Friday, December 23, 2011

A Baby Story

So my due date, December 18, came and went with not much fuss.  I hadn’t quite had the end of pregnancy feelings most women seem to have – the ‘get this baby out of me now’ feelings – so I was pretty sure that meant I had another month to do since I’ve heard the last month is supposed to be miserable.  I was still enjoying the perks of pregnancy – people holding doors for me, looking at me with that “aww…poor thing” look and the husband rubbing my swollen feet every night! 
On December 20, I started developing a rash on my belly, which was quite itchy.  THAT was the first moment that I thought it was truly time to get that baby out me!  So on the 21st, we did ALL the things (short of Castor Oil) that they say you do to induce labor naturally.  Amongst other things, I ate spicy Mexican food for lunch, drove over speed bumps, jumped and walked all around the neighborhood, even stomping some, frequently sitting on random benches on stranger’s porches.  Believe me; you can pretty much get away with ANYTHING when you’re pregnant.  Earlier in the pregnancy I had gotten pulled over for speeding, only to ‘learn’ that my inspection was expired and my tail light was out.  I got a ticket for the tail light, which I got dismissed by taking in the receipt for a new light.  ALSO, I walked into a stranger’s house at a Christmas parade to use the bathroom!!  ANYWAYS, at 2 am on the 22nd, I awoke with a pretty sure sign of labor, but maybe it was the Mexican food, so I went back to sleep.  At 5 am, I awoke to use the bathroom, something I’d been doing about 5 times a night for the last month, but this time, when I sat on the edge of the bed, I felt my water break!  Statistically, I did NOT expect this to happen.  Apparently only 10-15% of peoples’ waters break prior to going into labor, and since I’d had 2 close friends who this had happened to, I was sure mine would stay intact.  But no...  My plan was to labor at home for as long as possible and go to the hospital at the last possible second.  So while I was really excited that the baby was really coming, I was a little disappointed to have missed out on the home labor experience.  I had big plans to labor ‘comfortably’ in the tub & shower, walk around the neighborhood, all things I’d learned in our Bradley Method of Natural Childbirth classes and rehearsed in my head.  I was tempted to stay home for a little while after, but my doctor was adamant I be in the hospital if the water broke and I couldn’t feel the baby moving, so after loading the car and a quick rinse in the shower (I was moving quite slowly, while Michael was rushing around like crazy!), we headed to the hospital. 
When we arrived at the hospital, the door we had planned to enter was shut down under construction.  We ended up going into the day surgery entrance, where the nurses were unsure what to do with me.  They told me to sit in a wheel chair and that Michael should park, and then meet me over there.  Well, I did not want Michael to leave me, so I made them wait, telling them I would jump out of the wheel chair if they tried to wheel me to L&D without him.  I think that was really their plan.  They nervously agreed to wait for him.  When we got to the L&D unit, they informed us that due to the storm there were already 2 other women who had come in before me.  This is a pretty small hospital and very small unit, so that was a lot for them.  Thankfully for me, who didn’t want to be hooked up to monitors quite yet, they let me be, so I walked around.  I was having Braxton-Hicks contractions pretty regularly, which I was hoping were the real thing, but when they hooked me up to the monitors an hour after we arrived, around 7am, nothing.  I was dilated to around 3-4 cm, but at my appt 3 days before, I was dilated to a 3.   Around 9, I started having some friendly real contractions, but not necessarily at regular intervals.  Turns out, I never really had contractions at regular intervals.  My mom also arrived about this time.  We played Scrabble on the iPad and started the labor play list, which included ridiculous songs such as “Sexy and I know I,” “Like a Virgin” and “You’re having my baby” from the Glee soundtrack.  We had 3 hours of “fun” music, which meant that each song played at least 4 times!  Labor progressed strangely for the remainder of the day.  I felt like I had complete control over the contractions.  I would do things to encourage them, such as rock side to side on the exercise ball, they would come kinda strong and then would slow down significantly until I changed positions.  When one was really strong, I would ‘take a break’ and have weak ones or none, until I did something else to induce another.  Eventually they were strong enough that I had to abandon our Scrabble game, though I was definitely winning when we quit.  Michael was amazing throughout this whole process.  He held my hand as I squeezed his tightly, rubbed my back with great force ALL day long, and let me hang on him while I worked through contractions.  At one point, there was a nursing shift change.  When my new nurse came in, she said, “I know you have a birth plan, but I couldn’t find it, so all I read was the C-section part, but we’re going to have to get things going…what’s it gonna be Pitocin? An epidural?...” I was about ready to cry, then miraculously, her husband ended up with kidney stones, so she had to leave! Then Kayla, an angel nurse, arrived to take over.  At some point, I cried tears of joy, telling Kayla how glad I was to have her!  At around 6 pm, I was dilated to about a 6/7 and my doctor, Dr. Tynes, came into to let me know she was going to another hospital across town to check on a patient there.  I was sure I would have the baby before she got back.  At 7, she called to have the nurse check me to see if could go to dinner with her family before coming back.  I was still dilated the same, so Dr. Tynes had dinner.  I was sure I’d have the baby before she finished eating.  When she got back to the hospital, I was still dilated 7ish.  Slowly, I got to almost an 8 and when Dr. Tynes checked me, she said my cervix was really stretchy and she thought she could stretch it over the baby’s head.  This was VERY painful with me practically kicking her away, so she would stop.  She thought starting Pitocin was a good idea, which I was stressed about mainly because I had had control over my contractions up until this point, and I thought I would no longer be able to control them, but the doula, Michael and nurse seemed to think it was a good idea, so she started 2 of Pitocin at 10:30 that night.  By this point, I had been in labor for 17 ½ hours!  But the time had flown.  So with Pitocin, the contractions picked up a bit, but I still had control over them, though I was feeling more motivated to stop taking breaks.  At this point, I thought that I would consider an epidural at 11:30 since things did not seem to be progressing, since I could not relinquish control over these contractions.  When the doctor came in to check me at 11:30, I could tell I hadn’t progressed much and was still dilated to almost 8 cm.  Dr. Tynes said she thought she could stretch the cervix around the baby’s head and I could push, but she didn’t think I could tolerate the pain.  I told her that if we could do that for a specified amount of time, I felt like I could handle it.  So with Kayla, the sweetest nurse ever, counting, Dr. Tynes stretched the cervix around the baby’s head while I pushed.  I was so hot.  My mom was putting wet rags on my head, while Michael held my hand and leg.  After each 10 seconds of stretching and pushing, I needed new, cool rags.  Dr. Tynes showed my mother a trick…flinging the rag around in the area to re-cool it.  This also created a nice shower for me, but watching the doctor fling that rag around was pretty funny.  The whole time this was going on, I had to keep telling myself…"it is normal to push for 2 hours, and judging by the way everything else has gone, I’m likely to have to push for 4."  My Bradley instructor, Maureen, had said that pushing was a relief, but it was by far the hardest part of it all.  When the baby started crowning, my mom, Michael and the doctor acted like this baby was really getting born any second, but I kept telling myself I had hours left to go.  We started the whole pushing process at 11:30 and Baby Lillian Marie Henry arrived at 12:32 am!  Thank God I didn’t have to push for longer!  When she came out, she had the most perfect round head, great big eyes like her daddy and a beautiful complexion that must’ve skipped Michael and I’s generation.  She took a moment, even before taking her first breath, to look around the room to see who was there.  She looked everyone in the eye and as I held her, I swear she had a little grin on her face.  The dry erase board in the room still said “December 22 – Happy birthday Lillian!” 

Friday, December 16, 2011

Lily's Pad

The nursery is complete!  Now all we need is an adorable human being to put in it!!!!!! 







Thanks to everyone who contributed letters to Lily's wall.  She already feels loved from A to striped Z!