5 minutes after she left I was like yeah ok this hurts pretty bad. 10 minutes later I was asking the nurse is it too soon to get an epidural? 15 minutes later was yep, I'm going to need you to call them now!!! In those 45 minutes while I waited for my epidural I gained a whole new respect for every woman who has ever had natural labor, namely my mother who gave birth 5 times naturally. The anesthesiologist came in & said how are we doing? Seriously, how am I doing?! That is the last thing you as a pregnant woman in active labor who just called you to remove any feeling she could possibly have in her lower body. I refrained for saying what I thought which was: Well sir honestly not great, I'm in an immense amount of pain & I'm pretty sure my husband has lost the ability to feel in his had but it doing a fabulous job not letting me know that. Instead I went with "I've been better." He got me all set up & ready for the epidural & waited for a contraction. I sat there in pain & completely terrified because to me this was the scariest part of labor & delivery. I hate needles so much I can't even have blood work done & keep my composure like one would expect an adult to. It was surprisingly painless & within 15 minutes his "how are you doing now?" was met with a smile and a "wonderful, thank you!" Everyone left & I passed out finally getting a little sleep. My family came in & out throughout the day & my labor progressed very quickly! I went from 3 to 5 to 8, 9 & by 3:00ish I was at a 10. The only problem....my son refused to drop into the birth canal, I tell you he would have stayed in there forever had I allowed it. We spent the next 2 hours trying every which way possible to get his head to drop but it never did. (Not kidding he wanted to live in there!)
Now is a good time to say, before we went in I told my mom I just wanted it to be Blake & I in the delivery room but to be on standby if I needed her. So about 4:30pm my nurse came in and checked to see if his head had dropped. It still hadn't but she said she could see his head & he had dark hair. Previous to this, every time that we discussed labor Blake said I'm staying by your head the whole time! However, the second the nurse said she could see his head & he had dark hair Blake couldn't wait to get a first glimpse of the son we had been dying to meet for 9 months. She said we were still going to give him a little more time to drop down on his own before we called the dr. but we were going to try some practice pushes. We got all set up and the second I laid back an extreme wave of nausea & dizziness hit along with a surge of fear & emotions. I burst into tears, looked at Blake & said "I need my mom in here please!!!" When she got there you can imagine the mess she walked into of "I can't do this! I'm too scared!" She was very calming & comforting & we made it through the practice pushes. Dr. Tran wasn't in there yet so I got comfortable & they gave me some medicine for nausea. My sister Amy had come in to check on everything & she & my mom left to give us some last minutes as a family of 2.
About 5:20pm Dr. Tran arrived & it was time for us to push. By that time the nausea medicine had kicked in & I had my emotions under control. After the practice pushes I felt confident that I would be able to do it with just Blake and I. We began pushing at about 5:25. The majority of the time pushing was spent getting his head to drop down, stubborn little man seriously tried to stay in there with every thing he had. The atmosphere was completely relaxed & wonderful. We just love our dr. & our nurse had been absolutely fantastic all day so the 3 of them cheered me through each push. At one point we realized Blake wasn't just cheering he was actually holding his breath & taking deep breaths in between pushes with me. We all 4 got a good laugh about that in between contractions. About 5:40 Dr. Tran said we were going to stop for a minute and several other people were going to come in, I wasn't really sure what was going to happen. She said that they could all be in there for a while but not to worry labor could sometimes take up to 2 hours. At that moment I thought, 2 more hours are you kidding?! Another contraction came & I began to push. I pushed 2 times & looked at Blake's face & saw his eyes completely light up & heard my Dr. say look at your baby mom! I was in shock! 2 thoughts went through my head immediately. First of all wasn't that going to take 2 hours not 2 pushes I wasn't prepared for it to be so fast?!" (again I'm accrediting this to my working out people told me to do) Second of all "that is my sweet baby boy! The baby I have dreamed & longed for all of my life. I can't believe he is here!" At exactly 5:45pm on Thursday, March 24th our perfect, sweet, beautiful Mason Porter Brown entered the world weighing 8lbs 4oz & measuring 20 1/4 inches long. He was absolutely perfect. He was laid directly on my chest for quite a while and we bonded (read I cried) for the first time as a family of 3.
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