I would say I’m sorry for my lack of blogging lately, but I really don’t feel I should need to apologize as a brand new mother of my first baby! I finally had a few minutes here to create a post, so I’m taking advantage to share the birth story with you.
On Wednesday morning, June 22nd, at around 7ish, I thought my water broke. I could have sworn my water broke. I called the doctor and told them what I was experiencing, and was sent in to the hospital to get checked out. The nurse tested the fluid and said it was positive for amniotic fluid (she tested from an external source, however). Apparently washing with soap can cause a false positive. The doctor checked me and said I was not leaking fluid, and I wasn’t very dilated or having contractions that I could feel. He did order an US to check my fluid level, because if it was low he would have kept me there. My fluid level was good, so I was sent home.
By noon that day I started to feel back pain that I realized was actually contractions, but they were coming very far apart and sporadically. As the evening progressed, they started to come a little closer together and were unmistakable as contractions. I was having all back labor. At first it wasn’t so bad because I used to get bad backaches and knew this feeling, so I was able to handle them. By 1:30am they started coming 5 minutes apart. I waited the hour to call the doctor to see if they stayed at 5 minutes apart and steady, so at 2:30am I was calling the on-call doctor and being sent into L&D again. I was checked and monitored, and I was sure enough having steady contractions, and I was just about 2 cm dilated, so I was admitted. I was still handling the contractions well, but once they got my IV in (oh my God! they tried 4 times, and bruised me badly!) they started Pitocin. By around 6am I was dilated at 4-5 cm, and still handling contractions well. After this, the times get a little fuzzy for me, but later in the morning I asked for Nubaine to take the edge of the contractions. Since I hadn’t slept since 7am the day before, the doctor also ordered another drug for me which knocked me out. I slept quite a bit and actually had trouble waking up. Good stuff! When I finally did wake up, the contractions were coming closer together and with the high dose of Pitocin I was on, I asked for the epidural. I was 7 cm dilated when I finally got it at 12:45pm, after waiting almost 45 minutes from when I asked for it, and I was so scared it wasn’t going to work properly. It finally kicked in and worked probably a little too well! I couldn’t move my legs on my own for the life of me! At some point I know they put an internal monitor on the baby for his heart rate, and they did give me an antibiotic since there was question of me leaking fluid, but I’m fuzzy on when that all happened. The doctor also had to break my water – no mistake in what that felt like now! By 3pm I was fully dilated and ready to push. They did have to knock back the epidural a little so I could push better, but it worked out great. I felt some of the contraction to know when to push, but I didn’t feel any pain down below. So, push I did…for 3 hours. He kept checking my progress, saying he’d let me go a little while longer, but baby Bean was somewhat stuck in there. It didn’t come down to a c-section, thankfully, but I was exhausted, and I was feeling sick, so at one point we thought we might have to use a vacuum assist to get him out. Luckily my last few pushes were good enough and pushed him right out quicker than they could even stop me to suction his mouth and nose! Bean was born right on his due date at 6:13pm. See the previous post for his stats.
I did have internal tearing and lots of internal bruising. I apparently lost a decent amount of blood and had to be given 2 injections of medications for the blood loss. I was also packed up and catheterized for a good 24 hours due to the bleeding, so unfortunately I could not get out of bed and missed out on Bean’s first bath and such in the hospital. I am feeling much better these days, but still not 100%. My tailbone was bruised and that still bothers me when I am up on my feet for too long or when I sit on certain chairs.
So, I had a rough delivery, baby was born with a conehead from being stuck, but he’s worth it and I love him so much! :)
Here he is!
