birth story, part 2.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010 /  Thursday, June 24, 2010

Contractions were time-able from about 6 pm on. They were consistently about 9 minutes apart.  Shawn & I took a walk. This relieved tension in my lower back. My lower back was very tight & that is where I felt most of my contraction.  It would also come around into the front.  If I sat down, most of everything would stop. Or at least spread out really far apart. If I laid down on my side, I almost instantly got a contraction.  Mom & I took another walk while shawn went & got pizza from Casey’s for dinner for himself.  My contractions were pretty regular, we used a blue stopwatch to time everything, but they were still probably 8 minutes apart. Slowly, as the night progressed, they got longer & closer together.  I finally had to quit sitting or lying down & just walk around to easy the pressure plus keep them coming.  I would rest my head on shawns t-shirt rack in his closet & close my eyes a lot. If my eyes were closed I felt like I could breath through & focus. I eventually was having contractions that were lasting longer, over two minutes. my biggest problem here was that i couldn't really lie down. i got tired of standing. at one point i remember thinking "maybe this will be our only child" (after it was all said & done, i looked at my baby in the hospital & thought "that was it?" i would go through a lot more to get such a great prize.)  They also began to get closer together…about 4 minutes or less. Eventually we decided that we could pack up & go to the hospital. This was at 3 am. Shawn gathered everything & put it in the car. Thankfully it wasn't raining anymore! One error we made is not packing a sweatshirt for Shawn (or should I say we only brought one, and he let me wear it).  He grabbed last minute snacks & pillows & my soft blanket.  I got in the backseat. Sitting was very uncomfortable so I got on my knees & leaned over the back seat with a pillow. The ride was bumpy & pretty uncomfortable.  The pressure in my lower back was increasing & un-relievable.  We got to the hospital quickly & then walked around in the parking lot for a while just to keep stress low & keep the contractions regular.  They were pretty much on top of each other so we went into the ER entrance (our only option). This was at 4 am. A nurse came with a wheel chair & wheeled me to our room. i felt really excited and it was totally surreal. Were we really at the hospital?! the one we had toured? dreaming of the day we would actually be having our baby?! and this is that day?! Checking in & getting to the room was very quick & easy. Once in the room, they hooked me up to monitor my heart rate & the baby. Everything was good. I was still having contractions about every 2 minutes or less. When they checked me I was at a 7, we continued to labor & they checked me again (probably about 20 minutes or so) I was at an 8. They checked again and I went to 9 -10 quickly. I had to do two more contractions to move the uterus out of the way. I had the strong urge to push & these contractions were the most intense. I was laying on my side the whole time. I had been cold so I had shawns sweat shirt on.  With the last contractions I got hot so he helped me take it off. I couldn’t really talk because I was keeping my focus on breathing & relaxing & I kept my eyes closed. I never even saw the nurses who were checking me.  My nurse was Kelly, who turned out to be the greatest nurse we could have possibly asked for (direct answer to prayer.  She only worked 2 days a week. God put us at the hospital at the exact time she was about to come on duty so it worked out that she could stay with us through the entire labor) after I made it though those last two contractions we got ready to push. I was most comfortable on my side and so for a pushing contraction or two we did it on my side. The nurse was very gracious in letting us choose positions, while also offering ideas. We then decided to utilize the bed so we sat it up in a throne position so that I could be in a more squatting type position. We did this for a while (now mind you, this all starts to run together, we had visualized the baby being born between 7-8 am since we had been there for a few hours and everything else had progressed so quickly), we then moved to a standing squat. I would lay down & fall asleep between pushing contractions & wake up going straight into pushing. The problem was that the contractions had slowed down to about 8 minutes apart. I would get 4 pushes out of each contraction but was not making much headway. We continued to do this for hours. I was also still leaking amniotic fluid this whole time. I stayed pretty rested because of all the sleeping I was doing between contractions. After a while I started walking around the room to try & get the contractions to speed back up. Nothing was changing. Shawn & mom would either sleep when I slept, or read & then when I would have a contraction, I would sit up, say ‘ok’  and they were there, right by my side. Counting, telling me to breath, push, etc. I actually remember feeling bad for them because they would be snoozing too, and it is hard to keep waking up & falling back asleep when you aren’t the one having something actually happen to you. I eventually tried getting in the shower which felt really good. The water was hot. This was ironic because I had made sure to have my hair & makeup done everyday but then I just stood under the water. priority’s. The doctor that was on call (mine was busy or something at the time) came in to check on me, he was encouraging saying he thought things would progress quickly.  It was encouraging at the time & the nurse that had been on call with me the whole time, as well as the head nurse, stayed positive. When the doctor came back in a while later he was a bit more hurried and really, we are going to sugar coat over this part because I won’t let him ruin my story. He was a jerk.  But God always has a plan, and Shawn took this small road block in stride & stood our ground and kept his cool.  We eventually asked him to leave the room so we could discus some options we wanted to try.  We consulted with the head nurse + Kelly, our nurse. They were both very knowledgeable…and had had babies of their own! We decided that we would try hooking up to a small dose of pitocine. This is a syntehcie version of oxitocin which your body produces to help with your contractions. Since mine were still so far apart the goal was to get them to speed up so they were closer together + more intense. We (me, Shawn & my mom) all felt peace with this decision. It wasn’t the route we had envisioned, but we also thought I wasn’t going to be pushing for about 10-ish hours.  They hooked it up through the iv tube that was already in my arm (standard hospital procedure). This totally worked! My contractions slowly started coming closer together which meant when I felt the urge to push it was more productive! The whole time I felt like I was in good hands. I can’t say I felt entirely at peace because I was surpressing stress that they were going to try to c-section the baby. I knew I could do it, and just wanted to hurry up & have this baby! With the encouragement of the two nurses, Shawn & my mom, I worked hard! I was laying in the bed/semi-reclined. They gave me two handles that when the contractions came I would hold onto & crunch forward (side note: days later my arms were so sore i could barely move them!), just like doing a sit up. Everyone would count out loud, forcing me to push hard for 10 seconds. My mom kept telling me to breath & would rub my face because I was scrunching it up so tightly. She didn’t want me to burst any blood vessels in my face (giving myself a black eye, which I didn’t). Everyone kept telling me how good I was doing (I just felt like it was routine encouragement). I never wanted to look to see progress because I felt like I would be discouraged. They could see hair (I didn’t believe them). I just kept going through the motions, a lot of times closing my eyes & counting. Eventually things were really picking up (about 45 minutes after the pitocin) and they called to see if my doctor would be able to come in to deliver they baby (we begged them to just “accidentally” deliver the baby but they said it was to much red tape.|)  She made it. This is where it also gets a little hazy but Shawn says he got stressed because there were a lot of machines beeping (the baby’s heart rate slows as it enters the birth canal, but that also means its monitor goes crazy) and I was so focused and needing to breath that they put an oxygen mask on me so that when I wasn’t pushing I would get a lot of good air. I still felt like every push was the same. I didn’t really feel like it was all about to happen. And then it did. At 3:41 pm. The push that shot that baby out. It hadn’t felt any different then the million before. There was a burn as the baby came out but as soon as I felt that I also saw her pull out a baby. So all was ok. Shawn said “anna, it’s a boy!” I didn’t respond. But in my head I thought “I actually don’t care. I’m just so happy our baby is born!” My mom was so anxious to know the name! “Well, can we FINALLY hear it?” Shawn said Bentley Von. They put him right up on me & he cried. But I didn’t care or really try to stop it. It was such an amazing sound. They let him lay on my chest for a while & didn’t clean him up except for a little rubbing around him laying on me. After I got over the initial excitement of the birth being over (and after I was stitched up. Um, kind of the worst part. But then again, WHO CARES! I’m holding my baby!)  I was super interested to see how much he weighed! That is when my mom came over & told me how proud of me she was. And I cried. I was overwhelmed with relief that everything was ok. We had made. I had a baby.

so that's it. my story. i wrote it in a couple different sessions. so sorry if it is choppy or runs together. a few days after B was born i sat down & typed up most of it but literally stopped mid-sentence because as much as i loved having a baby & would do it again in a heartbeat, i was also so relieved to be moving on from that point that it was hard to go back & relive it all! i can't believe that it actually took me 9 months to finish it. oh well, i also can't believe that my newborn tiny baby is almost 9 months old.