Birth Story

My baby's almost two weeks old...I still don't believe it. We go in for her two week check up tomorrow. Elsie is taking a nap right now, so I figure this might be a good time to finally write out her birth story.

*Disclaimer: If this is too yucky or just too much information, feel free not to read it.*

It started Tuesday night (April 7th). I started having some really bad contractions around 6:30 - 7ish. Not wanting to get sent home from the hospital again, we started timing them and waited until i was have them 2-3 minutes apart for about 3 hours. By 10 o'clock, I was not a very happy camper. I called my doctor, and he told me that as long as my contractions stayed consistent, the hospital should keep me.

We made it into the hospital, but since my water hadn't broken, I was sent to a triage room. I got all hooked up to all the monitors, they checked my cervix and I was still only at about a 3. The hospital's definition of "in labor" means cervical change within one hour. So we waited and waited; Alan liked watching the monitor and saying "look, you're having a contraction". They finally came back in to check me...still at a 3. So despite the fact that I was having regular contractions (that they could see on the monitor) every two minutes or so that hurt like all kingdom come, we got sent home.

Needless to say I was very upset. I held it together until we got out to the parking lot before I broke down sobbing. Alan just kept telling me that it was alright and promising me that this kid would in fact come out. We made it home shortly after midnight. They had given me some painkillers to help me sleep, so we tried to go to bed. The medicine didn't do anything, and I couldn't get to sleep. I tried getting up, walking around, eating some toast, taking a warm bath, anything I could to keep my mind off and ease the pain. By about 3:30am, I tried to go back to bed.

About a half hour later, during the peak of a contraction, I felt a little 'pop'. I grabbed Alan, told him to turn on the light quick, then jumped up and stumbled my way to the bathroom. My water had broke! I called my doctor again (I know it was 4 in the morning, but I was a little angry with him) and he said I just got my 'golden ticket' and the hospital can't send me home now.

We made it back to the hospital by about 5am. It felt so good to be able to waltz past those triage rooms and finally make it back to the real labor and delivery room. My doctor had called ahead so everything was there waiting for us. They rushed us in, got me dressed down, and got my IV and epidural going right away. They checked me again and I was at about a 4. Once everything was nice and numb from the waist down, I was able to get a little sleep.

They checked me again in about an hour, and I was only at a 4 1/2. My doctor ordered me up some pitocin to get things moving. They let that run for another hour or so, and when they checked me next I had jumped up to a 9 1/2! By about 8:30am they decided it was time to start pushing. One thing about getting an epidural though, is it was kinda difficult to learn how to push with everything so numb. I'd say it took me a good half hour - 45 minutes just to figure out how and where to push.

Towards the end it got really uncomfortable. Little Elsie decided to come into this world 'sunny-side up', with her face and body pointing up towards the ceiling instead of down towards the floor. That puts a lot of pressure on the nerves in the lower back, and it was pretty painful even with the epidural. When her head was about halfway out, she was already kicking and squirming and trying to look around. A few more pushes and out she came, flailing and kicking and grabbing at everything she could; my legs, the doctor, her umbilical cord. Alan cut the cord and they took her to get cleaned up and checked out. There had been trace amount of meconium in the amniotic fluid, so there was a respiratory team there to suction her out quickly before she had a chance to start crying.

There was a new little person in the room! Alan and I watched them clean her up while my doctor pulled out the placenta and stitched me up (I tore a little bit). They brought her over to us and we got to hold her for the first time. I have to say it went a lot faster than I thought it would. It was about 6 hours from when my water broke at 4am that she was born at 10:16am.

Whew! I finished just in time. I can hear Elsie starting to wake up.