{She Said} Labor… I’ll Say

You got a bit of the story through the play-by-play blogs but here is the overall story…
I woke up at 4:30 A.M. on Wednesday, May 27th with some new feelings. The contractions felt like really bad menstrual cramps that extended from the abdomen all the way around to my back. They really weren’t too intense at first and were only coming approximately every 30 minutes so I honestly thought maybe this was false labor and left Matt to sleep while trying to go back to sleep myself. I never actually got back to sleep because just as I would start fading out, I would get another contraction. At about 7:30 I finally woke Matt up. We started timing a little more rigorously and realized they were still just about every 30 minutes. I was taking the morning off of work anyway so I still planned on going in at noon still thinking this was false labor. Anyone that I said that to thought I was crazy but I was holding out- I just wasn’t ready for this yet.

The contractions got extremely irregular from there. I had always envisioned contractions starting far apart and slowly getting closer together. This was not the case for me- mine were sometimes coming 20 minutes apart and sometimes 5 minutes apart. At approximately noon, Matt called the doctor’s office to figure out what to do with this timing discrepancy. Before they had a chance to get back to us the contractions were suddenly worse and all 4 minutes apart. This put both of us into a bit of a panic being that we were supposed to go to the hospital at 5 minutes apart. Matt remained cool as a cucumber on the surface but raced around the house gathering everything needed and loading it in the car. We left as soon as possible and Matt sped the entire way. At this point I was contracting about every 3 minutes, they lasted at least a minute and Matt could predict to the second when I would get one. As we pulled into the hospital parking lot Matt let out a big sigh and muttered under his breath, “ok, it won’t be an auto birth.”

We got there at about 1:45, went in, got rushed to a room and after the nurse checked me and realized that I was dilated to 8 cm, they started rushing around like mad. I had one person putting in an IV, another asking for medical history, another having me sign consent forms, and another prepping the room for delivery. About 10 minutes after getting to the hospital, my water broke. That was very shocking- it broke, I let out a huge gasp and the room got silent and still. After explaining what had happened the room got busy again, they checked me and I was dilated to 10 cm. This is when the un-imaginable pain started. We didn’t know it at the time but the baby was coming face up (ideally babies are face down when they come- this allows the proper body contortion). While Matt and I had hoped to do this without an epidural, and until this point I had been managing, this was completely different. I just looked at Matt and said I can’t do this- it’s different and he was immediately 100% on board with my decision. At this point they didn’t even know if we would have time for the epidural.

Long story short, I did get the epidural. By the time I got the epidural I had been in labor for 12 hours. At this point, they were able to let me labor a bit and I got to close my eyes for about an hour before pushing- I have to say, thank goodness for that. Pushing was a beast. I pushed for 40 minutes. I was pretty sure I was actually pushing my eyes out of my head. Then he was here. Wiggling around on me in all his glory and goo. He came out face up (the doctor likes to call it sunny side up), the cord was wrapped around his neck twice, I had a stage two tear, and we were all healthy and happy. His eyes were wide open and he was already lifting and working his head. Full head of dark brown hair. 10 fingers. 10 toes.

Since, we have both recovered nicely. I have been amazed at my body’s capacity to heal and return to “normal.” I have been amazed at his body’s ability to be apart from mine. I have to admit that it’s hard. It’s hard for him to suddenly not be in me. He is beautiful and I am so glad to now be getting to know him but I do miss the physiological connection to a certain degree. It’s weird. It is one of many dichotomies I am experiencing right now: I am so glad he is out and thriving but at the same time I loved the connection of housing and growing him.

As for labor- it will take me a while to get to the point that I want to do that again.