On Sunday 15th the hubster left for a week of work in Mountain View, CA installing a Microsoft set and I had a list of things to keep me busy.
On the evening of Monday 16th July after my usual mates date night I started having some mild period pain-like cramps. I put it down to the spicy gyro I’d eaten for dinner and went to bed.
On Tuesday, I went out to Target to start gathering some last minute baby stuff and stocking up the house supplies. It was a hot day, so I wanted to be home in the a/c and the cramping was occurring every couple of hours. By the time I went to bed Tuesday evening (or attempted to at least) I decided I would keep track of the timing because they weren’t getting stronger or longer but they were getting closer together.
All the books and classes say “oh you’ll know when you’re having True Contractions rather than Braxton Hicks Contractions”. At this point I was thinking that maybe all the mild period pains and occasional tightening of my belly that I’d been thinking were Braxton Hicks were something else and that now I was actually finally having the false labor Braxton Hicks contractions.
At about 6:20am on Wednesday (after a night of no sleep) I called Lewis in California and told him he might want to try and get home to Chicago today. I told him I was going to go to the hospital and get check out, but that I fully expected to be sent home. At my last Drs appointment my cervix had been “high and closed with no expectations of delivering anytime soon”. My hospital bag was only partially packed and I had a long list of things still to do before baby’s arrival. Baby was not supposed to be arriving just yet!
At 7am I headed out to catch the bus to the hospital (I almost walked the 1.3miles, but it was already such a scorcher of a day I decided to enjoy the air conditioning on the bus) and by 7:25am I had checked in.
I explained to the nurses that my husband was in California and I just wanted to get looked at so that I could tell him to come home or not. I was taken in to an exam room and met a couple of nurses, a doctor (Doctor J) and 2 student doctors. The OB on call from my group was Dr McD who I’d met once 2 years ago and had no memory of meeting me. I was a little disappointed, but figured a) I’d be going home soon anyway and b)clearly there was going to be a bunch of doctors and nurses examining me so, y’know, whatever.
At around 8am when Dr J felt to see how far along I was I was already 4.5cm dilated. She asked how I was feeling and what my pain level was on a scale of 1-10. I said I was at about 2, it just felt like a medium strong period, not unbearable by any means. At some point it got out to some friends that I was at the hospital (I guess I texted Lewis that I was in labor and he spread the word? I honestly don’t remember) and Angela offered to come keep me company until Lewis arrived. I said yes please 🙂
I was moved into the delivery room, hooked up to an IV and blood pressure cuff which went off automatically every 15 minutes (it was kind of painful, the automatic ones always go just that bit too tight for me and add my carpal tunnel into the mix and my right hand was puffing up and turning purple every time 😦 you could literally see my hand deflate as the cuff released its grip!
At 11am I was given some soup (the first thing I’d eaten since middle of the night snacks). Angela was awesome and tried to get skype to work so that Lewis could stay in contact while he was flying home. We had a brief connection, but his picture was pixilated and the sound was too garbled. Having both my hands/arms connected to machinery made it tricky to text or check my phone.
I’m really glad Angela came along to keep me company. I probably wasn’t the best companion ever, getting distracted by contractions and practicing my breathing, exhausted from lack of sleep, having to be interrupted every so often by Drs and nurses needing info from me.
At 1:45ish, we heard a loud cheer and round of applause as Lewis arrived at Labor & Delivery straight from the airport (many thanks to Dugan picking him up and then also running back to ours to grab my partially packed overnight bag!). Dr McD said I had been stalled at 7cm for a few hours now and that they’d let me take it slowly while we were waiting for Lewis, but that since he was here now we should get things moving along. He said if I had been this slow in a ‘normal situation’ he would be prepping me for a c-section at this point?! I was rather surprised at this, because really, I’d only been there for 6.5hrs and felt like things were moving along nicely. Anyway, they broke my water and I leaked unceremoniously for a while. It was pretty gross and embarrassing. Just laying there with pads and towels feeling like I was peeing myself while chatting with my friends and in-laws.
My pain level was still only around a 2 or 3 when they put me on pitocin to speed up my contractions. Oh boy did that work! They started coming on much stronger and longer. Before they had been lasting about a minute and coming every 5 or 6 minutes I think (Angela had been keeping track :P) but now the pain level shot up to about a 7, they lasted about the same I guess, but there was hardly any rest between them. My back was starting to hurt so I stood up and the nurse (Carole) raised the bed high enough that I could lean over it and sway my hips back and forth while Lewis did his best to massage my lower back and put pressure on my hips. They brought in a birthing ball which I had been thinking would be my best tool, but I tried it for about 10 seconds and returned to just leaning on the bed. I tried to focus on my breathing and Lewis was good about helping me keep my fluids up. Carole was wonderful about keeping me focused too. She didn’t pressure me to take the epidural or anything like the doctor, but an hour after the pitocin had kicked in the pain level was at about an 8/9 and I didn’t think I could handle any more. I needed to stand to ease the back pain, but my legs were starting to buckle under the strain of each contraction. In the brief break between contractions I felt somewhat okay and would think “maybe I can do this” and then the next contraction would come and it would hurt so bad. I caved. I got the epidural. I was and am disappointed in myself for needing it, but I had reached breaking point.
The anesthesiologist came and had me sign some papers for the epidural and I did my best to read them before blindly signing, but it was hard when my body was just saying ‘who cares about any side effects- just take the drug! NOW!’. I sat on the bed and lewis stood in front of me and helped keep me from making any sudden movements. I know I jerked a little when the needle went in but I think that was as much to do with a contraction as anything. I felt the warmth flood my legs and was helped back into a laying down position. It took a while for the pain to truly go away but in general I think the pain level went from a 9 down to a 2/3 very quickly. Apparently in the time the pitocin had been progressing me I’d jumped up to 9.5cm dilated so I was almost there. I threw up 😦 Lewis saw this and helped call for a nurse and clean me up rather than throwing up in response. I was very proud of him 🙂 He’s so squeamish I think he was more nervous about all the icky stuff that comes with delivery than me 🙂
Finally it was time to push. Dr McD kept telling me to put ‘pressure here’ and ‘push like you need to poop’ etc but I could only vaguely feel what was happening. I was numb from the waist down so pushing ‘like I need to poop’ was bloody hard! I had no idea whether I was doing anything down there at all. In hindsight maybe having the mirror they offered would have been a good idea. As it was I occasionally caught a glimpse of my reflection in the tv screen which isn’t the same thing at all. I remember it feeling different down there when she was starting to crown and thinking ‘ok, now I have a base sensation to know if I’m pushing’, and then about 4 pushes later, at 6:16pm, there was a rush of something, a rush of me… emptying, and she was here! The doctor asked Lewis to say the magic words “It’s a girl!” and handed him the scissors saying “okay. Cut here.” Lewis had no choice but to go against his initial feelings and do as he was told and cut the cord. Again, I was surprised and very proud of him for actually doing it considering his absolute “no way” statements for the past months. In the space of half a minute I became a mum, but the enormity of that didn’t sink in until days later.
I got some skin to skin cuddle time with our new daughter, Maeve Alice, while they cleaned her up and checked her over, then they asked if they could take her away (and by away I mean 5 feet away to the other side of the room) for a few minutes to weigh her etc (7lbs 0oz, 19.75inches, blood type same as her mummy). Lewis went with her while I had my stomach massaged and I guess delivered the placenta. I say I guess, because I don’t remember hearing any mention of it and I know I didn’t see it (I was too busy trying to see Lewis and Maeve). I did hear that I had had no tearing but that I have a few hemorrhoids from pushing during delivery. Then Maeve was given back to me and we had our first feed which was not super easy for either of us, but pretty amazing all the same.
At 7pm there was a shift change for the doctors and nurses so I met a fresh round of faces while I recovered and while Maeve had her first bath and met some important people (Nana, Auntie S, Uncle I, cousin Riley, Dugan & Angela. And Uncle T made a brief appearance a bit later too). It’s weird how squishy my belly feels after months of increasing firmness. I think it was about 9pm when most people had to start heading home and the first rumbles of thunder were heard. I was still really wobbly on my legs after the epidural (my right knee especially) and starting to get the shakes from a combination of adrenaline, epidural drugs wearing off, hunger and exhaustion (I’d been awake for 26+hrs by this point and had only had a 90minute nap before that). Lewis, Maeve and I were moved up to my Post Partum Recovery room and Dugan and Angela followed with some of my stuff. I had missed dinner time on the ward so we ordered out and I managed to nibble on some thai curry and crab Rangoon before finally getting some sleep at around 11pm while the storm blew outside.
So there we have it. The day our little stormbringer decided to make her arrival and make our little family. It was a long and unexpected and somewhat surreal day full of amused disbelief that any of it was actually happening. My birth plan had been completely forgotten until it was too late, I was a little bummed that my doctor wasn’t the one to help deliver Maeve but there were so many people in and out of my room that one more strange face was easy to shrug off. The important thing was that Lewis was there and he was amazing. And that Maeve is here and she is perfect.
Chasing The Stormbringer 