Baby Elise joined our family exactly four weeks ago today at 4:46 p.m. She decided not to arrive on her due date so we had to make a trip to the hospital for a non-stress test to make sure the baby was okay. Due to the gestational diabetes my midwife had told me that if she didn't come before 42 weeks that they would induce me by rupturing my membrane to get things going. I left the hospital feeling frustrated. I wanted to avoid having my membranes ruptured as much as possible. Up until this point I was all "Water birth, no drugs, all natural." Little did I know that this labor would be anything but normal or natural.
After the doctor's appointment I told my husband that I wanted spicy food, the spicier the better. We stopped at a local greasy spoon and I picked up a large order of nachos and an order of hot wings. I was determined to kick things into high gear. I was feeling pretty good after demolishing the nachos and decided to save the hot wings for later. I started to feel very strong pains in my back around 4:30 p.m. so I decided to take a long hot shower just thinking that it was Braxton-Hicks. For a bit the pain was gone and I decided it was time to dive into my hot wings. As I ate my back pain returned to the point that I was curled up on the floor and the cats kept coming up checking on me and licking my face.
The hubby got home from work and I told him that the contractions were getting stronger and I was pretty sure this wasn't "practice" as we had called it. He got in a quick workout and came upstairs to eat dinner. During this time I had to take another shower. It was now about 8:45 p.m. I settled in on the floor with my maternity pillow and watched "Hoarders." I remember that the two hoarders featured were an animal hoarder that had over 60 animals and many flat dead cats and a guy whose house ended up being condemned because the weight of his hoard damaged the load baring beams in his house. I'm getting off track though...
The whole time the hubby was timing the contractions and made the decision to call Labor & Deliver, my friend Ely, our parents, and our doula. We drove the 35 minutes to the hospital and my contractions kept getting stronger. We arrived at 10:45 p.m. Despite the pain I was able to walk from the parking garage to Labor & Delivery, which although it sounds lame, I was pretty darn proud of. We were taken to a triage room where we found out that all the birthing tubs were in use. I was pretty bummed and realized at that point that even though I was disappointed that I needed to be prepared that anything could happen. It was while in the triage room that my water broke. After that they moved me to the birthing room, did a quick exam and told me I was between 8-9 cm. I was surprised because I was in pain but it wasn't to the point I wanted to start pushing yet. Then the wave of active labor hit.
When all was said and done, I was in labor for over 20 hours. Elise had some trouble coming out, first getting caught on my anterior lip of my cervix which took over 4 hours to clear. I kept pushing and pushing to no avail, she just would not come out. After hour 16 I told them I couldn't take it anymore, I wanted an epidural if possible. So much for the natural birth. They had already given me pitocin thinking that increased contractions would get her out, which still didn't work. After taking me down to the O.R., giving me the epidural, and letting me push for another three hours they wanted to try to get her out with forceps. When that didn't work, it was decided that we needed to do an emergency c-section. From that point it only took 30 minutes to get her out. During the surgery the hubby stood up when they were getting Elise out. When they walked away to clean her up he told me,"So crazy, your uterus is on your stomach!" Mr. I get Queasy-At-the-Sight-of-Blood was telling me this!?! A few minutes later they brought Elise to me. The whole event didn't feel real at first which I attribute to the drugs I was on.
I've had time to reflect after a month of sleepless nights and I have to say that once I was out of the drug-induced fog that the mothering thing has come quite naturally. We've had a few hick-ups along the way, milk not coming in quick enough, our first case of baby acne, but all in all this month has been amazing. I haven't felt this awesome in a long time. :-)
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