Alex's Birth Story

Jokingly, in this post, I had semi-wished for a 5 hour labor. That didn't exactly come to fruition....

On Monday, June 15, Rich and I went to bed around 9 p.m. I had been feeling some contractions throughout the evening, but they were irregular and not painful, so I thought they were the usual Braxton Hicks ones. I couldn't sleep, so I stayed awake in bed watching television while Rich slept. At 11, I noticed some pain coming with the contractions, and I decided to start timing things. Sure enough, they were coming five minutes apart and getting more intense and painful each time. I jumped out of bed, started the shower and told Rich to wake up because I thought this was the real thing. I wanted to get cleaned up before we went to the hospital, knowing that it might be awhile before I got to shower again. Good thinking on my part.

By the time we got to the hospital, 20 minutes later, my contractions were 3 minutes apart. They hooked me up to monitors and saw that I was indeed in labor, but only dilated 2 cm. The nurse said gravity might help, and had us walk around the floor of the hospital for an hour to see if we made any progress. The pain was really intense by this point, and I had to stop walking every few minutes to try and breathe my way through it. But we were laughing in between contractions, getting excited at the idea of our baby coming that night. When we got back to the room, the nurse examined me and found me still at 2 cm. No progress. So she said we needed to go home and continue laboring until I felt an increase in intensity. I remember almost crying at that point, because I was thinking there was no way I could make it if there was supposed to be an increase in the pain coming soon! But we got our stuff together, and left the hospital at 3 a.m. on Tuesday morning to go home. We tried to sleep (I was given a sleeping pill) but it was difficult. We already had a regular doctor's appointment that day at noon, and because I was afraid of being sent back home from the hospital, we decided to stay home until the appointment. It is a fog to me already, but I remember laying on the couch while Rich timed my contractions and he watched t.v.

When we got to my doctor's office, she asked me the usual questions..."Any pain lately? Any contractions?" I responded with a resounding YES and Rich filled her in on the story while I lay on her exam bed. She checked me, and I was 5 centimeters! She said, "You guys should go to the hospital!!!" (Like we hadn't thought of that!) So we made our way to the hospital, and things moved much quicker this time. Throughout the pregnancy, I had been hoping to have the baby naturally (without pain medication). I wasn't stubborn about the idea, and I had said that I would decide more on it once I actually knew what we were dealing with. Once we were in the hospital, it had already been 14 hours since contractions had started, and even though I was in a lot of pain, I had started telling myself I could do it. The nurse asked me if I wanted an epidural, and I said I'd like to wait. I thought if the level of pain continued as it was, then I could make it. The nurse said she thought the pain wouldn't get worse, and she thought if I had made it this far, I could make it all the way. She checked my progress after a couple hours, and I was 7 cm. We were so excited to be progressing, and the nurse and doctor were really surprised that I was still talking to people and dealing with the pain without medications. I asked her if I could walk around the hospital to keep things moving, and she was surprised, but said yes. As I stood up, my water broke. So she had me lay back in bed. Then things started slowing down. A few hours passed, and my pain started increasing. She examined me, and I was still at 7 cm. She said the doctor wanted to give me pitocin to keep me progressing, but I knew that I wouldn't be able to handle the pain of pitocin contractions. So I asked for an epidural, and 18 hours into labor, I was pain-free. I didn't like the feeling of numbness from the epidural, and I wish that I could have persevered without it, but it was definitely a relief to be out of pain!

After the epidural, I stayed at 7 cm for hours. They started increasing the pitocin doses, (luckily I couldn't feel a thing) but I was still 7 cm. Sometime after midnight, the nurse came to prepare me that if I didn't progress anymore in the next hour, they would need to do a C-Section. I was really bummed about this, knowing the pain and increase in recovery-time involved with major surgery. But I wanted the best outcome for our baby, so I started mentally preparing for it. But the scare of surgery apparently worked, because when she checked me again, I was 9 cm! Finally it was time to push sometime after 2 a.m. on Wednesday, June 17. After each round of pushing, my oxygen levels were low, so they put an oxygen mask on me. And then I got really nauseous, so it went something like this:

Push to the count of 10.... Three times....
Rip off my oxygen mask....
Lean over the side of the bed to throw up...
and Repeat...

The baby's heartbeat started dropping with each push. I could tell that they were getting concerned because the doctor's tone became much more serious. I heard my doctor say to the nurse, "Prep the room." They could see that the baby was in distress, and she had passed meconium in my waters, so the doctor said she needed to use the vacuum to get her out past my pelvic bone. With the last push, I heard my mom and Rich cry out, "She's right there!!!" And within seconds, she was laying on my stomach, and I was overwhelmed with joy, tears, and shock! What an amazing feeling. I can't describe how it felt to look into the eyes of our beautiful baby girl, knowing we created a miracle.