Our Birth Story

So, it’s been almost two weeks since my labor started and I’m finally finding the time to sit down and write our birth story. Oliver is sleeping contentedly in his car seat after our trip to Dan’s for breakfast so I’m thinking I’ve got a good ten to fifteen minutes before he wakes up and wants to eat. That should be enough time to at least get started with the story. Fair warning: I was in labor for twenty hours so this is not a short story.

As you know, Brian and I made a practice run to Labor and Delivery the Friday night before Oliver was born. I was having blurry vision and they wanted to monitor me due to my history of high blood pressure. We left after a few hours and I was told to stay home and off my feet until my induction date Tuesday the 14th. Mom and Richard came up to Austin that Saturday to help Brian keep me entertained and Mom planned on staying through the induction appointment. I had resigned myself both to four days of bed rest and to the fact that I was going to be induced. I was upset that I wouldn’t get to experience that feeling of my labor starting naturally but I was ready for Oliver to come no matter how labor started (or was forced to start).

We spent a nice day relaxing around the house, watching the Master’s and some TV shows on DVD and around 10:30 that night my parents headed back to their hotel and Brian and I got ready for bed. I laid down and was asleep for about fifteen minutes when I felt my first contraction. I hadn’t experienced any contractions except Braxton-Hicks contractions prior to that one so I was surprised by the sensation and by the fact that I knew right away what I was feeling. (I was always complaining about how people would say that you would “just know” when you were experiencing real contractions but it turns out that’s a true sentiment). The contraction lasted around twenty seconds and then was gone. I tried to get back to sleep but was pretty wound up thinking both that this might be the real thing and that I might somehow “jinx” it if I let myself be convinced that this was the real thing. I was so anxious to feel another one and yet convinced that it wouldn’t come. 

About twenty minutes later, I felt another contraction. And then another one fifteen minutes after that. They were rather short and mild so I stayed in bed and tried to sleep between them. After about two hours they started to get a little more uncomfortable so I got up and took a warm bath. They were still coming no closer than every fifteen minutes and this pattern lasted for another two hours. At that point (around 3:30 am) my contractions were still pretty far apart but were becoming more and more intense and were being accompanied by some really serious lower back pain. Apparently Oliver had turned face up giving me back labor to deal with. I finally woke Brian up since I was getting to the point where I couldn’t manage the pain on my own. (I had let him sleep up to that point because it seemed obvious that we were in for a long labor and I thought it would be nice if at least one of us got some sleep). I laid down on the bed and Brian rubbed my back during contractions to help with the back labor. I kept trying to sleep between the contractions but they were getting very hard to deal with and in between every contraction my back would ache horribly so that it became difficult for me to tell when the contractions actually ended. Brian and I started to time the contractions around 4:30. At that point they were coming every seven minutes and lasting a little over thirty seconds. (You are supposed to call the doctor when you hit 4-1-1: contractions every four minutes, lasting one minute for over an hour). Around 6:30, I took a hot shower to try and deal with the back labor but the pain was getting very hard for me to cope with. When I got out of the shower I started vomiting from the pain and my contractions were getting closer together and lasting almost a minute. We decided at that point that it was time to head to the hospital.

We got our stuff together and called the doctor’s office who called the hospital to let them know we were on the way. I called my mom and told her that I was in labor and heading to the hospital and that we would call her when/if we got a room. I think it was around this point that I finally let myself start to think that this really was labor and Oliver really was coming that day. Up to that point I had been so worried that the contractions would stop and I would end up being induced on Tuesday. We got to the hospital around 7:30 and went immediately into triage. Luckily I had been in the hospital just a few short hours before and thus didn’t have to answer the four thousand ridiculous questions I had to answer on Friday night. The triage nurse started monitoring me - at this point the contractions were coming every three to four minutes or so and were really intense. The nurse checked me and I was fully effaced but only two centimeters dilated (that is, I hadn’t dilated any more than I had at my appointment on Thursday) and my water was still intact. In other words, I wasn’t making any progress despite the pain. I was still adamant about trying for a natural childbirth, though, so I shrugged off the nurse’s offer of an epidural.

They left us in triage for a few minutes and kept me on the monitor to track Oliver’s heartbeat and my contractions. I kept vomiting and was in the middle of throwing up when my labor and delivery nurse, Brenda, walked in to introduce herself. She took one look at me and said: “Uh uh, I don’t do vomit. So, you’ll have to stop doing that.” That might read rude but she had a great attitude and it was a light comment and actually made me laugh. She was with us all day and was great. It really is true that your labor and delivery nurse is the most important person the day you have a baby. She told me they were going to admit me (which was a relief since I had thought since I wasn’t making any progress that they might send me home) and helped me make my way to our labor and delivery suite. Brenda observed me through a few contractions and I’m pretty sure summed me up in those first few minutes as someone who wasn’t going to make it without the epidural. She told me right away that if I decided I wanted the epidural that it would be another hour before she could actually get it for me so I needed to keep that in mind as I was trying to cope with the pain. Basically she looked at Brian and I and realized that we had done nothing to prepare for having a child naturally - no classes, no breathing techniques, no doula - and she could tell that I was fighting every contraction. I would tense up and stop breathing every time one would start and could never get on top of the pain. 

After fifteen minutes in the labor and delivery room they finally took me off the monitor so that I could move around. I (incorrectly) thought that if I could just walk and rock from side to side and take a shower that I would handle the contractions better. Brenda told me I could be off the monitor for thirty minutes but that then she was going to have to monitor me again for fifteen minutes. I did feel better while I was in the shower but the back pain was becoming too much for me to deal with. I got out of the shower so I could get back on the monitor and at some point in there my water broke. The doctor was going to come in a break my water to get things rolling but it happened on its own. After my water broke the contractions started coming on even stronger and I had been in labor for twelve hours. I hadn’t slept since Friday night (it was now almost noon on Sunday) and I was beat and wasn’t making any progress. I had Brian call Brenda and we ordered the epidural. They started an IV to run some fluids and within forty-five minutes the anesthesiologist (Dr. Smith) came to get me hooked up. They had Brian sit down in front of me (apparently more partners pass out during the epidural than during the birth) while the doctor put the epidural in. I had to sit through a few contractions while he got everything set up but within fifteen minutes the epidural was in and working and I was feeling nothing and could finally relax. I could still tell when I was having a contraction but it registered simply as a tightening and not as pain.

After the epidural... 

Not only did I relax but so did Brian and my parents. None of them liked seeing me in so much pain. From that point on, labor was a breeze and I quickly started making progress. We spent the afternoon watching the Master’s on television (which Brenda loved since she was a huge golf fan... I probably got to see more of her than her other patient did since we had the tournament on). I even managed to sleep a little bit (not much but a little). They kept turning me from side to side every few hours to try and get Oliver to turn around from the sunny-side up position (it worked and he was faced towards my spine by the time I delivered). And Brian and I got a chance to talk about how things might be different the next time we do this. We really wanted to try for a natural childbirth this time but we did nothing to prepare for it. No classes, no books, no breathing techniques and (in our opinion, most importantly) no doula. Next time we will try again but we will take classes and hire a doula.

Around six o’clock Brenda checked me and told me that I was fully dilated and ready to start pushing. Mom and Richard left for the waiting room and we did some practice pushing. Pushing was a strange experience with the epidural. I could tell when I was having a contraction and thus knew when I needed to push, but there was no pain - just plenty of pressure. I pushed with Brenda in the room for about 45 minutes and then her shift ended. I was kind of bummed that she wouldn’t be there when Oliver was born but she left me with another great nurse, Leah. They passed me off and Brenda gave Leah an update on our progress and on the one point of concern - Oliver and I both had elevated heartrates (Brenda told Leah that both mother and baby were “tachy” - tachycardic... I was offended that she would call my baby tacky). Our elevated heartrates indicated that both Oliver and I were starting to run a fever (not surprising since my water had broken over 7 hours earlier). It wasn’t an emergency, just something to keep an eye on.

We kept pushing with Leah and once I got a hang of the technique it was pretty quick going. A little after 7 Leah called the doctor who came in to watch a few pushes. She watched one and realized that we were ready to go and the room became a flurry of activity as everyone prepared for delivery. We suddenly went from it being just Leah, Brian and I in the room to having a doctor and three nurses shuffling about getting ready for the baby. I found the influx of so many people a little confusing and scary but was assured that it was the standard number of people - two people for me and two for Oliver. Once the doctor was ready to catch we pushed through a few contractions until Oliver started to crown. Leah and Brian told me he had dark hair which was a little surprising to me since I was a bald baby and Brian was a blond baby. Once he crowned it only took another contraction to get him out. His head was mostly out and with the next contraction the rest of his body just slid out without me even having to push. The doctor put him up on my chest and all I remember saying is how very warm he was (probably from the fever). I remember Brian grinning this huge grin but can’t remember what he said if she said anything. I do remember the doctor or one of the nurses saying: “Big baby.” They cleaned him up on my chest and Brian cut the cord. I couldn’t believe he had finally arrived. Twenty hours after my first contraction.

But he was really pale and wasn’t screaming the way he should have been so they whisked him over to the warmer and pumped what looked like a ton of fluid out of his lungs and stomach. That got him screaming a little bit but they still wanted to get him to the nursery to check him out further. He was super alert from the beginning, though, just quiet. Brian brought him over to me so I could hold him for a little while but his breathing was kind of scary to hear (he seemed to be really struggling and sounded like he had even more fluid in his chest) so Oliver and Brian went with the nurses to the nursery (they grabbed my parents out of the waiting room on their way) and the doctor and Leah got to work on getting me cleaned up. 

Forty-five minutes later I was all cleaned up and found myself alone in the room. I made some phone calls to let people know he had arrived and ate an apple and drank a huge glass of ice water (I hadn’t had anything to eat since 8:00 on Saturday night and hadn’t had anything to drink since eight o’clock that morning. But I hadn’t had an update on Oliver so I called my mom on her cell phone and she came and sat with me and let me know that he was screaming something fierce in the nursery which was a relief. An hour later they finally transfered me to a postpartum room and Brian and Oliver met us there. It was at that point that I really got to hold him for the first long time and got to try nursing (he took to it really quickly despite the fact that we didn’t get to try until two hours after he was born) and then he was ready to sleep. 

All in all, it wasn’t the birth we originally imagined nor was it the birth I had resigned myself to (i.e., an induction that could very well end in a c-section) but I know it was the right birth for us at the time and I’m glad that I was able to go into labor naturally and that I was able to avoid a c-section. But mostly I’m just glad that he’s finally here even though his arrival has meant I haven’t slept more than three hours in a row for over two weeks now. He’s totally worth the sleep deprivation.