Our 3rd birth story

          

Well this time around I wanted things to be a little different than my last 2 births and I definitely got what I was wishing for…  I was induced with Abbie and Ben and had an epidural with both of them.  I was really trying to avoid induction with this baby and I wanted to “try” to do it naturally, without pain meds, although I was keeping my options open.

Around 8am on April 29th, I got up to go pee and went back to bed.  When I laid back down the baby got super active but I didn’t really think much of it.  For some reason though, I sat up in bed and felt a “gush”.  I was pretty convinced my water had just broken, but since this was also a first for me, I wasn’t positive.  I went and changed my clothes and then told Mark that I was pretty sure my water had just broken.  I knew that you have to have the baby typically within a day of your water breaking because they worry about infection, but I wasn’t in any rush to get to the hospital since I wasn’t having any painful contractions.

We finished packing our hospital bag and made sure Ben was all set with my mom and ate some breakfast and headed to the hospital around 10:30am.  They told me there that they had to do a speculum exam and take a swab to see if it was my water that had broken or if I’d just peed myself.  After about 20 mins they basically told me they thought I’d just peed myself.  ….  Never in any of my pregnancies have I just sat up and randomly peed myself, ESPECIALLY after I had just gone to the bathroom like 5 minutes before.  I felt like a total and complete idiot, but assumed they were right and said I wasn’t coming back until the baby was halfway out to avoid this whole situation again.  Little did I know…

Turns out, they were wrong.  Mark and I went to grab some lunch and went to Ross really quick and got Abbie from school and then went home.  Mark got ready for work and left around 3pm.  I was sitting on the couch and when I got up to say goodbye to him, I had another huge gush.  I had to change everything again (even though I had a pad on at this point), but I still wasn’t having any bad contractions.  This happened 2 more times in the next few hours – every time I’d get up from sitting for a while, I’d have a gush and have to change.  I had to go over to my neighbors house to get my kiddos around 4:45pm.  At this point I started timing the contractions I was feeling.  They weren’t super painful but they were enough to make me stop talking when they were happening.  My neighbor was cracking up and telling me I was definitely in labor, but again, since I’d never experienced it naturally before, I had no clue.  My contractions were pretty low, under my belly, and for some reason I assumed that when they turned to “real” contractions that they’d come over the top of my belly in order to push the baby out.  I was sitting at Megan’s kitchen table and Abbie, who was upstairs playing, got a bloody nose.  Megan ran upstairs and I tried to follow but again, as soon as I stood up, another huge gush…  So I had to head home to change everything for a 4th time.

I finally rounded up the kids and headed back home and decided to call OB triage again to tell them what was going on and how either I was having major bladder issues or my water really had broken.  They told me to come on back to get it checked out.  I got ahold of Mark at work around 5:45pm and asked him to come home asap so we could get to the hospital.  In the meantime, I was having fairly painful contractions to where I didn’t want to talk or move through them, but I was still able to get the SUV packed up and talk to the kids a bit.  Abbie was pretty worried about me because she knew something was going on and she was concerned about my pain.  Mark got home a little bit after 6pm and we jumped in the SUV and headed to the hospital.  I remember having a few painful contractions on the way there and I couldn’t get comfortable in the seat. 

When we got to the hospital I was having contractions pretty close together that were lasting a few minutes each.  I couldn’t walk when I was having a contraction, so as much as I wanted to get in to the building, I had to stand in the parking garage for a while waiting for my contractions to pass so I could waddle as fast as I could to get as far as I could before then next one started.  Mark ran to get me a wheel chair and once I sat in that it was a little better.

They got me checked in fairly quickly and back to a triage room and told me to get into a gown.  However, I was having another contraction and getting out of clothes and into that stupid gown was no easy task.  I finally managed to get into the gown and up on the bed and I told them I wanted an epidural.  The nurses in there said they had to check me again and that they had to get an IV in and run a blood test before they could give me an epidural and it would be about 30 mins.  I think I knew at that point that an epi wasn’t going to happen, but I was still hoping and praying for one…

One nurse was putting an IV in me and another one was checking me and said I was 5cm dilated and 100% effaced.  I think I was on my back at that point and they had a monitors on my belly and his heart rate started to drop and they told me I needed to roll on my side immediately.  So I rolled on my side and his heart rate came back up fine and I was curled into a fetal position trying to work through the contractions.  I told them I thought he was coming and they checked me again less than 5 mins from the first time they’d checked me and I was 7cm dilated.  As soon as that happened they started rolling me out of triage to a delivery room.

I remember I was gripping the side of the bed to help during contractions and they kept telling me to let go so my hands didn’t get pinched going through doorways.  I think I asked the nurse if I was going to be able to get an epidural (hahaha!!!) and to be honest with me and I think she said “no probably not”.  They got me to a delivery room, although they could have taken me to the parking lot and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have noticed.  They told me I needed to get on to the bed in the room and I wanted until the contraction was over and rolled on to the other bed.

Everything that happened in the delivery room was a bit of a blur.  I remember laying on my left side again and being in a significant amount of pain.  I was gripping the side of the bed pretty darn hard and I remember thinking to myself that I have to try to relax a little bit.  I tried to let out a big breath, and as soon as I did that I could feel the baby slide down.  I was waiting for the “ring of fire” that everyone talks about feeling when you have a baby naturally, but I don’t remember ever really feeling that.  Someone was telling me to not push, but I wasn’t pushing.  However, when I tried to relax and breathe, his head pretty much came out on it’s own without me pushing.  I remember right before his head came out, I felt like I was going to throw up and asked someone for a bucket but that feeling went away as fast as it came.  Someone lifted up my leg and that’s when his head came out and they pushed me on to my back and told me to push, and one push later he was out!  He was born less than 4 mins after we got into the delivery room at 6:52pm.  (A little over an hour after I called Mark home from work – he works 15 mins from home and the hospital is about 15 more mins from home…)  The OB didn’t even make it into the room before he was born, but he did get there shortly after.

Jamison’s birth was fast and furious and that’s actually what I was hoping for all along.  I really wanted to have a natural birth and I got what I was hoping for, even though in the moment I was begging for an epidural.  Him actually coming out didn’t hurt all that much and I only had an hour or hour and a half of painful contractions but they weren’t completely unbearable.  The worst part of it was the 30 mins afterward where the OB was trying to get all of the placenta out.  Him mashing around on my uterus for a long time wasn’t exactly pleasant, but it had to be done.

Jamison was born on 4/29 at 6:52pm.  He weighed 8lb 0.2oz and was 21 inches long and he’s just perfect!