A Son is Born

I give to you Ryan's birth story, for all those who are interested:

First, I have to start by saying, I'm highly disappointed in the fact that I went over my due date for a second time! Especially since for about the last month of the pregnancy I was having all sorts of "labor is coming soon" signs, mostly TONS of Braxton-Hicks that were stronger than what I thought they should be and were sometimes timeable. It was extremely annoying.

So, my due date came, and my due date went with no baby. I cried. A lot. When every day feels like a week, and you feel like a whale in the middle of the desert because all you can do is sit on the couch, and even that hurts, it's a very depressing thing to still be pregnant after your due date, even knowing that it's just an estimation of when baby will be here anyway.

Finally, the night of February 5, I started getting good strong contractions that were timeable! They got closer together pretty fast, withing a couple hours they had gone from 15 minutes apart to 3-4 minutes apart. The problem was, they weren't really getting stronger. By 3 AM on February 6, we decided that they were staying consistent enough that we should go to the hospital, even if they weren't getting stronger. After all, we needed to get the kids to my parents', and if this was the real thing, we didn't want to have an issue with that.

We got to the hospital around 4 AM, and after all the check in stuff, they let us walk the halls for an hour to get things moving, since I was only at 3cm. After the hour of walking, I had progressed to a 4, so they admitted me!

My goal was to go unmedicated. With Dorothy, the epidural completely stopped my labor, and with Giana, I got it right as or before I went into transition, and it made my labor take about 3 hours longer than it would have had I not got the epidural. Other reasons were that I hate the way they make you lay in the bed with the epidural. It's very uncomfortable. I also wanted feel the urge to push.

So, unmedicated I went. Unfortunately, things progressed very slowly! By 10, I was only at a 5 and by noon, nothing had changed. They started asking about starting pitocin, which I declined saying I wanted to see what happened with breaking my water first. There wasn't a doctor available to do that until 1, though. By that point, I just wanted to be done, so I also allowed them to start the pitocin.

Things got very intense very fast after that! After a couple more hours, the contractions were coming strong and fast. I was starting to feel like I couldn't do it anymore, but Ryan and my nurse kept telling me I was doing great. My nurse was slightly annoying, though. I think she was trying to be helpful by doing this, but it was just annoying. She'd watch the monitor and tell me, "Oh, this is a strong one!" or, "Okay, it's coming down now!" I just kept thinking, "Yes, I know! I can feel just how strong and I can feel it coming down!" I did scream a few times when things got too intense for breathing to take my mind off things. The nurse didn't like that, but oh well. It's what I needed to do at the time, so that's what I did.

Now for the good part. The nurse did a final check, and declared that I was at an 8. She said she would call the doctor to let him know he needed to make his way to the hospital. I fell asleep, apparently, and woke up to a VERY strong contraction. *Side note: I've heard of women falling asleep between contractions late in labor and always wondered how that could happen, but apparently I did, and I think I did it more than once, I only know the one time for sure. I just think that's funny.* So, this contraction, a few seconds into it, I realized the kid was on his way out. I started yelling at Ryan that I needed to push and that the kid was coming out. When the contraction started coming down a bit, I more calmly told him he needed to call the nurse in. In she came. I frantically told her that I needed to push and that he was coming right then. She unhelpfully checked and told me that I was ready to go, but that I needed to wait for the doctor. I disagreed with her and that I needed to push the kid out. She told me to trying moaning. Nope, sorry the kid's coming. She told me to trying puffing air. Nope, the kid is coming now! And he came! He was born just a few minutes before 4 PM. The doctor came rushing in about 15 minutes later to catch a kid that was already born!

My doctor was not on call that day, but he came by the next day to check how my recovery was coming along. When he walked in, he apologized for not being there for the big event, and I responded, "That's okay, neither was the other doctor!" Hahaha!

In the end, I am happy I didn't get the epidural, even though a main reason was that I didn't want my labor to stop or slow down, and, ironically, both things happened. I'm not sure if I could go through unmedicated birth again, but I also don't know that I would want an epidural again, either. Right now, we're thinking we're done with kids, anyway, so this might not be an issue. The point is, I'm glad that I did it at least once! It was a very cool experience!