Yes, I know this post is long overdue (my baby is six weeks old!), but better late than never, right?! And what better time to bring the blog back from the dead than the birth of my beautiful little boy?
Either way, he's here!
The whole labor process started on Wednesday, August 24
th.
Up until that point, I had been having regular, painless contractions pretty
frequently, but nothing ever came of it. I had been 50% effaced since week 36,
but I was only dilated to a 2, and hadn’t had much change since then – and it
had been 3 weeks. I was feeling a little discouraged. Plus, the ultrasound at
37 weeks estimated that he was nearly 7 lbs already (plus or minus half a
pound), and typically babies grow a half pound per week, so he could be well
over 8 lbs! I was definitely not interested in pushing out a 9 lb baby, so I
wanted to get him out right away!
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| 3D shot from 37 weeks |
Nothing I did was making any difference though. I had tried
every natural labor-inducing remedy I came across, everything from walking (4+
miles per day!) to peppermint oil to castor oil (couldn’t bring myself to
actually drink it). I had tried acupressure therapy, eating an entire
pineapple, super spicy foods, bouncing on a birthing ball (aka yoga ball),
drinking pregnancy tea, using my breast pump, and taking evening primrose oil.
The doctor had told me at my week 36 appointment that the baby would be
perfectly fine to come anytime, so I had been trying to induce labor for quite
some time, and nothing was working. My little man definitely had his own
schedule and would do things his own way, regardless of what mom wanted.
On the 24th, I went in for my week 39
appointment, feeling pretty miserable. My belly was huge and uncomfortable, it
was starting to get difficult to just walk, and to top it off, it was 115
degrees outside! My doctor offered to strip my membranes (he had done it the
week before as well, but nothing really happened), and then told me that since
I was right at 39 weeks, we could schedule me for an induction at the hospital!
I was thrilled – only a few more days at the most until I’d have my little one!
Unfortunately, the hospital didn’t have any openings until Monday night at 8pm,
and they were currently running a day behind on inductions. Regardless, I took
that time slot.
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| Last pregnancy shot...I felt soooo huge! |
By the time I got home, I had this crazy feeling like the
baby wasn’t going to wait until Monday. He had been trying to be so defiant
already, working on his own time schedule, that I just knew that since we had a
date he absolutely had to come, he was going to try to throw us off by coming
earlier. Not long after that, I started getting contractions. They weren’t bad
and they were completely irregular, but I could actually feel them now. In
addition, every time I used the bathroom, I was bleeding quite a bit and I’m
pretty sure I lost my mucous plug that afternoon.
That night, at just about midnight, the contractions became
harder and more regular. I stayed up reading a book so that I could keep better
track of them. At first they were about 8-9 minutes apart, but they gradually
got closer and closer together and became harder and harder. At about 4:30 in
the morning, when the contractions were about 6 minutes apart, I decided to
wake Anthony up. The doctor had told us to go to the hospital when they were
consistently 5 minutes apart, so I figured it wouldn’t be much longer. We got
up and put on a movie to watch in the meantime. Anthony, of course, fell back
to sleep within an hour.
At about 6:00, the contractions were about 5:30 apart, and I
started getting nervous/anxious/excited. I sent out a text to everyone in the
family, just letting them know what was going on so they all knew to keep their
phones close by today, as it was probably going to be THE DAY. I ate some
breakfast, knowing that once I got to the hospital, I wouldn’t be given any
food.
Then, at around 7:00, I started having more irregular
contractions. Some would be only 3-4 minutes apart, and others would be nearly
15 minutes apart. By 8:30, they were nearly a half hour apart, and losing
intensity, and I fell asleep for the first time that night. When I woke up
around 10:00, I started crying – I didn’t want to have to go through all of that
all over again, a full 8 hours of intense contractions, just to end up with
nothing.
I was pretty depressed and unmotivated all day, but couldn’t
really sleep much either. Around 2:30 that afternoon, the process started
again, an exact repeat of the night before. Contractions started at about 8-9
minutes apart, then got harder and closer together until about 9:00, when they
fizzled out again. I didn’t sleep much that night either, waking up every 15-30
minutes from another contraction, and then staying up to see if there would be another
one right after or not.
By Friday morning, I was exhausted and still extremely
pregnant. Contractions were still 15-30 minutes apart, occasionally coming
closer than that, just to throw me off. I was tired and hungry, but nothing
sounded good to eat. I just wanted to have my baby and get it over with! I
spent another pointless day just lounging around the house. Late in the
afternoon, I got a little spurt of energy, and thought I might try to walk the
baby out again. It was blistering hot outside, so Anthony and I decided to go
walk around Costco for a bit and run some errands. I kept timing my
contractions and by the time we finished shopping, I was consistently at 7
minutes apart again. Then we met up with his mom, brother, and sisters for
dinner and dessert at Bahama Bucks. While in there, my contractions increased
in intensity to the point that I’d have to pause for a moment during them, and
they were coming about 5 minutes apart. We left there at 8:45 to go home and
pack our bags!
By the time we got home at 9:00, they had stopped again.
This time completely.
The only benefit was that I actually got some sleep Friday
night. It wasn’t the best sleep ever – I was quite upset over the whole thing
and uncomfortable beyond anything I’d imagined – but it was still sleep,
nonetheless.
Saturday morning, I heard Anthony get up to go to work
around 9:30. Ni’cko jumped up in bed with me, and Anthony told him to snuggle
me because I wasn’t feeling good. When I finally woke up a little after 10:00, I
realized that Rhya was laying across my legs and Ni’cko had followed orders
exactly – he was spooning me, with his paw dangled across my neck and his head
on my head. I laughed and carefully reached for my phone to take a picture of
us.
I got out of bed a few minutes after that to use the
restroom, then went back to bed. A few minutes later, the cat wanted out of the
room, so I got up again to let him out and saw a little wet spot in the bed,
about 3 inches in diameter. I had heard about getting a slow leak in your water
before, so I wondered if that was it – I had just peed a few minutes before, so
I was pretty sure I didn’t wet myself. I went to the bathroom again just to be
sure, then went back into bed (I deserved a lazy day, after all, and Anthony
wasn’t there to make fun of me for being in bed all day!). About 20 minutes
after that, the cat realized that nobody followed him out and that he was alone
in the house, so he wanted back in the bedroom. I got up once again, and saw
another little wet spot, this time only about 2 inches in diameter.
I didn’t want to call Anthony just yet, because I knew he
would freak out, and I didn’t know for sure if it was really my water breaking.
Besides, I didn’t have any regular contractions at all, and the ones I had were
so weak that I had to really think about them in order to even notice them
happening. So I just started going about my day. I ate breakfast, played around
on the computer for a bit, talked to my mom on the phone, etc. At noon, Anthony
came home early from work. I told him about what had happened, and he told me
to call the hospital. Of course, they told me they wouldn’t be able to give me
any information unless I came in to be examined, but the nurse let me know that
if I wasn’t continually leaking, then it probably wasn’t my water. Anthony had
me call the doctor on call just in case, and she told me basically the same
thing.
By 2:00, I just felt depressed. Even Anthony looked at me
and said that between a few hours ago and now, I had really changed and looked
beyond miserable. I was very discouraged from what the hospital and doctors
told me. I laid down on the couch and tried to take a nap. Just after laying
down, I started a contraction (it had been about 20 minutes since the last
one). This one was the hardest one of the day, and kept getting stronger. Just
as it peaked, I felt a triple-jump/kick feeling in my stomach, like nothing I’d
ever felt before. My first thought was that the baby had totally farted, really
letting one rip, and I laughed for a moment. My next thought was that something
had exploded in me, and I freaked out thinking the umbilical cord had ruptured
or something. My baby had never moved in the middle of a contraction before,
and I was really worried that he was ok, but he started moving again after the
contraction finished, and it put my mind at ease.
As I continued lying on the couch, I had this feeling of
water pooling around me and running up my back. I felt around me, but
everything was completely dry. I had the urge to use the restroom again (I’m
pregnant, go figure!), so I got up to do that. When I sat down on the toilet,
all of this fluid gushed out of me. I looked down, and it was this clear, milky
looking stuff, almost iridescent, that I knew definitely wasn’t urine. Besides,
I still had to pee. I couldn’t hold it any longer though, so I went ahead and
peed, then spent a good 15 minutes just sitting on the toilet using my phone to
google what amniotic fluid actually looks like, figuring that it probably was
my water that just broke. But really, I had no idea.
I went out then, and just felt like snuggling Anthony on the
couch. A few minutes later, I told him what had happened. We called his mom,
and she agreed that it was most likely my water that had just broken. We talked
about it for a while, and then decided that we should probably pull everything
together. I still didn’t have any contractions yet, so I was taking everything
slow. Finally, I decided that I probably should get up off the couch and
actually get dressed so we could leave soon.
As I walked into the bedroom to grab my clothes, a
contraction hit. It was harder than anything I had yet experienced, and I had
to stop everything I was doing until it passed. Once it was over, I figured I
had about 5 minutes to put my clothes on before I had to worry about the next
one. However, as I was reaching for my clothes, another one hit, this one
bringing me to the ground. It took me a minute to recover, and by the time I
had pulled my pants on, I was having yet another. I realized that they were literally
only about 2-3 minutes apart, meaning that I could be having a baby very, very
soon!
I had the urge to pee again, so I crawled into the bathroom,
and then had another gush of the strange fluid again. Anthony was running
around the house as well, making sure he had the car seat, our overnight bag,
the diaper bag, etc. After finishing in the restroom, I made it back to my bed,
still shirtless, and stayed there for a few minutes, trying to calm myself and
just breathe through everything. It was then that I heard my husband scream.
Really, there was a lot more than just a scream. There was
quite a bit of swearing and f-bombs as well. I pulled myself up and stumbled
out into the kitchen, and he yelled at me to get back, yelled at the dogs to
get out, and wouldn’t tell me what was going on. The only other time I’d ever
heard him scream like that though, was when he found a scorpion in the house,
which is just what had happened. He was reaching for my shoes to bring them to
me, and there was a scorpion in them! As I’m lying back in bed, my mind was
going crazy. I had to get to the hospital – now – but I couldn’t leave the dogs
home alone if there were scorpions in the house, but I had to get to the
hospital right away, but I couldn’t bring home a new baby if there were
scorpions, but I had to get to the hospital!
What seemed like forever later, Anthony came in, sweating
and panting – he had gone around the entire perimeter of the house with
diatomaceous earth! It wasn’t a pretty sight, but at least we could be more at
peace leaving the house to go to the hospital. Everything was packed in the car
now, so I finally pulled my shirt on and we ran out.
When we got to the hospital around 4:30 and I hobbled in,
having to stop briefly for a contraction, they took us into a little office and
started asking us our personal information questions, like name, social,
birthday, occupation, etc. I explained that I had pre-registered, but they
wanted to take down my information again anyway! I kept having to stop them
during contractions, and after a couple minutes, they realized I was probably
serious when I said I was going to have a baby very soon, so they admitted me
to triage around 4:45.
I had decided, even before I got pregnant, that I wanted to
have a natural childbirth. I’m not a big fan of drugs, and I’ve had some bad
reactions to heavy painkillers before, so I wanted to avoid them as much as
possible. Plus, I wanted to make sure I was completely alert during the whole
thing and that my baby would be alert as well. I knew that we both would need
to work together to do this. In addition, I just really wanted to experience
childbirth and know what it felt like, as crazy as that seems.
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| Waiting in triage |
I had bought a book on hypnobirthing that a friend had
recommended. The first half of the book was beautiful and inspiring, talking
about how childbirth is completely natural and how 90% of the world does it
without drugs every single day. I gave up during the second half of the book
though, as it seemed to contradict the first half – childbirth is natural,
people do it every day, you don’t need drugs, but you need to practice and
memorize these 15 different meditation techniques every day for all 9 months
and take all these classes or you’ll never get through it!
To me, childbirth is a completely natural and beautiful
process. I knew from experience working in a surgical center that you end up
feeling the pain that you expect to feel – if you expect something to be
mind-bogglingly painful, it will be! But, if you expect it to be normal and
natural, it will be that too. You get what you expect. I fully intended to
meditate and visualize what I wanted my birthing experience to be, but I never
really got around to spending time doing that. So I was a little nervous about
everything, but just kept reminding myself that I knew, deep inside, that
everything would be completely OK.
I knew though, that going into it, I would have to really
control my environment. I had a CD player and a special CD that I had borrowed
from a friend with gorgeous piano arrangements of hymns. I didn’t want anyone
in the room (other than hospital staff, of course, my husband, and Livi, since
she was the appointed photographer). But everyone knew to just let me be and
not talk to me at all – I think I only said about 50 words during the entire
birthing process. I had to just zone out and get through each contraction on my
own.
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| Attempting to relax during a contraction |
The nurse came a few minutes after I was admitted to triage.
She strapped me up to several monitors and checked me to see how I was
progressing. Sure enough, my water had definitely broken and I was somewhere
between a 6 and 7, 90% effaced! I was absolutely about to have this baby!
I then went into the labor and delivery room. It was right
around 5:00. When they got me situated in there and the nurse left for a
moment, I remember just thinking, “now what?!” Was I supposed to just wait?
When did I actually start pushing? What did I do in the meantime? Family was
coming in and out to support me and see how I was doing. I felt really bad, but
I ended up having to kick everyone out of the room. Even just having people
sitting in there, completely silent or having their own conversations, I could
feel their anticipation and nervous energy and it made it difficult to
concentrate through each contraction. I just had to be alone (with Anthony).
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| Couldn't have done it without him! |
After a few minutes, the nurse came back, and I managed to
ask if she could help me figure out something to do, because the contractions
were really starting to hurt. She laughed and said that lying in bed was
probably the worst thing I could do, and she suggested I try sitting on a
birthing ball instead, and that she’d check my progress in a half hour. I
thought that sounded great.
The birthing ball was my savior. It felt so good to be able
to stretch out my lower back and hips during the contractions and move around
just enough. Anthony sat behind me and massaged my back, then when he had to
leave for a couple minutes to eat some food (he would have been unbearable if
he didn’t have food to keep him going through all of this), Livi took over the
massage job. I don’t know if I would have made it through that half hour
without them.
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| What a life saver! |
A little after 5:30, the nurse came back in. The
contractions were still pretty hard and strong, so it took some time for me to
give up the birthing ball and crawl back into the bed to be checked again. As
she was examining me, she kept saying, “wow, you’re doing really good, you’re
really progressing!” It honestly didn’t sound that promising though, so I
thought she was going to tell me I was between a 7 and 8. At least, that was
what I was hoping for.
But no, it was not to be. Instead, I was at a 9.5!
Technically, you can’t enter in a 9.5, so they had to call
it a 9, but she said there was just a little tiny lip left and I’d be ready to
go! I just had to progress a tiny bit more! My doctor came in to verify about
6:00 and said again that I was almost there, just a little bit left to go, but
to call him when I felt like pushing.
So how in the world would I know when I wanted to start
pushing? I mean, technically, I wanted
to start pushing 3 weeks ago! It was a little after 6 though, and suddenly, I
knew I wanted to push. I let the nurse know and she started instructing me on
how to push. There was so much to remember! Hold your legs like this, crunch up
like this, hold your breath, relax your face, concentrate, and push in this
exact spot (which doesn’t feel like the right place to push) for 10 counts.
Then, take a single deep breath and do it again. And then a third time. And
then you can rest, but only for 2 minutes, because then it will start all over
again. You can only push during contractions, because it won’t do anything
otherwise. If you rest too long between pushes, the baby can slide back up and
you’ll lose everything you’ve just done.
The worst part was, I didn’t feel like I was doing anything.
It felt like as if I were at the gym, trying to move an entire rack of weights.
I could push and push and try to move them, but they would never budge, no
matter how much I tried. It was the same thing here – trying to push and push
and feeling like nothing was moving or making any progress. But I kept going,
mainly because when I was pushing, I didn’t feel the contractions anymore.
Pushing was hard, but at least it didn’t hurt.
The nurse let me know once she could see his head, even
though I still had quite a long way to go. She excitedly told me all about all
the dark hair she could see on his head. I asked how far he was, and she told
me that he was still about two finger widths from crowning, but that I was
moving him about a hair down each time. I mentally pictured my fingers and how
many hairs I could stack up to equal the width of two fingers, and it seemed
like forever away. But I kept telling myself, “Ok, I’ll have this baby out by
6:30!” and then “Well, I’ll definitely have a baby before the shift change at
7:00!” and then “There’s no way he won’t be out by 7:30!”
After about an hour and fifteen minutes of pushing, right
around 7:30, the doctor came in to assess the situation. He let me know that
the baby was sunny side up. It wasn’t a bad thing and it didn’t endanger myself
or the baby, but it made pushing a lot harder and progression a lot slower. He
said that he could try to turn him around. I thought that it would be something
like when the baby is breach and you have to do different stretches to try to
turn him around, so I said I’d go for it. Instead, the doctor reached his hands
right up inside and tried to manually turn him around. That was the most
painful thing I think I had ever felt, but I tried to still stay calm and
focused throughout it all.
Once the baby was turned around, I could actually start to
feel him move down whenever I was pushing. It became a lot easier to feel where
I was supposed to push, and I felt like I was actually making progress for
once. At that point, Anthony and Livi could see his head as well, and they
could see him move when I was pushing correctly. It seemed like during every 3
pushes, the first one didn’t do much, during the second one I remembered what I
was supposed to be doing, but by the third I ran out of energy. Anthony and
Livi were great support though, letting me know exactly what I was doing right
and cheering me on. They were also joined by two high-energy nurses, who had
replaced my wonderful calm nurse that had gotten me through the first half.
I started to really dig in and feel the changes in my body
with each contraction. It no longer felt like contractions, I would just feel
the baby start to move down on his own and I would know it was time for me to
push. I had actually developed my own position for pushing at some point during
the whole thing. I hated holding onto my thighs, and trying to go on one side
or the other didn’t work, nor did trying to squat in the bed. Instead, I held
onto my feet and put them together like a yoga pose, then pulled them up toward
my head. It spread my hips apart while still giving me the leverage I needed to
push. All of the nurses told me they had never seen anyone push like that, but
it worked for me. The only thing I didn’t like about it was having to generate
the energy to pick my legs up for each push, and then when I finished, I had to
set them down slowly instead of just collapsing, otherwise it felt like my hips
might actually pop out of socket.
Finally, I had the sensation that the baby was actually
starting to come out. It gave me another burst of energy, and I didn’t want to
stop pushing. I would try to give a 4th push during each
contraction, although I usually couldn’t hold it the full 10 counts. I just
wanted to keep going, although I knew that if I didn’t take a break between
contractions, I wouldn’t be able to make it through. At one point, the doctor
said it was all still pretty tight, and I might need an episiotomy or I could
tear. I let him know that I really didn’t want to have to do that, so to only
cut if there was no other option. So he started rubbing mineral oils and
massaging the way to help the area open up more.
After a few minutes, he told me, “Give me a big push! Now
give me another one! Now, just one more half of a push!” In my mind, I was
screaming, “A half of a push?! What in the world is a half of a push?! And why
would I only need a half of a push?! I want to get this baby OUT!” But I gave
him my best attempt at a half of a push, and then he said, “Ok, I have the
head!”
I didn’t believe him.
So I looked down, for basically the first time in the entire
process, and sure enough, there was an entire head there! My only thought was
that it was very blue and very large. I don’t know exactly what I expected, but
the head seemed huge, sticking out from between my legs. I couldn’t believe it!
Then he told me to give another little push, and the rest of
the baby just slipped right out. I barely had time to think, “wait, that was
it?!” and they were handing me my baby. He was slimy and wet and still very
blue, but I didn’t care one tiny bit. I took him and cradled him against my
chest, and suddenly nothing else mattered in the world. He lay there for a
moment, skin to skin, then lifted up his head and looked directly into my eyes.
We stayed that way for several moments, making perfect eye contact. It was the
most incredible experience of my life.
I finally had my baby. My sweet, beautiful, perfect baby Rio.
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| Our new little family of three! |
Stats:
Andre Rio Mauro
Born August 27, 2011
8:04PM
7 lbs 10 oz
21.5 in
