The day I became a Mommy

In honor of Mother's Day, I thought I'd finally get around to posting Andrew's birth story. For those of you who don't want the nitty-gritty, you may just want to move on now :)

On Friday April 8th, my water began leaking about 10:45 am, but I didn’t realize anything possibly strange was going on until 2:15 pm. After checking with Dr. Google, conferring with Robyn, and calling Kaiser, I called Dave about 3:15 and told him he better finish up at work and come home before 5 so we could go to Kaiser “just in case.” At this point I was still pretty sure I’d lose bladder control and was positive I wasn’t in labor.

He got home about 4:15; while I took a shower, did my hair and make-up, he set up his new BluRay DVD player. The plan was to go confirm I’d peed myself and go buy our deep freezer; however, once we got to Kaiser, they were able to confirm that we were indeed going to have a baby within 24 hours! With an ultrasound the midwife on call told me that I still had “plenty of fluid” and told us that “by the size of that head, this is going to be one big baby.”

I was having very mild, inconsistent contractions (I could actually feel them, but I could talk through them). I was 4 cm, 70% effaced, and he was -2 station when they checked me at 7:45 pm. They started me on pitocin at a very low dose because my contractions still weren’t consistent enough to make; the pitocin drip stayed on the entire labor process, but was constantly adjusted up and down based on my progress.

Melissa showed up about 8:30 pm after calling in “baby day” to work (best decision ever—having an RN as a labor coach was spectacular!!), Dave went to get dinner, and we sort of just hung out. Melissa and I played a half of game of Skipbo and my parents came and talked for awhile. It took a few hours for the pain to really start in and I begged for the epi about midnight. This is when I started telling Melissa that Robyn was CRAZY for doing this without medicine. It took another hour to get it and when it finally took effect (1:45 am) it was stellar. I slept on and off and tried to stay relaxed.

At 6:00 am, the pain started to return to my back, left leg, and I could feel every contraction. Contractions were about a minute apart and lasting 60-90 seconds. I cried. A lot. I was slightly freaking out because I knew that I was going to have to do “this” without pain relief and my biggest fear is that I’m a major wuss.

Dave and sister were both pretty calm and tried to reassure me and I was trying to do all of our breathing techniques with Dave. At 7:15 am, I was checked the second midwife on duty and was 9.5 cm, 100% effaced, but Drew was only at +1 station. The pain kept increasing and I started to beg (well, to be honest, cry and whimper) for some relief. At 7:55, I was given another type of pain medicine through my epi catheter which took the edge off and I was able to calm down.

At 8 am, I was checked again and was complete, but the midwife thought that it would be best because I was calm for me to “labor down” to get Drew to drop more. I was comfortable enough to breathe through the contractions for another hour and a half. At 9:30 am, the pain and pressure was unbearable again and I was given the okay to start pushing.

According to my RN, I pushed like a champ and almost as effectively as I had no epi (maybe this was because by this point I had 100% feeling in my left leg?!). I struggled through the stupid three set of 10 second pushes and was told many times by the RN to stop talking. My OB and midwife kept checking on me and praised me over and over again that I was doing a good job. My temp went up to 100.2, my OB said that we have to pay very close attention and may have to “expedite this,” and then I heard him mention possible c-section to someone on his way out.

Two hours later, I was still being told I was doing a good job and got flat out mad at the nurse and Dave for telling me so. I used my teacher voice and said, “Do not tell me that I am doing a good job when that is not the case. If I was doing a good job, the baby would be here by now.”

Finally about 11:35 am, I told the nurse that I wasn’t putting my legs down between contractions and a second wind came. There were four other people in the wing delivering at the exact same time as me and my RN couldn’t find a doctor/resident/midwife, but I didn’t stop. Dave saw Andrew’s head coming out fast and yelled to get someone in there as the RN was at the door yelling for a doctor. A resident from the clinic ran in the door and started to introduce herself and I yelled “I DON’T CARE WHO YOU ARE!” One push later at 11:47 am, everything went from relatively normal, painful labor, to scary.

The cord was wrapped around his neck and he did not breathe right away. DH said that as he was coming out the resident was rotating him around trying to release the tightness. He was put on my chest for about 10 seconds and then taken to the warmer for about 15 nurses/doctor’s to figure out what was going on—it was the worst moment of the entire process—and I kept sending Dave over to see/report what was going on to me and told him to “take pictures!” His one minute Apgar score was a 3 (on a scale of 1-10, 3 is a horrible score).

It seemed like an eternity, but after five minutes, they had him breathing, kind of crying, and wrapped. His five minute APGAR was taken at this point and he was up to an 8. The NICU charge nurse, Michelle, placed him on my chest to hold/see for about a minute and then he was whisked him away to NICU. Dave followed.

A very long four hours later, I was able to hold him for the first time in the NICU and we got to spend 2 hours of skin-to-skin contact. It was heart breaking to see him with an IV in his arm, cords attached all over, and have him stuck in the NICU, but we were reassured that he was doing fantastic and everything was right on track to have him released to us.

He was released from NICU to my post-partum room at 9 am on Sunday (4/10) when he passed the five different NICU tests. From then we started what I thought was going to happen 22 hours before… amazing, stellar, tear-filled baby moments!