Birth Story

At my Dr's appt Monday, March 22, Dr and I went over my birthplan. I ended up wanting to change a few things so she made scratches thru it and said to edit it and bring it to Monday, March 29's appt. I planned to. She hadn't turned at that time. My cervix was soft and anterior, but no other progress since she was still transverse and not putting pressure down. Ultrasound on Thursday showed she flipped sometime since Monday. Friday night we're doing stuff around the house and get to bed around 2am.

Bright and early (6:30am) my water breaks. I do some laundry because we weren't totally finished with everything. At about 7:30am I start feeling contractions 2 min apart and lasting about 1 min so they started pretty quick and intense. We hang out for about another half hour and then head to the birthing center at the hospital.

At 8:30am, I was 2 cm dilated and told my Dr was out of town, so unsigned birthplan goes out the window...I was pretty upset. Dr. on-call read my plan, told the nursing staff that she was only comfortable letting me get out of bed to get on the birthing ball, but I had to remain hooked up to the heartrate monitor, contrax monitor and IV...but that was it! My Dr was allowing me to get up and walk around, labor in tub, intermittent monitoring, etc...so this was quite the change.

I labored in bed with meds until about 5-6cm which was just more than I could handle since I attended 12 wks of Bradley Method classes of stretches and all. It hurt too bad just lying in bed. Her heartrate actually wasn't being picked up well on the monitor, so they had to insert this little screw antenna thing (I forget the name) into her scalp so I couldn't even sit up for an extended period of time, even though it felt better. So I opted to get an epidural.

4-5 hours later the epidural started wearing off once I got to about 8cm so I asked the anesth. nurse to only put another surge and not a continuous flow on since my goal was an unmedicated birth. He did but my legs and body felt completely aware. I had them on the side of the bed sitting up during contractions, moving around.

When I hit 10cm, they contacted the Dr (they'd been in contact all day with her) and she was "heading" up to the hospital. I waited a good 45 minutes with her ready to come out before I just couldn't hold her in anymore and the nurse and tech delivered her. She had a funky conehead from me holding her half out for what felt like forever. Luckily, her heartrate stayed great so there was no concern.

I told them I couldn't wait anymore for the damn Dr and she they said "Let's go." I pushed once and heard them suctioning her mouth out. They said push once more and she came flying out.

I did have a small tear that the Dr showed up just in time to repair that required a couple stitches. She went to stitch me and I squeeled in some pain. She said "I'm sorry. I thought you had an epidural." Yeh, but that wore off 2cm and 45 min of pushing ago! So I had to get some more local meds and wait for that to kick in so I saw the dr for all of about 5 min. Lotta good she did!

Catching up...

Sunday, March 14
Had a wonderful shower with tons of family and friends at my aunt and uncle's house. Our last one for this pregnancy.

Monday, March 15
I took off work to visit Babies R Us and buy any more necessities for our bebe's arrival. We also finish up the nursery -- for the most part.

Still going to the chiro this week to try and get bebe to flip.

Monday, March 22
Dr's appt. Bebe's still transverse (sideways), but my Dr still thinks she can flip. If she doesn't a C-Section will be mandatory. I'm not dilated any, but my cervix is soft and anterior so my Dr believe as soon as she flips, we'll have a little one on the way! We schedule an ultrasound for that Thursday.

Thursday, March 25
She flipped!!!!!! They predict her to be about 7lbs.

Saturday, March 27
The big day! Look for the "Birth Story" post next...