A Birth Story (Part Uno)

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It was only after spending several hours re-reading old posts that I had written about the little guy and his time as an infant, that I realized that I had never actually shared his birth story with you guys. And what’s even worse is that he will be three in a few short months…and this is the first that I’m getting around to it. It wasn’t really anything all that dramatic; and for the most part things went pretty smoothly. But for the sake of having it written down so that I can include it in his baby scrapbook, I thought I’d share it with you.

Little Man’s original Due Date was November 4, 2008. The doctors were never 100% of this date because 1) I didn’t find out I was pregnant until I was close to four months along; and 2) I had no idea when he might have been conceived. Apparently he was conceived in January, but since I’d taken four pregnancy tests and all of them came back negative (including an actual test done by my Ob/Gyn in March 2008), we didn’t have a clue when to expect his arrival.

I went in for my routine weekly exam on Thursday, October 23. I was 3 cm dilated and I can’t remember what percent effaced already. Everything looked great, and my doctor made his guess that I would be in labor by Sunday night. I was very, very pregnant. I mean, big fat whale pregnant. And miserable. My back, my stomach and my legs ached nonstop. I couldn’t sleep, because I couldn’t get comfortable; and when I did fall asleep, I would wake up having to pee (go figure). [Please excuse the crap-quality photo. This was before the days of my SLR.]

I was determined when the doc told me that things checked out okay, not to have to wait  much longer to have my baby. I was 38 weeks, I’d reached “full term” and I was tired of being pregnant. So, I spent the next day researching ways to induce labor (safely). Hubs and I started trying pretty much everything. I ate the spicy food, we had sex, but nothing was working. Until I discovered pregnancy pressure points and contraction stimulation. Apparently, placing heat across your boobs causes contractions. Who knew?

Sunday night, starting at 9:00 pm, I started trying these little tricks. It didn’t seem to be working, so I called it quits, and went to bed. At 2:05 (I remember exactly what time it was because I always check my clock when I wake up at night to see how much longer I can sleep), I got up to pee. When I stood up, I literally thought I had peed my pants. I went to the bathroom, and it just kept coming. That’s when it clicked that I was in labor and that my water had broken. I went to the side of the bed to wake the hubs up, and he rolled over on me, thinking it was time to go to work. When I whispered that it was “time” he jumped up like someone had lit a fire under him. I called my doctor, she told me to come on to the hospital.

We already had everything packed up, and I wasn’t really having any contractions yet. So we both took a shower. I washed and dried my hair, and even put on a little makeup. But 45 minutes later, when we were getting ready to head out the door, the contractions started up like a beast. They were never less than 5-6 minutes apart. We lived about 15 minutes from the hospital in Saint Petersburg, and since it was the middle of the night, we didn’t really have to fight traffic to get there. Hubs did turn the emergency flashers on, just so we didn’t have to sit and wait and dead red-lights.

When we got to the hospital, we had to park the car in the parking deck and walk to the emergency room entrance. Talk about a sight. My in labor and overly plump self waddling across the street. It was really funny. And to save my life, I can’t remember what I was wearing that night. But I’m sure it was nothing cute or slightly attractive.

The ER was dead, so we were able to go straight back and up to Triage on the maternity floor. I remember that the wheelchair ride was my favorite (I know, I’m such a kid) and that I had no clue where we were going. The took us down every back corner in the hospital. I couldn’t even begin to tell you how to get to where we ended up.

Once in triage, I had to pee on a little piece of paper so the nurses would know if I was (or wasn’t) really in labor. The fact that I was still dripping water was kind of a giveaway, but you know how those things go. They gave me a gown and those God-awful pregnancy panties to wear (seriously, those are the worst things EVER) and began the process of starting an IV. The IV hurt worse than the epidural. The nurse stuck me two times, in two different places (despite my insistence that she would never be able to start an IV where she was sticking) and blew both veins. Finally she called in a different nurse, who stuck me exactly where I’d be telling the other nurse to stick me, and she got it the first time.

The contractions were still there, but not so bad that I needed drugs (yet). And when they checked to see how far I was dilated, I was still at just over 3 cm.

That’s when we had to start walking…

I’ll continue this post later on during the week to keep it from getting so obnoxiously long. I was in labor for 17 hours. So there’s still plenty of story to tell.  🙂