As usual, I had told everyone Devin was going to be born earlier than his due date. When I was pregnant with Ryan, I said the same thing, and everyone told me, "No, you never have your first borns early, it just doesn't work that way." So I told them all I thought he was coming around June 19th. He was born June 24th (almost June 23rd, but that's a story for another time...)
I originally thought he was coming August 28th, and each time I went in for a check-up at the OB's, they commented on how low he was in my pelvis already. I was already at 3 cm, 70% effaced at 35 weeks when they checked, so I was really confident on his coming into this world early on.
August 28th came and went, and no Devin. We all went out for our usual pizza night with Sean's family, and we tossed around ideas of when we now thought he might be born. Most people thought September 5th, but Jaron suggested that since I didn't have him in August like we thought, that September 6th would be ok, since it was Labor Day and all.
Fast forward to Sunday, September 5th. That day, we went out and picked out our Christmas tree at the tree farm we go to every year. I was kind of bummed out that we didn't have Devin with us yet, but made the best of it.
That afternoon I got very tired. We were visiting with his family, and I asked Sean if he could take me home because all I wanted to do was take a nap. That was kind of strange for me, so I started wondering if Devin would make his appearance soon.
I did go home and take a nap, and although I would have the Braxton Hicks that I had been having for many weeks, there wasn't anything new. At my appointment earlier that week, they had mentioned that Devin seemed higher up than he was before. I was so bummed out, since they had said he was so low before. I ended up doing some research and found out that sometimes baby's will get in a funny position and have a hard time coming into the birth canal because they aren't in optimal position. I read that if you get on your hands and knees and arch your back and relax it, it will help the baby get into the correct position for birth. I did this a couple times, and looking back, I wonder if it was what got everything started.
I ended up going to bed at midnight, and tossed and turned for a bit. Sometime around 1 am, I woke up with a terrible contraction. It literally shook my entire body. I lay there in the dark for a bit, wondering what to do. Then there was another.
I got up, went to the bathroom and went into the computer room where Sean was still up playing games with his friends. I casually told him I thought was in labor, but wasn't too sure yet.
By 1:30 am, I thought I should start timing my contractions as they were getting more powerful and regular. They started out 8 minutes apart, and within an hour they were down to 6 minutes apart. My midwife said to call when they were 5 minutes apart, at least 1 minute in length, for an hour. So I kept timing them.
Suddenly they dropped to 3 minutes apart. At this point, I had to moan through them. My body would be shaking. I was still not convinced it was the real thing, so I didn't want to call. I didn't want to be "that lady who always called for false alarms." I kept telling Sean I couldn't do it anymore, and would repeat it over and over to him.
Finally, after 20 minutes of them 3 minutes apart, Sean convinced me to call my midwife. I couldn't even make it through the entire automated message before I had to hand Sean the phone while I had a contraction. He was so paniced, poor guy, he had no idea what to say. I told him to give them my name, date of birth and phone number and what was going on and I was sure the midwife could figure it out.
When Cindi called back, again, I was having a contraction, so he answered the phone. Sean did his best to fill her in on what was going on, and when my contraction was over, I took the phone and we decided it be best for me to head to the hospital.
I had no idea how many centimeters I was at that point, but I was hoping for at least 4 by that point. I told Sean he needed to call his mom and ask her to meet us at the hospital because I didn't think we would make it to her house without me having the baby there as well.
In the car, I was having such painful contractions that I could barely take them. It was all going so fast, I was so scared, I had no idea what to expect. This was so different from when I was in labor with Ryan, it was like I had never had a kid before.
I had to yell through the contractions at this point. I would roll the windows down in the car because I was so afraid I would blow out Sean and Ryan's eardrums. At one point, I yelled, "Help, mom!", which to this day Sean pokes fun at me about because he was so afraid someone would think he was abducting someone.
We got to the hospital, and thankfully Sean's mom and sister was waiting for us in the parking lot. I turned backwards in my seat and was biting the headrest of the chair while Sean got Ryan over to their car as well as his belongings.
We then started to go into the hospital and I just felt like at that point that I could not walk anymore. Sean went and got a wheelchair for me, and we lucked out that a security guard was making rounds at that same time and he was able to get us through the locked doors and up to the maternity floor.
Once up on the maternity floor, I was able to just close my eyes and breathe through my contractions. They had me to into an observation room, and they were going to hook me up to monitors to see how far apart my contractions were, as well as check on the baby.
The nurse was putting my info into the computer, and I had a couple contractions. On the 2nd one, she said "Well, we normally monitor you for a while, but you seemed to be bearing down on that last one, so let's have you just get into bed and I will check and see how far along you are."
She checked me sitting up in bed, since it hurt so bad to even be sitting from a standing position. I was so surprised when she said "Ok, you are 9.5 cm. Don't push, we are going across the hall to a labor room." Then she told me that it was going to get crazy in my room since I was so far along, and not to be alarmed. They quickly called Cindi, my midwife, and we were all thankful that she lived 5 minutes away.
In the other room they had me get into the labor bed, again sitting up, because I literally could not get into a laying position. When Cindi got there, she asked if she had time to get changed, and the nurse looked at and told her to do it quickly.
Each time I would have a contraction at this point I internalized it, and would just hold one of Sean's hands, and one of the nurses hands and squeeze them (hopefully not too hard!). At least I was able to be quiet through them now, lol!
Cindi came in, checked me and told me to go ahead and push whenever I wanted to. My next contraction I pushed, and she reached up and moved the last little lip of the cervix I had left. That hurt more than anything else up to this point!
I pushed just like I remembered when I was having Ryan. I felt Devin coming down the birth canal so fast, I could barely believe it. They had been telling me since I got to the labor room that my baby would be here soon, but I was kind of like, yeah right, they said that with Ryan and it took me 5.5 hours to push to get him out.
The next contraction, Cindi broke my water, which was tricky because Devin was so far down, the bag of waters was taught and she had a hard time getting enough to break. When she did get it, Sean said only a small trickle of water came out.
The next contraction, I pushed him down more and he was crowning. I was in so much shock that it was happening so fast (and no pain!!), and the nurse said that I should feel some burning and it was normal, just push through it. I never did feel any burning, but I kept pushing.
When his head was out, Cindi unwrapped the cord around his neck, and with a tiny little push he came flying out. I am completely serious in the flying out part. I will never remember this image for the rest of my life. From my perspective I saw Sean holding my right leg, the nurse holding my left and Cindi at the end of the bed, and when Devin came out, he did so on a wave of water from all the amniotic fluid that was behind his body. Everyone turned their heads like a huge tidal wave was coming at them. I got Sean in the face, and I hit the lamp at the end of the bed. Cindi joked that if she wasn't at the end of the bed she didn't know where he would have landed.
Everyone in the room was impressed by Devin's cord, which was twice as long as a normal one. It was funny, one of the first things they did after making sure he was ok, was get a measuring tape so they could see how long the cord was.
Everything was just wonderful, Devin was on my chest for some skin to skin time, and he was just so perfect and beautiful. I thought he looked much smaller than Ryan, so I was thinking he was 6 lbs, but his birth weight ended up being 7 lbs, 5 oz and 20 inches long. He nursed like a pro as soon as he was born, I was surprised. Ryan and I always struggled with breastfeeding, I was kind of expecting the same thing. The nurse said that she feels that first babies leave a note behind for other babies so they know what to do when they come out.
Unfortunately, I had some real heavy post partum bleeding because my uterus was in shock from everything happening so fast. For about a half hour after he was born, Cindi massaged my uterus and the nurse gave me two shots of Pitocin to slow the bleeding. She said it is more common during precipitous labors (which is when total labor to delivery time is 3 hours or less), and that is what I had. Labor started sometime after 1ish, and he was born at 4:15 am.
Thankfully it worked! I had no tearing or stitches and I was amazed at how wonderfully I felt. Nothing at all like when I had Ryan! I felt like I could get up and dance!
It was a beautiful birthing experience, I couldn't have asked for anything better. Loving being a happy family of 4 :)
No comments:
Post a Comment