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!”
