Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Grace's Birth Story

I wanted to get Grace's birth story in writing before having baby 2 because I did not want to blur details.  It probably would have been better not to wait two years, but live and learn!

I was at work the night I went into labor.  We got done with the "work" part of the night and were tearing down tables and chairs, cleaning up, etc.  I was having contractions but wasn't sure they were "real"...finally about an hour later (12am on Wednesday morning) I decided I needed to get home, figure out what was going on and get prepared. (I do remember telling one of my coworkers that if I could clean while having contractions he could certainly get off his butt and lend a hand...that must have been the hormones talking).

When I got home and told hubs I thought I was in labor he told me he was going to bed and to wake him up when the contractions were close enough to go to the hospital (this was 5 days after my due date...a Wednesday, I was scheduled to go in to be induced Friday morning).  Of course my paranoid self wasn't sure when I should go so I bounced on the exercise ball, timed the contractions and tried to mentally prepare, walked up the stairs about three times to wake him up but kept turning around...my bag had been packed weeks before :).  Finally I woke him up around 4:30 and told him I thought maybe it was time and he asked if I had called the hospital.  I talked to some on-call Doctor and told him my contractions were about 5 minutes apart.  He said, yes, yes come in you are a-gonna have a baby!  (I have no idea what nationality he was but it made me laugh pretty hard).  So we went into the hospital, did the admissions thing, and went up to be monitored. 

It seemed like we were in there forever but at this point I was NOT leaving without having a kid!  Finally they moved us into a delivery room.  Sometime in the morning - maybe 7am or 8am they started me on pitocin because I wasn't progressing very quickly.  I think around that same time we finally called my mom - we figured we had plenty of time and might as well let her sleep.  I waited until she got there to have an epidural because Aaron specifically said he did NOT want to be in the room when that happened and I did want to go as long as I could without medicine...but I also didn't want to remember just intense pain so I was willing to take the drugs.  It took a half hour or so after she got there to get the medicine - I remember she stood by the monitor when I had a contraction and said "oh my, that was a rough one" or something to that effect...Aaron, quietly, said "yeah, she doesn't really like it when you give her the play by play."  (I had mentioned to him earlier that I could feel them and didn't really need the comments!)  Good husband. 

I started crying like a school girl right before I got the epidural - I think it was just nerves and adrenaline.  I had NO idea what to expect - I also asked the Dr giving me the medicine what the odds were that I would end up paralyzed and every other horror story I had heard.  Then after the medicine kicked in I was good to go!  We sat around talking, preparing, etc.  I did make them turn A Baby Story off on TLC - I didn't think THAT would be a good idea!  They kept telling me I needed to stay on my left side - never said why, only that I needed to lay on that side...and that the epidural medicine was liquid so it might not completely numb my right side...joy.  (It turned out fine).  It seemed like it took FOREVER for me to dilate but once I got to 5 it went pretty quick.  Finally at 5pm I was ready to push (again, started bawling because I had NO idea what to expect.).  I remember throwing the oxygen mask on the floor because I couldn't breath.  I remember throwing up a little bit of orange jello.  I remember getting REALLY mad at the Doctor and nurse.  Apparently I was supposed to push while they counted to 10 three times for each contraction but I could NOT catch my breath.  Some of the more memorable quotes were..."You get two 'I can'ts' and that was one of them."  "You have to be the mom now, no one else is going to get this baby out."  - These people I thought were nice and my friends got MEAN!  :)   My Doctor also tried to get me to touch the baby's head on her way out which I thought was just odd.

Lets see, finally at 6pm on the nose Miss Grace emerged into the world!  They cleaned her up real quick while I got stitches (I tore pretty bad and by the way, local pain meds would have been welcome...ouch!) and then handed her over to me.  She was BEAUTIFUL!  And I remember thinking that although it hurt a lot and wasn't a walk in the park I would do it again in a heartbeat for this little girl.

Some things they didn't tell me was that she was face up (which I think contributed to the tearing) and that the umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck - which was why they had me lay on my left side.  When I was on my back or right side her heart rate dropped significantly.

I will probably come back to and edit this but again, I wanted to get something out before baby 2 is born because I don't want to forget the details or blur them together!

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