Birth Story
Labour started at 1am on the 24th when I woke up after falling asleep on the couch to my water broken (good thing for leather!). I was just having mild cramping at that point, but I had to go into the hospital to get my first dose of antibiotics (I had a positive GBS test). By the time I got cleaned up and into the hospital I was having contractions about 12-15 minutes apart. I talked a really nice nurse into giving me the 6 hour antibiotic (instead of the 4 hour one) so that I could go home and get a longer rest. I got the antibiotic at 3am so I would have to be back to get my next dose at 9am. The nurse checked me and told me I was 1.5 cm and 50% effaced. When we got home I slept on and off for an hour or so, and at that time contractions were about 5 minutes apart and lasting 1-2 minutes long. It was worse to try to sleep during the break, because it just made me feel like I had no break and was constantly waking up in pain. I called my doula and she said to use a warm shower to try to make the contractions shorter because a 2 minute contraction was fairly long. I got into the shower and that helped a lot with both the intensity and the length of the contractions. I stayed in the shower until we ran out of hot water. After I got dressed, we started timing the contractions again which were about 3-5 minutes apart and still lasting at least 1 minute long. Aaron was starting to think we should be heading to the hospital soon. We decided to go since it was almost 9am anyways and I wanted to use their hot water. We called our doula to get her to meet us there. We had to wait in the waiting room for about 30 minutes (which was NOT fun at all sitting there with contractions) before the let us into triage so that I could get my next dose of antibiotics. At that time they stuck a rookie nurse on me who checked me and said I was 2 cm but she couldn't tell how effaced I was (are you kidding me, get out of here and send me someone good!). By the time that was all done and we got settled into a room, it was about 10am. Our doula met us there and kept me company while Aaron made 3 trips down to the car to get all our stuff. We laughed thinking about how many trips it would take to leave with another little person. After using the bathroom a few times, I told Aaron he needed to fix the toilet paper roll because I was going to go crazy if I had to go through another contraction sitting on the can ripping teeny tiny pieces of toilet paper off the roll at a time. He went in there and just took the whole roll off the holder (thanks!). I decided to try the warm shower again, but for some reason it was not as comfortable as it was at home. Dr. Mahungu came in around 1pm and said I was 3cm and 80% effaced. She started talking about augmenting my labour with oxytocin since my membranes had been ruptured for 12 hours and I was GBS positive. That also meant continuous fetal monitoring, which meant being stuck in bed. I knew that if she did that I would not be able to handle the contractions without some sort of pain medication, so I flat out said no and told Aaron and our doula to not let her do it. Aaron did a good job of convincing her to wait for another hour or so just to see what happened. The doctor came back after an hour to check me and said I was 4 cm and 100% effaced. She started pushing the oxytocin again and somehow Aaron bought me another 2 hours. Those 2 hours were very hard labour. It was so intense that several times I almost caved about the pain meds, but I kept talking myself out of it. After about an hour, I started throwing up a lot (which actually felt pretty good) and I had a feeling I was in transition. I needed to lie down for a little while, so I got into bed on my side and dozed a bit in between the most intense contractions yet. They were so strong it took everything I had not to scream at the top of my lungs. I somehow managed to keep myself calm and relaxed. At around 3pm I started to feel the urge to push so my doula got a nurse to go and get the doctor. At 3:20pm the doctor checked me and said that I was 10cm and ready to push (I knew that, that’s why we came to get you). I did a few pushes on my side but my leg kept cramping up from trying to hold it in the air, so we switched to squatting at the birthing bar. That was much better and after just a few pushes our doula said that she could start to see your head. At that point, the doctor came in and announced that she had to go and do a c-section. The nurses told her that they didn't think that she had enough time for that, but she went anyways. The nurse started to get ready to deliver the baby, just in case the doctor didn’t make it back in time. She was back really quickly (about 15 minutes - I think she must have gotten another doctor to close up the c-section). At that time the baby was starting to crown so they put me back into a semi-sitting position, which actually felt pretty good at that point. On my next push the doctor started to count at me but I ignored her and our doula told her to stop because I didn't need her to do that (thanks!). I took my time during crowning, which stung really badly. Once the head was out, it was just one more big push and it was all over. At 4:21pm Dayton was born (after almost exactly 1 hour of pushing). They gave him to me right away and he let out a couple of cries. Aaron cut the cord after about 30 seconds. Another push and the placenta was out. At that point I started to hemorrhage, so Aaron took Dayton to the warmer to get weighed (8lbs 4oz), measured (21”), and cleaned up while they tried to get the bleeding to stop with uterine massage. That didn't work, so I agreed to oxytocin to try to get it to stop. Even after a huge dosage that didn't work very well, so they had to check to see if I had any clots or placental fragments left that were causing my uterus not to close up properly. The pain of the doctor removing the clots was absolutely excruciating. It was 10 times worse than all of labour put together. They gave me the laughing gas to try to "take the edge off", but it did absolutely nothing. At one point I almost kicked the doctor just out of instinct because it hurt so bad (they had 2 nurses holding me down plus our doula tying to distract me). Aaron was really worried and asked if they could give me something for the pain. They said no, the only thing they could do was knock me out, which no one really wanted. After what seemed like a really long time, the bleeding started to slow down and the doctor said I didn’t need any stitches. The nurse brought Dayton back to me so that I could feed him. He latched on, no problem and ate for about 20 minutes while watching us all watching him. He was a cute and perfect baby boy!
