(In as excruciating detail as I can remember....6 months + later)
I went to work as usual on Monday, it was the start of my last week until Maternity Leave, which was super awesome! I was busy trying to wrap everything up before going out.
Tuesday morning, around 9am I went to the bathroom and saw lots of mucus, brown, not red. I instantly knew I was starting to lose my mucus plug. I rushed back to my desk and started googling the shit out of mucus plug/signs of labor.
I started getting nervous, until I read that most of the time it can be weeks before labor. So I went back to concentrating on getting my work done. Throughout the rest of the day I started having more and more gunk down there. Not a big nasty wad like so many people described to me. (I'll take it cuz ewww)
Other than that I was feeling ok, really tired, but sleeping had become non-existent by that time so that didn't seem weird. I was getting nervous though which made me a little more moody. Totally a "shit is getting real" moment.
I left work, drove home, changed my clothes, then headed to prenatal yoga class. I met a friend there, we'd been going for a few weeks at this point, she was about 3 months behind me in her own pregnancy. About 1/2 way through the class I bent down in some yoga move, that I don't remember, and felt a tiny gush. It was EXACTLY that moment when I thought, OH SHIT, I pee'd myself!! Everyone warned me it would happen at some point!! I listened, and luckily wore panty-liners the last week or so. Go me!
I casually walked out of class and to the bathroom, pee'd went back to class. During another move.... gushhhh.... the wheels started turning in my head... WTF I JUST pee'd. Like a champ I pushed through the end of the class. By the very end I was feeling a couple more tiny gushes. I started to think something was up. I said goodbye to my friend, after picking the time to meet up for the next class. I got in my car.
The very same second my ass hit the seat of the car I had a contraction.
At this point I knew. Ok ya, I'm pretty sure I wasn't pee'ing myself back there in class...
The whole drive home (about 30 minutes) I was having waves of contractions (just felt like longer, deeper, period cramping). I walked in the door and told Cameron that I thought I might be going into labor.
As soon as I said it out loud it kind of hit me that this might be it. I had just hit 37 weeks, and had been cleared from my placenta previa, so I knew there was no rush and this was just going to happen. I decided I was going to be super chill about it and wait it out at home as long as possible. So I started going into last minute OMG I'm having a baby mode.
I cleaned everything I could, did laundry, packed my bag and tried to get some sleep.
At 1am I woke up and the contractions were noticeably stronger. I timed them for an hour, they were lasting 1 minute and 5 minutes apart. I called the on call doctor. I explained to him that I was thinking my water was leaking/broken about the contractions. His advice was to stay home until I could no longer comfortably walk and talk through the contractions.
((( PSA: As it turns out, if your water breaks go the fuck to the hospital!!!! )))
I went back to sleep. I had already decided that I wasn't going to be going into work the next morning. So I woke up at 6am (no more contractions), did some work, emailed my boss and drank a cup of coffee. At about 8:30 I decided to call my doctor to let her know what happened and tell her there was nothing going on now. The nurse was kind of appalled that I was still at home and told me to get my ass into the hospital ASAP. I of course asked if I had time to take a shower and get ready, she basically said no (but I did anyway!HAHAHA)
We took a leisurely drive to the hospital. Got there about 10am -ish.
I got there, got all undressed and in the bed, etc, etc. The nurse checked my water. She said she still felt a bag and she doesn't think I broke it, so don't get too comfy since I'll probably be sent home (since I was having no more contractions). I was only 1 cm dilated (which I had been for like two weeks at that point anyway).
She came back a while later with what looked like cheapie pregnancy tests, the test came back positive for amniotic fluid, so this shit was actually happening! She said it probably broke up high and was just dribbling down the side and out, the big gush would come at some point.
Then things got serious, they wanted to know when I first felt a gush, I explained my yoga situation. My first contraction was exactly 8:00pm which was right around them so we basically chose that time. They then told me that I had 24 hours from that time to get the baby out, or we'll be in for a c-section. I was blown away. Like WTF I only had (at this point) like 10 hours to birth this little dude.
BTW to preface the remainder of my story, my original goal was to try for a natural birth with as little intervention as possible. Also, my timing is probably off because it is super easy to lose track of time during the whole process.
I was, in fact, having contractions consistently, I just could feel them, they were on the monitor.
Felt like a couple hours after I got there they were already pushing the pitocin. I was NOT happy. My doctor of course had the day off so some other doctor was there, I had never met him. He comes in saying I waited too long to come in and that I needed to have the baby soon and the only way to push it along if I wanted vaginal was to use induction medications. I knew that any chance I had of getting through this birth naturally were thrown out the window. I wish I had been more informed and went into the hospital earlier, there were lots of other options besides pitocin for moving things along that I didn't have a chance to try because of time constraints.
Oh well. That wasn't what was important in the big picture.
I got up to pee at one point and bent forward to try to get out of the bed and GUSH the water broke completely. I can't even believe your body even has so much water in it. It just kept coming, and coming, forever, it was insane!!!
The pitocin was cranked, I was still moving pretty slow. And the pain just kept getting worse and worse. They wouldn't check my dilation as often as I wanted because of risk of infection. It was aggravating, but understandable. I got to a place of a lot of pain by that evening, no idea what time it was. They checked dilation, and I was only 4 cm. I wanted to scream. It was so painful and I had so far to go and I knew they had to crank the pitocin to max at this point, which they did. And the pain was fucking shitty. I was still refusing an epideral. Eventually I had a nurse basically telling me that I had been in so much pain for so long by the time the baby was ready to come I would have no energy left to push. That is when I decided to just do it. I still feel confident that I could have gone longer without the pitocin. Stupid pitocin.
I got the epidural which was super disturbing and icky. :: shudder ::
Fairly instant relief from the pain of contractions.
After we hit our max time limit of 8pm that evening I started panicking that they were going to make me have a c-section. After ALL that I had been through thus far I was NOT going to be happy about that. Luckily they told me as long as I wasn't showing any signs of fever (infection) then I could keep going.
At about 10 pm I was dilated at 9 cm. I was also starting to get a fever. To help move things along the nurse at the time started using other techniques to try to dilate me further. Being on my side with a yoga type ball rolling back and forth, etc, it was kind of funny. I was just ready to be done, it had been about 33 ish hours at this point, no sleep, no food, no water, I was DONE.
At around 11:30 pm, she announced I was 10cm and it was time to get this baby OUT!
Instantly I started shaking uncontrollably. Everyone said that it is from the meds, um no, basically one of the scariest things in your life is about to happen. Scary on many levels, medically scary, OMG I'm having a baby scary, just fucking scary. That is why I started shaking. I think it is just an excuse to give the woman's partner to keep them from freaking out.
I started pushing, every other contraction to "practice" I did this for 30 minutes then she wanted to give me a break, obviously shit wasn't going as fast, or I wasn't doing a good job, who knows. I didn't really care because pushing was hard and a break was nice. So I lounged there for about 30 minutes before we started again.
Then we started again....
I believe about 1 hour into it he was getting down in the birth canal or something was happening, I could feel the difference, but it was so slow. They turned down the epidural so I could really feel what I was doing.
2 hour mark I'm fairly certain they basically turned the epidural off. It suddenly became a lot easier, and I felt like things were happening. He was for sure in the birth canal and the intense pressure that comes with that was almost more than I could bear. He was probably like that for the last hour of pushing, it felt like my body was being torn in half extremely slowly. Contractions had NOTHING on that pain.
His head finally was spotted. He made it past the bone of doom (the pubic bone). The nurse told me to stop and she was getting the doctor, this shit was going down now.
STOP!??!? Are you fucking kidding me!!!??? I was in such intense pain and the ONLY thing that eased it was to PUSH through the contractions. For 3 consecutive contraction waves I had to hold back the urge to push. That urge is a primal instinct, every fiber in my being was trying to move forward to get this watermelon out of my fucking vagina. Stopping it was completely the worst part of all of it up to that point. BY FAR.
Yet somehow I managed to watch the magical transformation of the room that I had heard so much about. Lights dimmed and came out of the ceiling, tools came out of drawers, nightstands turned into special medical device things, and people started flooding in. My Mom and Cameron who had been there the whole time were placed to the sides or out of the way. I remember arguing fiercely the whole time this was happening that I could stop pushing. Sobbing pathetically. It was probably the most emotion I'd ever shown anyone in my life. I just wanted this to be over.
Right when I was about to freak the fuck out the doctor rushed in, It had maybe only been 10 minutes waiting but it felt like ETERNITY!!!
As soon as his ass hit the stool in front of me I begged him to just push this thing out of me. He said go for it and I pushed maybe three more times and he was out.
The relief from the pain was unbelievable.
So, after 36+ hours of labor, 3 1/2 hours of pushing, my little (not so little) baby was born, 3:30am he was 7lbs 15oz.
He was placed on my chest directly after birth, for bonding, it was all very overwhelming.
A few minutes later I was still trying to take it all in and I heard the doctor say "shit". I was instantly on guard and asking what the hell was going on.
He said the placenta broke off while he was trying to get it out and he has to "get it". With no more warning that that he reaches his entire arm up my very abused vagina and uses his hand to scrap the walls to get out all of the fragments of placenta.
I was screaming in pain. It was the most awful pain I'd ever experienced in my life. It took him about 10 minutes, they quickly took the baby away from me because of what was going on. My mom and Cameron were with the baby so a nurse was holding my hand while I was screaming and sobbing. Two nurses had to keep my legs pried open, because of course my instant reaction to that pain is to try to slam my legs together. I really can't even describe how painful that was. And right after he was done, here comes the shot of whatever it was that made me feel high and wonderful for the next hour.
I won't go into much more than that, I realize writing this out it doesn't even come close to expressing how dramatic and horrible/wonderful the whole thing was.
What matters is he is out of my body, and we are both safe and over the shock of it all.
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