July 29, 2011! A big day for me, for our family, for Lily! Merrick and I arrive at the hospital at 6am. I get checked in and wheeled up in a wheelchair to the birthing center. I keep thinking that I should have just walked up there- it might have sped up my labor a little! Haha, anyways I get into my room, get in the bed, and I start to get heartburn really bad. I realize I didn’t bring any Tums and they didn’t have any. I totally live off Tums when I’m pregnant and I hadn’t packed any because I figured my pregnancy was almost over right?! Merrick goes on a hunt downstairs to buy some but the pharmacy doesn’t open until 9am so he calls my dad to bring some in. Meanwhile, the nurse pokes me for my IV and hits a vein. Great. She tries again and has to do it in my hand, which hurts more. (Another reason I did not want to be induced – the dang IV is terrible!) So I start to feel reeeeally queasy then. Then walks in the lab tech and she wants to take blood. No, they can’t do it later. Great.
I almost throw up but don’t, thank goodness. I get the Tums (thanks Dad!) and Merrick is back and I’m feeling better. I’m on Pitocin by 7am and I’m grateful to get a new nurse. Her name is Vanessa too. She’s cute and young and very nice. This is a relief. My doctor swings by at 8am and checks me – I’m 3cm dilated, 75% effaced and the baby is at -2 station. I had been 2 cm, 50% effaced on Tuesday and on the previous Thursday appointments so I am glad I have progressed some before the contractions started. She leaves and says she’ll be back at noon.
At 9:30am I’m still not in pain but when I go to the bathroom I lose some more mucus so that is encouraging. At 11:10am my pain is up to a 4-5 out of 10 because of some back pain. I get out of the bed and sit on the birthing ball and Merrick helps me relax during contractions. The ball helps make the back pain so I am back down to a 2-3 on the pain scale for a while. I sit in the big recliner and listen to music on my iPod.
At 12:30 I have been on Pitocin for 5 ½ hours and am still pretty calm. The doctor checks me and I am 4cm and 90% effaced and the baby has come down to a -1 station. A little progress but not a ton. I don’t want her to break my water because I know the pain would increase a ton and everyone told me that if I was going natural, don’t let them break your water. But my nurse makes a good point – it would speed up the labor a lot. Then my doctor says she has an emergency surgery at 4:30pm so she says “I can either break your water now and we can have this baby soon or you can keep laboring and I can come back after my surgery and break your water then.” I’m not too much pain and I don’t really want to wait all day (it has been kind of boring up to that point, actually), so I say let’s break the water.
She does and finds there was meconium in the water. (It makes me glad I didn’t use castor oil because I would have blamed the meconium on the castor oil.) Immediately it starts hurting much worse. I get out of the bed, which helps a lot. Over the next hour I go between standing and swaying with Merrick supporting me, to the birthing ball to the rocking chair. I definitely need Merrick’s help breathing through the contractions. He counts breathe in 2-3-4, out 2-3-4. That helps. I need him full time. He gets a few phone calls and I only allow him to text because I only have 30 second breaks between contractions at that point so it’s very stressful.
At 1:50pm the nurse checks me and I was 6-7cm, 100% effaced, and the baby was at 0 station. Hooray! She calls the doctor to let her know we are making good progress and she starts quietly setting things up. She tells me to tell her when it feels like I needed to go #2. Around that time I start to feel what I call “the worst pain of my life.” :) It’s bad. I can’t get comfortable anywhere, but the best place is definitely the rocking chair. I rock back and forth, try to stay calm, but can’t really breathe through the contractions much anymore. Thankfully the epidural option isn’t brought up by my nurse, my doctor, or Merrick. I don’t really think about it either. I am doing it and making quick progress and I know that the pushing wouldn’t hurt much more than transition so I just really have to deal with the pain and that’s all I can think about. Forget putting a needle in my back at this point! Ha!
Around 2:20pm I feel like #2 is coming so I tell the nurse and the doctor comes in and checks me and I am 9cm, 100% effaced, and 0 station. I’m really wishing I was 10cm. And I REALLY REALLY hate laying down to get checked because it hurts way worse, which I didn’t really think possible. At one point they have me get on my knees and lean against the top of the bed to try to turn the baby so she isn’t pushing against my back so much. I can hardly stand it for one contraction and then I have to get off the bed. It does help with my back a little bit though. I have to go back to that rocking chair but I am really dying so the doctor comes back at probably 2:40ish and checks me again. She says I just have a lip of cervix left. She has me lay there (torture!) for one contraction and she says to push a little and she pushes the lip of cervix up around the baby’s head. It works and she says to the nurse, “Okay – let’s prepare for delivery.” They have already been buzzing around setting things up but she still has to get all the stuff set up around the base of the bed. At that point my body just kicks in and takes over. I don’t really know what is happening. They says, “You remember how to push right?” I don’t really, actually. So I try and the baby’s head comes down a bunch. They still have a few things to get ready so they want to me to stop pushing for like a few seconds but I am dying in pain. I call out, “Somebody help me!” The nurse says to me “Vanessa! Vanessa! Open your eyes! Look at me!” I open my eyes (they had been tightly shut in pain) and she tries to get me to breathe quick short breaths. I guess to get me to stop pushing. But my body somehow pushes that head right out.
Her shoulder gets stuck, like Avery’s had. It’s called shoulder dystocia. The doctor turns her a little and Merrick said she pulls the baby and she is out!
The doctor only had one glove on. And her scrubs are drenched because she hadn’t had time to put an extra layer of scrubs on! They tell me she is big. I was used to that by this point (Avery was 9 lb 7 oz and Camryn was 8 lb 12 oz), but I am shocked when they weigh her in at 10lb 4 oz!! Wow!
While they are suctioning and checking on the baby the doctor helps me push out the placenta and boy, was that a relief or what?! I feel sooooo much better once that was out. They still have to press really, really hard on my stomach for a while to get my uterus to contract down in size. But I feel great. The doctor stitches me up while Merrick is watching over Lily. The numbing shot hurts a little but, hey, at that point- a little shot in the bum feels just fine compared to “the worst pain of my life”!
There is this doctor who comes over and says he is going to put some medicine in my IV to help ease the pain. He says it would help. I don’t really feel a major pain relief, but it probably helps keep me calmer.
I get to hold my Lily. She is beautiful! She has a nice shaped head since she didn’t have to spend much time in the birth canal. Her shoulder is fine, the meconium didn’t affect her, and the only thing we notice is that she is urping up some yucky stuff for a while- since she had come out so quickly. But that goes away after a day or two. She is big. In fact, the newborn diapers at the hospital are so tight that they special order some size 1 diapers for us! Ha!
I was grateful to have gone naturally even while on Pitocin. Family and friends called me “Wonder woman” and such for having done such, but it really was only bad for the last hour. Don’t get me wrong – it was REALLY bad pain. But the Pitocin actually helped it go fast, so maybe if I hadn’t been on Pitocin I would have caved and gotten the epidural. Who knows. But I was content with how it worked out. The biggest things that helped me were getting out of that bed and sitting in the rocking chair, having a positive attitude going into it knowing I could do it, and breathing through my contractions. (I actually didn’t even have Merrick massage me at all during the labor. I did not want to be touched, haha!) I will probably try to have my baby naturally again next time. I may even have a midwife instead of an OB/GYN because I know they are more helpful with the labor part of it. It was very empowering and I felt fabulous afterwards, whereas with my other two I felt like a train wreck, so that made it a positive experience overall.
Oh and everyone was also amazed that I had a 10 POUND baby naturally. But really, I don’t think it mattered how big she was because she came out so fast. It probably actually helped that she was so big. My mom said I came out super fast too and I was her biggest baby too (10 lb 0 oz!). I guess Lily was my payback for having been so big (sorry Mom!). My grandma has since told me that Lily is the biggest baby of all her descendants! I actually love big babies, so having a 10 lb-er was totally fine by me.
So that is the story of how my little lovely Lily came into this world. She has changed our lives ever since. We love her so much.
Note: I hope I haven’t come off as condescending in any way – I had two babies with epidurals so I can definitely relate to those of you who go that route. I just wanted to try something different this time, on my third baby. :)
