The Birth Story (long)
So I woke up at 4:30am Sunday morning with contractions that were about 10 minutes apart. I went back to bed and woke up at 6:00am with even stronger contractions and my “show”. Woke Jay up and told him that I think we might be having the baby today so he got up and we started doing stuff around the house. We went to Wal-Mart and by the time I got there the contractions were about 6 minutes apart. Walked around Wal-Mart and paid off our layaway went home and ate a little bit and got stuff ready for the hospital. By noon the contractions were a lot stronger and about 4 minutes apart, called the hospital and they said it sounded like I was in labor but I needed to wait an hour before coming in because they were so busy there were no rooms available….finally got to go to the hospital and OMG if you can per-register with your hospital DO IT! I got there with contractions 2-3 minutes and apart and I had to wait for the lady to come back from lunch to register us. I was breathing through contractions in the lobby while everyone is walking by staring at me. Got into the triage room and got setup on the monitors and the contractions were about a minute and half apart and I decided right then that as soon as I could, I was getting that epidural. We were in triage for like 3 hours because every delivery room was in use. Finally get a room and I’m dilated to a 4 and that’s when I’m able to get the epidural! It didn’t hurt at all but that might have been because I was too busy concentrating on the awful contractions. I felt bad going against my plan but I would do it again in a heartbeat. After that everything went really fast, an hour later I was already at a 6 almost 7 and a hour after that I was fully dilated and we were just waiting for her to move her head a little bit before I could start pushing. 45 minutes later my doctor came by, who by the way had only been there for about an hour and half, and asked if I wanted to do some practice pushing. We did one set of three practice pushes and she had the nurse get all the other nurses and other people I don’t really remember who to get in the room because the baby was about to be there. I pushed for a total of 10 minutes and she was born! It was amazing. Jay cut the cord and she got plopped on my chest. I tore pretty bad, probably because it all happened so fast. She was 6lbs 13oz, 19ins long and absolutely perfect. I couldn’t have asked for a better labor and delivery or for a better baby.
A few things:
I labored at home as long as I could. My doctor kept telling me that’s one of the reasons why everything went so fast for me was because I stayed home until the contractions were closer together and I couldn’t talk through them.
Don’t feel bad if you decide to change your birth plan. I can’t even properly describe how bad those contractions felt. And I walked and did the breathing and everything I could think of to help and it just didn’t help me.
Annnnd there were 18 babies born at that hospital that day! Crazy!
I wrote this over a few days with little sleep so I hope it makes sense lol.
