Labor
I woke up at 4:00 a.m. on October 13 and felt a tiny gush of liquid in my underpants. I waddled to the bathroom and verified that my water had indeed broken. I was surprised by the amniotic fluid – it was thicker than I thought it would be.
I wasn’t having contractions I could feel yet, so I took my time, woke up BK, took a shower, and finally called the doctor, telling him that my water had broken at 5:00, buying myself an extra hour on the 24-hour clock I knew I was now on. I threw some last things into my hospital bag, we both sent emails to work, filled up the feeder for the cat and put the dog out back with food and water. We finally left, stopping by Whataburger for a contraband biscuit, but I was too excited and nervous to eat much of it. I started feeling the contractions really ramp up in the Whataburger parking lot, so we got a move on and got to hospital around 6:00 a.m..
I had completely leaked through the pad I had on, so I checked in perched on the edge of a chux pad spread out over the hospital chair. Once all the paperwork was filed we were met by a nurse who asked to hear my story. Apparently it was believable because I did not have to go through triage – we got checked right into a labor and delivery room.
Evelyn was my first L&D nurse, and she set me up in the room and asked me about a million different questions. I was having steady contractions, but they weren’t too bad, and I rated them a three on the 1-10 pain scale when Evelyn asked. She checked me at 6:35 a.m. and I was at 3-4 cm, 90% effaced, which I was pleased with.
The shift change is at 7:00 a.m. and Evelyn departs. My next nurse is Kelly, who is a relatively new nurse shadowing a more experienced nurse, Nancy. Kelly puts in my heparin IV lock, which seems to take forever and it was painfully bothersome once in place. I ask to walk around, so I am issued mesh underpants and two-foot long maxi pads (I am not kidding – these things were monstrous) that nicely compliment my hospital gown and am allowed to roam the hospital.
BK and I go up to look at the babies in the nursery, and we run into Dr. Thurston, who swept my membranes on Tuesday, October 11th. I tell him the procedure worked, and he asks when I had the baby. I point to my enormous belly and point out I am still pregnant. Dr. Thurston does a double-take and acknowledges that it’s been a long night for him, and we all have a good laugh. At this point the contractions are painful, but still totally manageable. BK and I laugh and joke between them, and I am excited and in good spirits.
BK is wonderful during the whole process – he applies counter-pressure to my back (which becomes less and less effective as things progress) and is generally fantastic and supportive. I cannot imagine doing it without him.
I need to be monitored for 20 minutes of every hour, so we head back to the L&D room. Lying down and sitting make the contractions much worse so I ask to be monitored on the birthing ball. Kelly has a hard time keeping the monitors in place as I writhe on the ball, and the baby’s heart rate dips during many of the contractions, which are getting much worse but I can still stay on top of them fairly well. They are coming in 2-contraction sets (one very bad one quickly followed by slightly better one, then a longer break) every 2-3 minutes. Kelly tells me that this is a hallmark of laboring with a posterior baby.
At some point I labor for a while in the bathroom – for me, from the get-go the contractions made me feel like I needed to poo. So for about half an hour or so I have a contraction, poo a little, have another contraction, poo some more. I have quite the routine going, and I think in the process manage to completely clear out my digestive tract (no dreaded poo during pushing!).
A little later when I’m walking around the room laboring, BK accidentally knocks the hep lock out of my hand. We call the nurses’ station and a different nurse puts in a new one which doesn’t hurt at all – it looks like Kelly was just not that experienced and bungled the first one.
At 12:10 p.m. I am checked by Dr. Nokleberg, who is the doctor on call from my practice. She tells me I am 6-7 cm and complete at -1 station. She thinks I’ll have the baby within three hours. He is sunny-side up (posterior), as we’d feared.
The contractions now are getting much, much worse but the thought that I only have a little more to go before I can start pushing keeps me going. The back labor caused by the baby’s posterior positioning is indescribable. The back pain does not fully go away between contractions like the other pain. It’s funny, but the memory of labor is like sort of like diving underwater – the further into the labor I dove, the higher the pressure rose, and the less I can remember now. It was only a few days ago and it already seems hazy. I know I was in tremendous pain, but I have no recall of that pain, really. BK says I moaned deeply and painfully and would shift my weight from one side to other, on the balls of my feet, as if trying to escape the pain.
Throughout this very painful part of the labor, BK, Kelly, and everyone else involved tell me that I am being brave and strong.
Dr. Nokleberg is back at 1:00 p.m. to check me again. Though according to the textbooks, transition is the fastest part of labor, I am still at 7 cm. I’d decided during my pregnancy that I was completely ok with getting pain relief if and when I reached my personal breaking point, and I knew I was there. There was no way to tell how much longer it would take me to get to 10 cm., so I quickly confer with BK and decide to get an epidural. The doctor seems surprised, telling me I’d done so well up to this point, but agrees with me that there’s no predicting how long things will take. If the doctor could have given me a certain end time, or if I had progressed past 7 cm over that hour, I absolutely believe that I would have made it without drugs. But not knowing how much longer I would have to suffer, and how much greater the pain would get, was too much. Back labor kicked my ass.
Epidural
The time spent waiting for the epidural is excruciating. They have to pump two IV bags of fluids into me before starting. The tubing on the IV drip unhooks as they fiddling with the bags and I look down to see my own blood pooling up around my feet, going the wrong way out of the IV. I alert the nurses and they connect me back up and begin cleaning up what looks like a slaughterhouse scene.
Now that I have made the mental shift to get the pain medication, the wait for the anesthesiologist is interminable and each contraction seems so much worse. Or maybe they did get worse. I can honestly say that I was beyond the borders of my own mind at this point. All patterned breathing had gone out the window and I am sucking wind through every contraction, clinging to the bedrail as I pace and shift my weight back and forth by the IV stand. The nurses warn me to watch my breathing so I don’t hyperventilate.
BK has to leave when the anesthesiologist comes in at 1:45 p.m.. I am terrified of having to sit still through contractions. This is by far the closest I come to just completely losing my shit. I am sobbing, sitting on the edge of the bed, and Kelly is holding my shoulders. I lock in on her face – I remember that I could see where her eyebrows were growing in from being waxed.
After the epidural is administered the contractions feel shorter and less painful until I can’t feel them at all. I am shaking like a leaf, though. The exhaustion from the labor combined with the epidural has given me really bad shakes. BK later tells me that this was scary for him to see, because it really made me seem like a sick person. Though I can’t feel the contractions, the shakes get noticeably worse when they occur. They also completely stop whenever the baby’s heart rate decelerates, which it does after some contractions.
I still am able to move my legs a bit, but they feel like big, numb hunks of meat.
My contractions slow down and become irregular as a result of getting the epidural. At 2:45 p.m. I am 8 cm. I agree to pitocin to get the labor back on track. The baby seems to tolerate the contractions much better on my side, but the contractions come more frequently and regularly when I am on my back. Lots of flipping me from one side to the other ensues.
At one point the initial dose of painkillers from the epidural fades out and I start to experience pain again. Now that I’m tired, have made the mental shift away from enduring the pain, and am attached to a variety of machines and devices, I don’t have any patience for the pain at all, nor for the delay it takes to get the anesthesiology nurse to arrive and administer more drugs. But she arrives before the situation gets critical, and things settle down again.
For the first six hours at the hospital all I had connected to me was a hep lock. After the epidural I have tubes and wires coming out of me everywhere -- a contraction monitor, fetal heart rate monitor, IV drip, epidural catheter, three heart sticky monitors on my chest, an oxygen mask, pitocin drip, and catheter. I have so many wires on me that every time they roll me over I get tangled up.
From the time that the epidural sets in until I begin to push, BK and I both become somewhat disconnected from the process. I’m pretty tired and no longer in pain. The previous seven hours had been extremely painful, physical, and almost animalistic. After the epidural and before pushing, it’s something of a spectator sport. BK reads a book and checks his work email, and I just try to rest up for the pushing.
Eventually, about four hours after the epidural, I am almost completely dilated except for one stubborn little bit of cervix. The nurses who check me notice that the baby’s head has created a small, secondary bag of waters that is most likely impeding my progress. They are not allowed to break it, though, so we wait for the doctor to come by again. BK gets to see the little water bag bulging out of me right before she pops it. I am completely dilated almost immediately, and the doctor has me do a few trial pushes to see how I do. The nurse anesthetist is called in again to fix a “hot spot” of pain the epidural is missing about the size of an orange in my lower left abdomen. It’s 6:00 p.m.
Pushing and Delivery
The doctor leaves and at 6:10 the nurses start having me push on my left side, since that’s the position that the baby tolerates the best. I did not feel anything during the practice pushes, but now I feel rectal pressure during every contraction. I like pushing. It makes me feel like I’m making progress. I get more efficient as the pushing stage continues, though a bit more tired after every contraction. After about half an hour the doctor comes back and starts putting on her scrubs. I’m really surprised, because that means she thinks that the baby will be born sooner rather than later. I had mentally prepared myself to push for up to the allotted three hours.
Obviously I’m doing all the work, but there’s something of a team atmosphere in the delivery room. The senior nurse – Nancy – is there most of the time to join Kelly and BK, and I alert the group when I feel a contraction coming. BK and Kelly would help my pull my legs back – way back! – and Kelly/Nancy urge me to “push push push push …” and then count up to ten, at which point I can relax briefly, before they urge for me to push and help me pull my legs back again. In between contractions, they’d tell me how well I was doing, and BK would tell me he was proud of me.
The nurses had me doing the standard three pushes per contraction, but now that the doctor is here sometimes she asks me to do a fourth. By now I am vocalizing pretty loudly during the pushing. I remember at one point the doctor saying to me, "That’s right, get mad!" BK is able to see the baby’s head crowning, and I grunt out while pushing, “What color is his hair?” Apparently this is hilarious -- he tells me he can’t tell, and that I need to focus on the matter at hand. It’s almost 7:00, which is the shift change, so Evelyn, the nurse who checked me in that morning and another nurse are there again. Kelly also sticks around.
Eventually I feel a fullness between my legs, and soon thereafter the nurses break down the bottom of the bed and get my legs into the stirrups. They show me handles to grab on to, and the next contraction the doctor has me push a fourth, and then a fifth time. I’m fairly certain that I was hollering like a stuck pig at this point from the effort. I definitely feel a sensation that would have been the ring of fire were I not doped up, and then the doctor tells me to stop pushing. The doctor has me push again; I have no idea what she’s doing down there but it definitely feels as though she’s stuck a finger in my ass. Someone, one of the nurses maybe, says, “Look, look!” and at 7:04, after less than an hour of pushing, I see my baby come out of me and feel a slithery sensation. He’s covered in blood and someone places him on my chest. BK and I are both sobbing, and the nurses and the doctor are cheering. I keep repeating, “I did it! I can’t believe I did it! We made him!” I marvel at how much hair he has, how he doesn’t seem as enormous as was forecast, and just how perfect and slimy and alert he is.
Stage III
The nurses take the baby to clean him off and weigh him on the other side of the room, and BK goes with them. I hear someone announce “Seven pounds, thirteen ounces!” and I holler, “What?!?! What happened to this enormous baby I was supposed to have? That’s average!”
Eventually, I clue in to the fact that the doctor is still working on me, so I ask her if I had gotten an episiotomy or torn. She tells me that she could tell I was about to tear so she gave me an episiotomy and that I had a 2nd degree tear. It’s very bizarre to feel the pulls and tugs that I know are stitches. I deliver the placenta, which BK happens to see and is kind of freaked out by; I ask to see it and the doctor gives me a glimpse into the basin – yup, like a big liver. There’s a million things happening at once in the room and I feel fairly disoriented – people working on the baby, the doctor working on me, the nurse anesthetist adjusting the epidural, and all the while I’m shaking and shivering worse than ever.
Eventually people start clearing out and one of the nurses brings the baby back. She helps me try to breastfeed and the little guy latches on the right, but not the left. At this point I am still so gentle with him; I’m scared that I’m going to break him because he’s so tiny. It’s hard to believe that just a few days later I was comfortable enough to be slinging him around like a sack of potatoes.
Once our time in the L&D room is over Evelyn helps me into a wheelchair. My legs are still a little meat-hunky but I can walk. They give me the baby, BK gathers our things, and we’re off to a room on the fifth floor. On the way there we drop the baby off at the nursery, where he will be measured, examined by a pediatrician, and go through the usual battery of tests.
Recovery and Hospital
Once we are settled in our room we are visited by our new nurse who helps me to the bathroom (more two-foot long maxi pads and mesh underpants, along with some cool break-n-shake ice packs). BK goes home to take care of the cat and dog, so I spend some time making phone calls and eating dinner. I was amazed at how ravenous I was the first few meals after labor, not to mention how parched. The hospital gives you a huge insulated mug (which I’m still using), and it seems like I was constantly asking someone to fill it up for me with ice water. BK eventually came back (we had gotten a private room so there was a cot for him to sleep on) and brought me a milkshake. The nurse comes back with the baby and gives me some breastfeeding tips.
The first 24 hours at the hospital, I think I was coasting on adrenaline. The exhaustion didn’t really hit me until the second night there. It’s not really a restful environment, since the room was basically a rotating door of nurses coming in to take my vitals, people bringing in and taking out the baby, doctors coming in, etc. Some time on the second day we decide to name the baby Baxter – we had gone in with Baxter and Elliot picked out, but wanted to see the baby before we made the final decision.
The pediatrician discharged Baxter early Saturday morning, and the OB on call from my practice came soon thereafter and also gave me the go-ahead to go home. We head home around noon after being officially discharged by the nurse on call.
Breastfeeding
Bax and I have been very lucky to have had a fairly easy time breastfeeding so far. I am a huge fan of the My Brest Friend nursing pillow – I used it from the get-go at the hospital and I think it made those initial days much easier. I’m applying lanolin (PureLan from the hospital and then Lansinoh at home) after every feeding and so far have not had any problems with cracking or bleeding.
I was surprised at how obvious the oxytocin release during breastfeeding is, especially early on at the hospital when I would feel mild but obvious contractions every time I fed Baxter. Even after I got home I would notice that my lochia would flow much heavier while I was breastfeeding. Once my milk came in I would also get a tingling sensation whenever Baxter would cry. Nature is truly amazing!
Reflections
It surprised me to find myself mourning my pregnancy for a few days after delivery. Before my uterus contracted I still looked 5-6 months pregnant, and boy was it weird not to have a baby in there any more. I was sad that I would no longer be going to the doctor’s office weekly, full of anticipation and excitement about when I would go into labor and how it would be. That part of motherhood was behind me now.
I do not feel any regrets about how my labor went. I felt in control throughout the experience, and I made the decision to have pain relief administered once I thought that that control might be compromised. The L&D nursing staff was great and very supportive of my choices, both during unmedicated labor and once I had the epidural. I’m pretty sure I could have and would have made it through the entire experience without pain relief had the baby been anterior and/or had things not stalled at 7 cm. If ifs and buts were candy and nuts though, right? I will say, though, that if and when we decide to have another child, I’ll definitely give natural childbirth another shot.
I also wanted to be sure to mention at some point that I am so glad I did as much reading and educating myself about the labor process as I did. Nothing that happened to me at the hospital surprised me, and I think that went a long way in making my labor a positive experience. I can see how nurses coming into the room and putting an oxygen mask on you, for example, would be scary if you didn’t know that was standard practice during decelerations in the baby’s heart rate. I felt like I was able to knowledgably discuss the choices presented to me, and I never felt out of control or panicky.
At his two-week checkup Baxter had gained one pound and grown two inches. He is flourishing and even manages to roll over onto his back during tummy time every day! I am now within 10 pounds of my pre-pregnancy weight and have cleaned the maternity clothes out of my closet. My stitched-up taint ain’t so’ no mo’. And though I’m not thrilled with my stretch marks and pooch, I know that the latter at least doesn’t have to be permanent and just feel lucky that I managed to avoid other post-partum ailments like hemorrhoids and incontinence.
And the first poop? No problem at all. Colace is your friend.
(More pictures of Baxter than you can shake a stick at are here.)
I woke up at 4:00 a.m. on October 13 and felt a tiny gush of liquid in my underpants. I waddled to the bathroom and verified that my water had indeed broken. I was surprised by the amniotic fluid – it was thicker than I thought it would be.
I wasn’t having contractions I could feel yet, so I took my time, woke up BK, took a shower, and finally called the doctor, telling him that my water had broken at 5:00, buying myself an extra hour on the 24-hour clock I knew I was now on. I threw some last things into my hospital bag, we both sent emails to work, filled up the feeder for the cat and put the dog out back with food and water. We finally left, stopping by Whataburger for a contraband biscuit, but I was too excited and nervous to eat much of it. I started feeling the contractions really ramp up in the Whataburger parking lot, so we got a move on and got to hospital around 6:00 a.m..
I had completely leaked through the pad I had on, so I checked in perched on the edge of a chux pad spread out over the hospital chair. Once all the paperwork was filed we were met by a nurse who asked to hear my story. Apparently it was believable because I did not have to go through triage – we got checked right into a labor and delivery room.
Evelyn was my first L&D nurse, and she set me up in the room and asked me about a million different questions. I was having steady contractions, but they weren’t too bad, and I rated them a three on the 1-10 pain scale when Evelyn asked. She checked me at 6:35 a.m. and I was at 3-4 cm, 90% effaced, which I was pleased with.
The shift change is at 7:00 a.m. and Evelyn departs. My next nurse is Kelly, who is a relatively new nurse shadowing a more experienced nurse, Nancy. Kelly puts in my heparin IV lock, which seems to take forever and it was painfully bothersome once in place. I ask to walk around, so I am issued mesh underpants and two-foot long maxi pads (I am not kidding – these things were monstrous) that nicely compliment my hospital gown and am allowed to roam the hospital.
BK and I go up to look at the babies in the nursery, and we run into Dr. Thurston, who swept my membranes on Tuesday, October 11th. I tell him the procedure worked, and he asks when I had the baby. I point to my enormous belly and point out I am still pregnant. Dr. Thurston does a double-take and acknowledges that it’s been a long night for him, and we all have a good laugh. At this point the contractions are painful, but still totally manageable. BK and I laugh and joke between them, and I am excited and in good spirits.
BK is wonderful during the whole process – he applies counter-pressure to my back (which becomes less and less effective as things progress) and is generally fantastic and supportive. I cannot imagine doing it without him.
I need to be monitored for 20 minutes of every hour, so we head back to the L&D room. Lying down and sitting make the contractions much worse so I ask to be monitored on the birthing ball. Kelly has a hard time keeping the monitors in place as I writhe on the ball, and the baby’s heart rate dips during many of the contractions, which are getting much worse but I can still stay on top of them fairly well. They are coming in 2-contraction sets (one very bad one quickly followed by slightly better one, then a longer break) every 2-3 minutes. Kelly tells me that this is a hallmark of laboring with a posterior baby.
At some point I labor for a while in the bathroom – for me, from the get-go the contractions made me feel like I needed to poo. So for about half an hour or so I have a contraction, poo a little, have another contraction, poo some more. I have quite the routine going, and I think in the process manage to completely clear out my digestive tract (no dreaded poo during pushing!).
A little later when I’m walking around the room laboring, BK accidentally knocks the hep lock out of my hand. We call the nurses’ station and a different nurse puts in a new one which doesn’t hurt at all – it looks like Kelly was just not that experienced and bungled the first one.
At 12:10 p.m. I am checked by Dr. Nokleberg, who is the doctor on call from my practice. She tells me I am 6-7 cm and complete at -1 station. She thinks I’ll have the baby within three hours. He is sunny-side up (posterior), as we’d feared.
The contractions now are getting much, much worse but the thought that I only have a little more to go before I can start pushing keeps me going. The back labor caused by the baby’s posterior positioning is indescribable. The back pain does not fully go away between contractions like the other pain. It’s funny, but the memory of labor is like sort of like diving underwater – the further into the labor I dove, the higher the pressure rose, and the less I can remember now. It was only a few days ago and it already seems hazy. I know I was in tremendous pain, but I have no recall of that pain, really. BK says I moaned deeply and painfully and would shift my weight from one side to other, on the balls of my feet, as if trying to escape the pain.
Throughout this very painful part of the labor, BK, Kelly, and everyone else involved tell me that I am being brave and strong.
Dr. Nokleberg is back at 1:00 p.m. to check me again. Though according to the textbooks, transition is the fastest part of labor, I am still at 7 cm. I’d decided during my pregnancy that I was completely ok with getting pain relief if and when I reached my personal breaking point, and I knew I was there. There was no way to tell how much longer it would take me to get to 10 cm., so I quickly confer with BK and decide to get an epidural. The doctor seems surprised, telling me I’d done so well up to this point, but agrees with me that there’s no predicting how long things will take. If the doctor could have given me a certain end time, or if I had progressed past 7 cm over that hour, I absolutely believe that I would have made it without drugs. But not knowing how much longer I would have to suffer, and how much greater the pain would get, was too much. Back labor kicked my ass.
Epidural
The time spent waiting for the epidural is excruciating. They have to pump two IV bags of fluids into me before starting. The tubing on the IV drip unhooks as they fiddling with the bags and I look down to see my own blood pooling up around my feet, going the wrong way out of the IV. I alert the nurses and they connect me back up and begin cleaning up what looks like a slaughterhouse scene.
Now that I have made the mental shift to get the pain medication, the wait for the anesthesiologist is interminable and each contraction seems so much worse. Or maybe they did get worse. I can honestly say that I was beyond the borders of my own mind at this point. All patterned breathing had gone out the window and I am sucking wind through every contraction, clinging to the bedrail as I pace and shift my weight back and forth by the IV stand. The nurses warn me to watch my breathing so I don’t hyperventilate.
BK has to leave when the anesthesiologist comes in at 1:45 p.m.. I am terrified of having to sit still through contractions. This is by far the closest I come to just completely losing my shit. I am sobbing, sitting on the edge of the bed, and Kelly is holding my shoulders. I lock in on her face – I remember that I could see where her eyebrows were growing in from being waxed.
After the epidural is administered the contractions feel shorter and less painful until I can’t feel them at all. I am shaking like a leaf, though. The exhaustion from the labor combined with the epidural has given me really bad shakes. BK later tells me that this was scary for him to see, because it really made me seem like a sick person. Though I can’t feel the contractions, the shakes get noticeably worse when they occur. They also completely stop whenever the baby’s heart rate decelerates, which it does after some contractions.
I still am able to move my legs a bit, but they feel like big, numb hunks of meat.
My contractions slow down and become irregular as a result of getting the epidural. At 2:45 p.m. I am 8 cm. I agree to pitocin to get the labor back on track. The baby seems to tolerate the contractions much better on my side, but the contractions come more frequently and regularly when I am on my back. Lots of flipping me from one side to the other ensues.
At one point the initial dose of painkillers from the epidural fades out and I start to experience pain again. Now that I’m tired, have made the mental shift away from enduring the pain, and am attached to a variety of machines and devices, I don’t have any patience for the pain at all, nor for the delay it takes to get the anesthesiology nurse to arrive and administer more drugs. But she arrives before the situation gets critical, and things settle down again.
For the first six hours at the hospital all I had connected to me was a hep lock. After the epidural I have tubes and wires coming out of me everywhere -- a contraction monitor, fetal heart rate monitor, IV drip, epidural catheter, three heart sticky monitors on my chest, an oxygen mask, pitocin drip, and catheter. I have so many wires on me that every time they roll me over I get tangled up.
From the time that the epidural sets in until I begin to push, BK and I both become somewhat disconnected from the process. I’m pretty tired and no longer in pain. The previous seven hours had been extremely painful, physical, and almost animalistic. After the epidural and before pushing, it’s something of a spectator sport. BK reads a book and checks his work email, and I just try to rest up for the pushing.
Eventually, about four hours after the epidural, I am almost completely dilated except for one stubborn little bit of cervix. The nurses who check me notice that the baby’s head has created a small, secondary bag of waters that is most likely impeding my progress. They are not allowed to break it, though, so we wait for the doctor to come by again. BK gets to see the little water bag bulging out of me right before she pops it. I am completely dilated almost immediately, and the doctor has me do a few trial pushes to see how I do. The nurse anesthetist is called in again to fix a “hot spot” of pain the epidural is missing about the size of an orange in my lower left abdomen. It’s 6:00 p.m.
Pushing and Delivery
The doctor leaves and at 6:10 the nurses start having me push on my left side, since that’s the position that the baby tolerates the best. I did not feel anything during the practice pushes, but now I feel rectal pressure during every contraction. I like pushing. It makes me feel like I’m making progress. I get more efficient as the pushing stage continues, though a bit more tired after every contraction. After about half an hour the doctor comes back and starts putting on her scrubs. I’m really surprised, because that means she thinks that the baby will be born sooner rather than later. I had mentally prepared myself to push for up to the allotted three hours.
Obviously I’m doing all the work, but there’s something of a team atmosphere in the delivery room. The senior nurse – Nancy – is there most of the time to join Kelly and BK, and I alert the group when I feel a contraction coming. BK and Kelly would help my pull my legs back – way back! – and Kelly/Nancy urge me to “push push push push …” and then count up to ten, at which point I can relax briefly, before they urge for me to push and help me pull my legs back again. In between contractions, they’d tell me how well I was doing, and BK would tell me he was proud of me.
The nurses had me doing the standard three pushes per contraction, but now that the doctor is here sometimes she asks me to do a fourth. By now I am vocalizing pretty loudly during the pushing. I remember at one point the doctor saying to me, "That’s right, get mad!" BK is able to see the baby’s head crowning, and I grunt out while pushing, “What color is his hair?” Apparently this is hilarious -- he tells me he can’t tell, and that I need to focus on the matter at hand. It’s almost 7:00, which is the shift change, so Evelyn, the nurse who checked me in that morning and another nurse are there again. Kelly also sticks around.
Eventually I feel a fullness between my legs, and soon thereafter the nurses break down the bottom of the bed and get my legs into the stirrups. They show me handles to grab on to, and the next contraction the doctor has me push a fourth, and then a fifth time. I’m fairly certain that I was hollering like a stuck pig at this point from the effort. I definitely feel a sensation that would have been the ring of fire were I not doped up, and then the doctor tells me to stop pushing. The doctor has me push again; I have no idea what she’s doing down there but it definitely feels as though she’s stuck a finger in my ass. Someone, one of the nurses maybe, says, “Look, look!” and at 7:04, after less than an hour of pushing, I see my baby come out of me and feel a slithery sensation. He’s covered in blood and someone places him on my chest. BK and I are both sobbing, and the nurses and the doctor are cheering. I keep repeating, “I did it! I can’t believe I did it! We made him!” I marvel at how much hair he has, how he doesn’t seem as enormous as was forecast, and just how perfect and slimy and alert he is.
Stage III
The nurses take the baby to clean him off and weigh him on the other side of the room, and BK goes with them. I hear someone announce “Seven pounds, thirteen ounces!” and I holler, “What?!?! What happened to this enormous baby I was supposed to have? That’s average!”
Eventually, I clue in to the fact that the doctor is still working on me, so I ask her if I had gotten an episiotomy or torn. She tells me that she could tell I was about to tear so she gave me an episiotomy and that I had a 2nd degree tear. It’s very bizarre to feel the pulls and tugs that I know are stitches. I deliver the placenta, which BK happens to see and is kind of freaked out by; I ask to see it and the doctor gives me a glimpse into the basin – yup, like a big liver. There’s a million things happening at once in the room and I feel fairly disoriented – people working on the baby, the doctor working on me, the nurse anesthetist adjusting the epidural, and all the while I’m shaking and shivering worse than ever.
Eventually people start clearing out and one of the nurses brings the baby back. She helps me try to breastfeed and the little guy latches on the right, but not the left. At this point I am still so gentle with him; I’m scared that I’m going to break him because he’s so tiny. It’s hard to believe that just a few days later I was comfortable enough to be slinging him around like a sack of potatoes.
Once our time in the L&D room is over Evelyn helps me into a wheelchair. My legs are still a little meat-hunky but I can walk. They give me the baby, BK gathers our things, and we’re off to a room on the fifth floor. On the way there we drop the baby off at the nursery, where he will be measured, examined by a pediatrician, and go through the usual battery of tests.
Recovery and Hospital
Once we are settled in our room we are visited by our new nurse who helps me to the bathroom (more two-foot long maxi pads and mesh underpants, along with some cool break-n-shake ice packs). BK goes home to take care of the cat and dog, so I spend some time making phone calls and eating dinner. I was amazed at how ravenous I was the first few meals after labor, not to mention how parched. The hospital gives you a huge insulated mug (which I’m still using), and it seems like I was constantly asking someone to fill it up for me with ice water. BK eventually came back (we had gotten a private room so there was a cot for him to sleep on) and brought me a milkshake. The nurse comes back with the baby and gives me some breastfeeding tips.
The first 24 hours at the hospital, I think I was coasting on adrenaline. The exhaustion didn’t really hit me until the second night there. It’s not really a restful environment, since the room was basically a rotating door of nurses coming in to take my vitals, people bringing in and taking out the baby, doctors coming in, etc. Some time on the second day we decide to name the baby Baxter – we had gone in with Baxter and Elliot picked out, but wanted to see the baby before we made the final decision.
The pediatrician discharged Baxter early Saturday morning, and the OB on call from my practice came soon thereafter and also gave me the go-ahead to go home. We head home around noon after being officially discharged by the nurse on call.
Breastfeeding
Bax and I have been very lucky to have had a fairly easy time breastfeeding so far. I am a huge fan of the My Brest Friend nursing pillow – I used it from the get-go at the hospital and I think it made those initial days much easier. I’m applying lanolin (PureLan from the hospital and then Lansinoh at home) after every feeding and so far have not had any problems with cracking or bleeding.
I was surprised at how obvious the oxytocin release during breastfeeding is, especially early on at the hospital when I would feel mild but obvious contractions every time I fed Baxter. Even after I got home I would notice that my lochia would flow much heavier while I was breastfeeding. Once my milk came in I would also get a tingling sensation whenever Baxter would cry. Nature is truly amazing!
Reflections
It surprised me to find myself mourning my pregnancy for a few days after delivery. Before my uterus contracted I still looked 5-6 months pregnant, and boy was it weird not to have a baby in there any more. I was sad that I would no longer be going to the doctor’s office weekly, full of anticipation and excitement about when I would go into labor and how it would be. That part of motherhood was behind me now.
I do not feel any regrets about how my labor went. I felt in control throughout the experience, and I made the decision to have pain relief administered once I thought that that control might be compromised. The L&D nursing staff was great and very supportive of my choices, both during unmedicated labor and once I had the epidural. I’m pretty sure I could have and would have made it through the entire experience without pain relief had the baby been anterior and/or had things not stalled at 7 cm. If ifs and buts were candy and nuts though, right? I will say, though, that if and when we decide to have another child, I’ll definitely give natural childbirth another shot.
I also wanted to be sure to mention at some point that I am so glad I did as much reading and educating myself about the labor process as I did. Nothing that happened to me at the hospital surprised me, and I think that went a long way in making my labor a positive experience. I can see how nurses coming into the room and putting an oxygen mask on you, for example, would be scary if you didn’t know that was standard practice during decelerations in the baby’s heart rate. I felt like I was able to knowledgably discuss the choices presented to me, and I never felt out of control or panicky.
At his two-week checkup Baxter had gained one pound and grown two inches. He is flourishing and even manages to roll over onto his back during tummy time every day! I am now within 10 pounds of my pre-pregnancy weight and have cleaned the maternity clothes out of my closet. My stitched-up taint ain’t so’ no mo’. And though I’m not thrilled with my stretch marks and pooch, I know that the latter at least doesn’t have to be permanent and just feel lucky that I managed to avoid other post-partum ailments like hemorrhoids and incontinence.
And the first poop? No problem at all. Colace is your friend.
(More pictures of Baxter than you can shake a stick at are here.)
