Delivery as I experienced it:
Okay this will probably not be an exact account seeing as it's been over a month since that day and it feels like old news now. On top of the fact that I'm much more excited to write about what it's like now that Eli is actually here!
First I want to say that looking back at this pregnancy I feel like I'm a little bit misleading. My pregnancy and birth was overall very easy and painless, I know everyone has their own different experience, but by reading about mine you may mistakenly think that yours will be just as easy. When I started this blog I thought there would be TONS to talk about. I thought all kinds of weird interesting things would happen during pregnancy and during delivery. I was sort of wrong. It was not at all as difficult or as confusing or weird as I originally thought it would be.
So... Delivery...
January 14th, Friday: I started having contractions. They felt a lot like very mild period cramps. Uncomfortable at most. The worst part of it was the anticipation; knowing something was finally happening that could possibly lead to the baby finally being born.
January 15th, Saturday: The contractions continued the entire day, getting closer together and stronger. They were much more painful but still not nearly as bad as you hear about on TV or even as bad as I've heard other people I know talk about. Toward the end of the day, into the evening, they started getting really strong. They were probably about 5-7 minutes apart at this point and they were painful enough to distract me from other things that were going on, I had to sort of stop what I was doing and pay attention to my contraction. They still felt like period cramps though, just much stronger ones. In no way were they unbearable. Late Sat night, well technically Sunday morning they were extremely strong and much closer together. I didn't sleep a wink that entire night.
January 16th, Sunday: Early morning, around 3am after not sleeping at all I had really painful contractions. They were about 4-5 minutes apart consistently. I was alone in my bed trying to sleep but they were SO distracting and painful enough that that's all I could focus on. I remembered what my Dr had said about when to come into the hospital. He said if they were constantly 5 minutes apart for an hour or your water breaks come into the hospital. Well I was getting so excited and anticipating this baby coming that the last thing i wanted was to drive to the hospital and then have them send me home, but I also didn't want to wait so long that I'd end up stuck having the baby at home. My water still hadn't broken, it was about 4:30am, I decided to call the Dr office and talk to one of the nurses. The contractions were about 3-4 minutes apart at this point. I called and spoke to the nurse, she told me that I could either go in to the hospital and have them check me or I could wait another hour, see if they continue to get stronger or see if my water breaks then go in. I decided to wait. The thing that surprised me most was that I knew the baby was coming very soon and I knew my contractions were very close together and very strong but I could still walk around and still function. I was not even close to being doubled over in pain. Don't get me wrong, they hurt BAD but not as bad as I imagined they would. My doctor had told me that by this point I shouldn't be able to talk through my contraction. Well... that wasn't the case. I could still carry on a conversation. I don't know if it was just me having a high pain tolerance, or if my contractions just really were not that bad, I know normally my period cramps are rarely bad... I don't know that the two necessarily have anything to do with each other though. Okay, so about 5:30-45 am I decided to get up, use the bathroom, then head over to my parents' room to tell them we should head to the hospital. Around the corner there was my mom. It must have been mothers' instinct, but she figured something was going on. I carried on a whole conversation with here about what we should do, told her how I called the nurse, blah blah blah. Actually, the contractions were far less painful at this point and I believe it was because now I had something to distract me. Silly me, I actually was concerned that that meant maybe the baby wasn't actually ready to come, the contractions were suppose to be unbearable by now right? And my water still hadn't broke. So I went downstairs, ate a bowl of cereal, waited for mom to get some things ready to bring to the hospital, then we decided to head out about 6am.
At the hospital. We arrived around 6:30am. I went through the emergency entrance. They give you a wheel chair to sit in and they wheel you over to the maternity ward. Pretty sweet huh!? My water still hadn't broken, I wasn't flipping out and screaming in pain like they show in the movies, and frankly I could have walked to my room if I needed too. This all worried me. I thought by this point i was suppose to be practically dying of pain! But no... I wasn't. What did that mean?
Apparently nothing.
I arrived at the room they wanted me in. Here I met Stephanie, she would be my nurse for the next 12hr shift. She had me get into a gown and checked me for effacement and dilation. As she was checking me my water broke. Which automatically means your staying. yes!! That meant this show was finally getting on the road. By the way, my contractions were still not completely paralyzing.
Contractions: "Labor contractions are the periodic tightening and relaxing of the uterine muscle, the largest muscle in a woman's body. Something triggers the pituitary gland to release a hormone called oxytocin that stimulates the uterine tightening."
"Water Breaks" / Amniotic Sac ruptures: Basically the fetus lives inside the amniotic sac which is basically a sac of fluid that helps provide nutrients to the growing fetus. When the baby is ready to be born this sac ruptures causing fluid to literally come out of the woman's vagina. This also causes the release of hormones that cause contractions to increase causing the baby to come through the birth canal and eventually be birthed out into the world. When a woman's water breaks it is usually a colorless odorless fluid.
When my water broke I didn't really feel anything at first. Eventually it felt like a TON of fluid was coming out! However, in reality I don't think it was that much. Lucky for me I was already in the hospital, already on the bed and out of my normal clothes. Technically your water could break any time, you never know when it'll happen for sure, so i assume depending on the circumstance it could be rather embarrassing and/or extremely funny. Just think of all the situations you could be in when it happens :-) ha!
Sunday was a LONG day. As i said, I arrived at 6:30am, my water broke, they checked the dilation and effacement, they hooked me up to the machine with an IV because I had Group B strep (which i discussed in my 37wk blog) they had to give me antibiotics through the IV. They also checked my blood pressure (which they tracked this many many times during the day). After this we discussed if i was going to have an epidural or not. I was. I did.
Epidural: "The term epidural is often short for epidural analgesia, a form of regional analgesia involving injection of drugs through a catheter placed into the epidural space. The injection can cause both a loss of sensation and a loss of pain, by blocking the transmission of signals through nerves in or near the spinal cord."
Once you get the epidural you're not suppose to eat anything. So before they did this i had a bagel and cream cheese. That was the only thing I had to eat in the whole 12hr period I was in the hospital - lame!
So to put in the epidural they had me sit and sort of lean forward. I couldn't move at all, that was important. The anesthesiologist first gave me a shot to numb the area where he'd be putting in the actual catheter, that shot hurt way more then the actual catheter insert. I always heard the epidural hurts really bad. Not true in my experience. So they inserted that, then shortly after I couldn't really feel things from the waist down. My legs were totally numb. I couldn't even move them by myself. By now I was having major contractions and I imagine would have actually been extremely painful. At one point they were going so crazy they were 30 seconds apart! I couldn't feel any of them. It was great!! I definitely recommend an epidural! We watched my contractions on a monitor and laughed and joked about how intense they looked. At this point I was feeling really great, just extremely tired, I hadn't slept at all the night before. So really I spend the next approximately 11 hours just hanging out, switching sides that I was laying on, talking to my parents, napping... etc. It was actually really quite long and boring.
It was really weird having my legs numbed. When I needed to turn to another side, which by the way Stephanie had me flip over to make sure the medicine was equally numbing each side. Apparently if i only layed on one side the entire time all the medicine would be on that side. So she had to literally pick up my leg and sort of scoot me over. It was really weird and hard. During the 11 hours they also checked my blood pressure, checked monitors for where the contractions were, they checked my dilation and effacement. Oh! i forgot, they also have this little machine thingy that went around my tummy to track the baby's heart beat. Which was continually heard on one of the monitors. Oh and you're probably wondering how in the world did I go pee when my legs were numb and i couldn't walk or stand for so long and hooked up to a bunch of machines. Well, it's this nifty little thing called a urinary catheter. Basically a little tube inserted that allows you to pee through it into this little sac at the end. I found this kinda funny, i couldn't feel if i was peeing or not at all. obviously I did, but how weird right?
alright, so the boring 11 hrs goes by, finally it's getting to be time to start pushing. Now, I was not so numb that I couldn't feel anything. During the hours before this point I could actually feel the baby getting lower and lower in the birth canal. I felt a pressure. Finally it got really strong. I sorta wanted to start pushing. I didn't exactly know what that meant but I felt so much pressure down there that I wanted to do something to get that baby out. Stephanie was so great, she talked me through what I'd need to do, basically how to push. she had me try different positions too. So for those who gave me grief for not taking a Lamaze/birthing class, ha ha for you :-P just like i said, its unnecessary. I was thinking about it and the best reason for taking that would probably be to give the dad an idea of what the heck he's suppose to do during all this. Which by the way Troy was not able to come home and was not able to see the birth. We video taped it for him and took pictures.
So I started pushing. It was actually really exhausting work and sometimes I felt like nothing was happening. However, I had wonderful cheerleaders. Eventually the doctor who was there was a girl, i had another nurse, there was a shift change, but Stephanie stuck around anyways. At one point there were like 4 other girls in there cheering me on. It was pretty awesome. So the pushing... it's hard to tell where to direct your efforts sometimes. But basically at the start of a contraction you push through it as many times as you can, then sort of rest in between. It really was exhausting. And I don't know if it was the medicines or the moving around or what but a couple times I actually got nauseous and threw up!
They gave me a big mirror to use to see what was going on "down there" during all of this. Honestly I was too busy pushing to actually look the whole time. But it did help to give me something to direct my efforts on. Let me tell you it was totally weird and totally cool! How the heck does a baby fit through there!? So to save those who are faint or grossed out by this I'll save you some of the gore, but lets just say it's so messy! There's a lot of things, fluids, blood, etc, that come out with that baby. Oh and for those of you who are wondering, yes, I think everyone poops while trying to give birth. But the nurse wipes it up so fast along with all the other stuff, you'd never even know it happened.
So finally after about an hour and a half ish Eli was born! Out comes this blue ish baby all covered with goop and stuff and a cone-ish shaped head. Not so cute to be honest, but he's mine. My baby. I couldn't help but want to laugh and cry all at the same time. I know I cried. It was just so unexplainable really. By far the happiest moment of my life, second to marrying my Hubby :-)
They put him up on my bare chest, wiped him off a little and just let me look at him for a while. Things that happened after this point are extremely blurred in my memory. So much was going on, I was relieved and exhausted and just ready to eat a huge burger (which i did finally after a while) and then go to sleep. At some point the nurses took Eli away to give him a bath, weigh him, measure him, give him a couple shots, and take foot prints. Some time in there I got him back to try nursing him. This went really well in my opinion, being the first time and all. I'll go into that on another blog all about breastfeeding. I have lots of info about that!
I remained at the hospital for the next two days. That was enough. By the time those two days were up all I wanted to do was go home. I was so sick and tired of that ridiculous hospital. I'll also go into the hospital stay on another blog. I dunno about you, but i had TONS of questions about what happens after the baby is actually out.... uh like, how messy is it really? What is your body doing afterwards? By the way, it's not very attractive or fun.
Overall, delivery was not bad at all. It was definitely a challenge, definitely exhausting, but nothing like I've seen on any movie or TV show. I don't know if anyone should go off of my personal account to judge if they can handle it or not, but I'd say it was not the most painful thing ever and not nearly as bad as I ever thought it'd be.
I'm so happy he's here!
I arrived at the hospital at 6:30am
Started pushing around 5:15pm
Eli was born at 6:32pm
He was 7lbs, 8oz and 20 inches long.
My beautiful baby boy.
