I was 40 weeks and 6 days pregnant when I went into labor. Believe me, I was sooo ready to be done with pregnancy! I couldn't sleep well, I was always really hot, my hands feet and face were swollen past the point of recognition, and Lucas liked to stretch out and press his feet hard against my right side and his back hard against my left side. Really fun stuff.
May 20 - The Monday before I went into labor. I went to the doctor for a stress test to make sure that his heart rate was strong and steady, considering I was almost one week overdue, and to strip my membranes. This is a procedure that 50% of the time causes labor to begin within 24-48 hours. If you want more details on that, Google it. I was told that this will cause mild cramping and anytime I feel cramping or contractions, I should walk for 30 minutes. I was still only 1.5cm and not signs of anything happening anytime soon. So, I went to work like usual. Told my boss that I will likely be clocking out randomly and walking laps around the building, and went about my merry way. I felt mild period-like cramps, so I got my large self up from my desk and walked around in the May GA heat for 30 minutes as instructed. Repeat 3-4 times throughout the day and still, no baby. Fast forward to that night: I take a shower and did another suggestion by the doctor (I'm sure that you can guess what that one is), and still nothing.
May 21 6:00am - I wake myself up thinking that I have to go to the bathroom, feeling a little crampy, but it went away. Then, as I'm washing my hands, the crampy-ness comes back. I'm more awake now and realize that this is a pretty serious cramp, like a strong period cramp. I lay back down, and another one comes. Then another. I'm pretty nervous now, not too sure if this is labor or not. It feels too much like a period cramp to be labor, right? I whip out my contraction counter app on my phone and start to time those puppies. When I realize that they are pretty consistent, I pick up the phone and call my sister. We are on the phone for about 20 minutes when I notice that those "cramps" are about 2.5 minutes apart and lasting 45-50 seconds a piece. I frantically hang up and call the doctor and leave a message at the paging service. Dr. Hood calls back. He is notorious for having a bad bedside manor and, trust me, he is no peach at 6am either. He tells me to go ahead and head to the hospital. This is when I wake up Nicholas. He is still groggy and taking his time brushing his teeth and getting dressed. The, now confirmed, contractions are getting stronger and more painful by the minute, so I go into monster mode and yell at him to get a move on! He realizes that I am in serious pain and promptly picks up the pace.
The car ride was terrible. Every single bump in the rode felt like torture. Every red light was my nemesis. Finally - we're at Gwinnett Medical Center's Women's Pavilion. I sign some paperwork that seems to take forever. ADVICE - fill out your pre-admission forms and send them in as soon as you can! I turned all of mine in months prior and it still took a few minutes to get all of my stuff together. I cannot imagine what it would've been like if I hadn't. And of course, the person doing all of my stuff is a trainee. Great.
I get into the pre-admission room, pee in a cup, and get a gown on. At this point, my contractions hurt like the dickens and I'm yelling out words that I would not want my mother to hear. Nick's mother was in the room at this point, excited for the upcoming birth of her first grandchild. I was embarrassed to be in such a foul mood and saying these bad words with her around, but at this point, I didn't care. I just wanted to get from contraction to contraction without throwing up. I have no idea how long I was in the pre-admission room for. It felt like both an eternity and also like 5 minutes. When you're in that kind of pain, time is irrelevant. I just know that I was 2cm when I first got there and was at 4cm when they took me back to the labor and delivery room where I would stay until my son was born. Room 620 I believe. The room was huge. I looked to my right and there is the table where they will put my baby boy once he is born. It was unreal. This was actually happening. I am going to give birth today. TODAY.
My nurse, Sandi, was amazing. She started me on a local anesthetic in my IV drip to help with the pain. I'd say that it took my pain level from an 8 down to a 6. Not too much help, but enough to keep me from saying too many bad words. This pain, I suffered in silence for the most part. Unless Nicholas wasn't looking at me. I learned that to cope with the pain, I needed to focus on other things. So, I did two things: stare into Nick's eyes and squeeze his hand in 4-pump intervals, counting in my head: 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on.
At some point (again, all sense of time is lost), the anesthesiologist arrives! MY SAVIOR! He too has a trainee with him. Apparently this trainee administered my epidural and I had no idea. Whatever, it worked! The epidural itself didn't hurt, it was just uncomfortable. When they say "you'll feel a little pressure" that's exactly what they mean. It's an odd sensation. The worst part about the epidural is how you have to sit in order to receive it. My belly is huge and contracting painfully. I sit on the edge of the bed with my feet over the side in between Nick's legs on his chair (they raised my bed high so that my back was at a good level for the doc). I have to hunch my back to the point to where I cannot hunch any further. My chin in pressed firmly into my chest, my belly is smushed against my boobs, and I have to sit like this for 3-5 minutes through the contractions not moving at all. Lovely.
It was all worth it! The epidural was my best friend. I went from being the scary pregnant lady that no one wanted to be around, to being the life of the party! I was cracking jokes with my family (everyone had arrived by this point) and with the nurse. But then came the scary part: baby boy's heart rate took a dip. I had 3 strong contractions in a row (who knew? I was in blissful ignorance) and Lucas' heart didn't have time to recover from them, causing his heart rate to drop. An army of 5 nurses came into my room and are staring at the monitor and they put an oxygen mask on me. I had to wear that for about 30 minutes. My midwife said that if I wasn't as far along as I was, she would've had me sent off for a C-section. Thank goodness that wasn't necessary. But he did recover and all was well. I am very thankful for the calm, cool, collectiveness of my nurse. Because she wasn't worried, it helped me not to be worried. She was the bees knees.
It is now about 10:30 and I am 8cm and in a -1 station. By 11:30, I was 9cm and at a 0 station. Sometime between noon and 12:20 rolls around and I am STARVING and at a lovely 10cm and ready to push. Just waiting for my midwife to get back. She did not think that this would go as quickly as it did and went back into the office for her appointments that day. Lucas had other plans. I start pushing at 12:48 and my son is born at 12:58pm. I am speechless.
My sweet, amazing husband starts to cry at the first sight of our son. Me, I am in a stunned state of shock and awe. I see this pale blonde, almost bald, baby that I just gave birth to. He isn't crying yet. I am frozen in time and staring at Jonne (my midwife) hanging him upside down checking him out. I barely remember Nicholas cutting the cord. It was almost like and out of body experience. It wasn't until they took him over to the table to clean him off that I snapped out of it. What did it? He started to cry. The first sound that I hear my baby make. The most beautiful sound in the world. This is when I started to cry. Jonne is attending to my nether-regions and I am craning my neck to see past the nurses and past Nicholas with the video camera to see our boy. All I get are glimpses. But then they bring him to me and I hold him and nurse him for the first time. Indescribable. He is warm and soft and the most perfectly colored newborn I've ever seen. No red splotches, no vernix caseosa coating (cottage cheese looking stuff that most newborns have). He is perfectly pink. I just look at him and feel him in my arms and my life is changed.
This 8oz baby and this man leaning over him to my left with the look of pure joy on his face, they are my entire world. The annoyances of being almost one week over due and the pain of labor are a distant memory now. They seem like nothing compared to what it felt like to hold my son and kiss my husband who is now the father of my child. I could do this again.
Later, much later.
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