well. this is how it happened:
{disclaimer: i don't intend to be graphic in this post, but i also will not hold much back, so proceed with caution, and be prepared to know things about me that you may not want to know}
my due date came and baby was still not here. my amazing friend, anna, had us over for some hang time and probably the best foot/neck/scalp massage ever. anna (among many things) is a trained and experienced massage therapist and she knows some secret spots in the foot that can help kick labor into gear.
the next morning (saturday) i woke up to some "heavy fluids" leaking out of me. i didn't think my water had broken, because these same heavy fluids had occurred earlier in the week and led me to falsely believe i was in labor. so to further hurry this labor along, the husband and i went for a walk, while i entertained contractions every 10 minutes or so. but they weren't regular. i timed them off and on through the morning but they still weren't regular. but they were getting stronger. and i had at least 3 more changes of clothing due to my continuing fluid leak. since i'd had several bouts of false labor, i called over our neighbor who is a nurse, but she could neither confirm or deny that i was in active labor, but she said there was a good chance i'd go into labor soon. so i continued my daily tasks--got some work done, did some laundry, pausing only briefly to concentrate on breathing during contractions.
then around 2, i got out of the shower and my contractions had been coming steadily every 8 minutes. at that point i knew i was in labor (ok well i knew before that, but just didn't want to believe it). so i grabbed my bouncy ball, watched nearly a season straight of scrubs, and we continued timing. jeremy kept a written log of when they started and how long they lasted while i bounced away and practiced my breathing. around 6pm i got up to grab my water from the kitchen and a much larger fluid gush occurred. still not the huge "flood gates opening" type gush you normally hear of, but enough to make me quite sure that was my water leaking and not just pesky fluids that i experienced earlier in the week. shortly after this my contractions were 4 minutes apart and around 90 seconds long, and i could barely talk through them. so off to the hospital we went.
now here's the part where i will finally divulge our (original) birth plan. had it not been for insurance difficulties, we would have liked a home birth with a midwife (yes, we are total hippies). but we didn't have $5k lying around so plan b was a midwife in a hospital. which was fine. my midwife is awesome. we love her. she made us feel completely secure in our decision to go with a natural childbirth, with as little medical intervention as possible. my decision for this was based on many factors, not because i wanted to see if i could do it. the pain was not my first concern. i wanted to be in control of my body, feel its signals, and i also wanted the least amount of health risks for me and my baby. it's a very personal decision and i don't think my way is "right," but it was right for us. and when we toured the labor and delivery wing, the nurses assured me this occurs all the time, and that i'd be free from machinery, not tied to a bed, and i could even walk the halls if i wanted. it all sounded perfect. exactly what we wanted.
so we get to the hospital around 7pm. a nurse takes us to triage and hooks me up to make sure i was actually in active labor. i think i asked "when does gina arrive?" and she gave me a look like "don't you know?" and said "oh gina isn't on call this weekend. dr. tucker will be delivering your baby."
who's dr. tucker?" i asked. "she's dr. tucker," the nurse replied. not funny. "but gina's day off is on tuesday. she should be here. she said she'd be here," i shot back, a little panicky. and then i was told that weekends don't count. the doctors have to have a life. which was totally nonsensical to me at the time. she kindly called gina anyway, but got no response. that was unplanned event number one.
then after several minutes the nurse came in and asked if there was anything that could have caused "irritation" to my lady parts, to which i answered no. her reasoning for asking was because my contractions were very strange. after each one, i was having what i earlier referred to jeremy as "contraction aftershocks." and apparently the contractions weren't doing what they needed to because i was only 2cm dilated. what a disappointing thing to hear. they were getting ready to send me back home when i mentioned (in my second confused state of the evening) how frequent my contractions were and that my water had broken. upon hearing this, the tested my "fluids" which came back positive as amniotic fluid. and if your water has broken, they have to keep you, due to risk of infection. the one good thing that came of this was that there was only one other laboring woman there that night, so we got the "vip room" (which is nothing besides the handicap access room, but it's bigger and has more windows).
then my labor nurse came in. she struck me as odd at first--strange humor, an off bedside manner, and she was a big personal space invader. while she was asking me questions, i was laboring on the yoga ball and she got so close to me that i couldn't roll the ball in one direction because of her knee. because she was so disorganized and took so long, i at least got to labor around the room and on the ball for another couple hours. then she came in, hooked me up to about 3 different machines and proceeded to explain that maybe pitocin was a good idea to speed up labor. the dreaded p-word. at that point either my husband or i explained that our birth plan was to go natural. she backed off momentarily, but i wasn't taken seriously. and because of the "variables" i had to stay on the monitors. what variables?! what does that even mean?! i had a perfect, by the books pregnancy. there was no reason i saw that i needed to be monitored, except for the occasional fetal heart rate monitor. that was unplanned event number two.
then i really started to stress out. it was becoming increasingly difficult to labor comfortably as my contractions grew stronger. our friend jessica, who sleepless with excitement was staying in touch, offered to come for moral support. as our back-up emergency #2 person, i told her to go ahead and make her way to the hospital. (i would suggest to everyone having a neutral bystander like this, especially where your guests during labor are limited in number and you have too many family members to chose between--she ended up being a lifesaver, especially as our birth plan continued to unravel.) my husband was there to take my hand squeezes while jessica distracted me while our nurse (who became increasingly irritating) came in and decided to do all of her nurse business in the middle of contractions. never have i had someone hang out with their hand in my cervix for so long. and let me tell you--lying flat on your back while trying to be as still as possible is about the worst position to be in during a contraction.
every two hours our nurse came in to check my progress. and about every two hours, i dilated a measly centimeter. when your contractions are two minutes apart and over a minute long, there is nothing more discouraging to hear. and into the wee hours of the morning, they were nearly unbearable. i could handle each one individually (while swaying back and forth, breathing, and groaning), but the thought of however many more of them it took to get me to 10 centimeters--not to mention the effort after that it would take to push out a baby--was very disheartening. i was actually sleeping for 30 second spurts between contractions from the exhaustion. and the nature of my contractions was odd. unlike the typical parabola like graphs you see with a steep incline, peak, and decline, mine shot up at almost 90 degrees, plateaued at the top for nearly the entire contraction, and then dropped off. by 5am on sunday (23 hours of labor later) when the nurse came and checked me at 5cm, it was clear that my body wasn't responding to the contractions the way it should have. i don't know why. it could have very well been the stress of the situation. but either way, that was unplanned event number three. no 6 hour labor for me. shortly after 5 am, and an emotional talk with my two labor coaches, jessica called for me to have an epidural.
by 6am, the epidural was administered and i was finally able to nap in between the noisy visits from our nurse. around 8 or 9 in the morning, the shifts changed and i finally got a kind and gentle and competent nurse. that made a big difference. but because of the epidural, my contractions had spaced out to 7 minutes apart and i wasn't dilating past 7cm. around 10am, dr. tucker came in and told me they'd waited long enough since my water had broken and i was either going to have to take pitocin or have a c-section. say hello to unplanned event number four. once again we had a big decision to make, and despite swearing to take anything except pitocin, a c-section is still major surgery, and i still wanted to deliver my child vaginally and have him or her immediately on my chest. so pitocin it was.
2 hours later i was dilated fully and ready to push. however. as soon as i had the epidural, the nurses kept commenting on how great my epidural was because i had full-function of my legs, and could even left myself up and reposition myself in bed. it wasn't soon after that i disagreed with their "great epidural" comments. because the "great" epidural wore off. i started to feel the contractions. by the time the big-time pushing started, i could feel everything. ev-er-y-thinnnggg.
the surprising thing about pushing, was that it actually was more painful to rest during pushes. pushing offered a small relief. after the baby's head was close to crowning, all i could feel between breaks was a giant baby head in my lady parts. and it is not exactly easy to "take a break" when you can feel that. i had a great team of encouragement, but at some point during my encouragement, the nurse said "you're doing great! you've been pushing about 45 minutes...most new moms push for about 2 hours." and that's about the point i said "aw, HELLLLLLLZ naw" and decided to take it up a notch. in stead of the 3 pushes per contraction, i started pumping out 4. 45 minutes was about 44 minutes more than i cared for.
i cried at 2 points during delivery: when my husband told me there was lots of curly black hair, and when our baby finally arrived. after an hour and five minutes of pushing i could feel a head start to emerge from my body. i didn't want to look, but that was ok because there was enough i could tell from what i was feeling. i gave 5 pushes on the last contraction and out SHE came!
you know those moments in lovey-dovey movies where nothing exists but the two main characters? that's exactly what it felt like. they laid her on my chest, crying, and i met my daughter. i don't even remember who told me it was a girl first. i vaguely remember my husband exclaiming she was a girl. in stead of the shock i thought i would experience (since i was SO sure she was a boy), the emotion i felt was an outpouring of joy. i didn't care that i was wrong the whole time, i just was glad she was there. i remember saying "you're a girl!! i'm sorry you have so many boy clothes!" for the next several minutes i just looked her over again and again, marveling at what a beautiful creation she is. (at one point i looked down and saw a bloody suture being strung up as my small tear was stitched up, and i felt the brief sting of the needle and then i decided it was time to focus on baby again, so i did, and quickly forgot what was going on down below.) i couldn't believe that the creation that i carried for 40 weeks and 2 days had finally arrived. despite that nothing went as planned, in the end i felt confident that i made all of the right decisions. and most importantly, she was here, safe and sound.
our world was instantly changed. 7 pounds, 12 1/2 ounces, 19 inches. so small, but so big for our lives. i confess i've never been able to wrap my head around the love our God has for his children. but when your child arrives in to the world, it is a God-like love. i love her because she is mine, and i will always love her for that reason. there is nothing she had to do to win my heart. she just exists. and we are so excited to begin this new chapter of life with her.
june marie. she was nameless for about a day. since we had expected a boy and all. i'll admit, june has no profound meaning, nothing spoken into my heart (like i had thought was for our "boy"). it was just something we liked since before i was even pregnant. i like it for many reasons, but if you would guess that it's because of how much i love june carter cash, you may or may not be correct. either way, it fits her. and june she is! sunny and bright like a florida summer. and she does love the sunshine. every day after i change her morning diaper (the first morning diaper, because there are many), we go and open the blinds in the nursery and we say hello to the sunshine and thank God for the sun. and every day i thank God for her.
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i will follow shortly with my writings on the emotions of new motherhood. it is something you never comprehend until it happens. all the advice in the world is nothing compared to what just a week as a mom can teach you. but then again, i've only been doing it for three, so i can't imagine what's to come!
