Our first baby, sex unknown, was due July 14th 2012. This waiting game was so exciting, nerve racking and terrifying all at once. Will baby be OK? Will Mom be OK? And most of all, how bloody painful will this thing called “labour” be? We had attended all the Sally Elliot classes, which were amazingly hilarious, but scary all at the same time. So we should be good right? Well here is the story of the birth of our first baby.
I, Mom, woke up bright and early on the morning of Wednesday June 20th 2012. It was like any other day. I waddled around the house at 36weeks/4 days pregnant getting ready for a day of work at the hospital. And like every other day, I bent down to grab the strawberries out of the bottom of the fridge to pack in my lunch. At 6:50am, this is when I felt the “gush” that made my day go from normal to life changing. Yup, my water broke right there in front of the fridge at three and a half weeks early. For a second I thought, “Did my bladder just give out?” So off to the bathroom I went, when once again, “gush”! Nope, that was definitely not my bladder! In a panicked voiced I called out to my husband and told him that something was definitely going on. So it was out of bed for him and onto packing our bags. Just the night before we had packed the baby's bag and we had thought of packing our own bags, but with three and a half weeks left, we were sure we had time. Wow were we wrong! Once all the bags were packed, my husband politely asked if he could take a shower before we left. Sure, why not, it could be hours before he saw a shower.
After packing the bags and throwing the car seat and base, which we also thought we had time to install, in the car, it was off to the hospital. Of course we hit early morning traffic and construction, so it made the trip seem that much longer. However, I hadn't felt much for contractions. I had brief moments of, “maybe my belly just got tight” or “maybe that was a twinge in my back”. But in all honesty, I really didn't feel much of anything.
We arrived at the hospital at 8:15am where we registered at Emerg and then made our way up to Labour and Delivery. There, they checked me to make sure my water had in fact broke, which by this point I knew for sure that I wasn't still peeing! After some phone discussion between the intern and my doctor, they decided that I should be induced. Their reasons were that my water had broke, I wasn't feeling any contractions, I hadn't had my Group B Strep swab done, and they wanted this baby out within 24 hours. We, on the other hand, wanted to wait a little bit, go for a walk and see if this whole process would continue on it's own. So off for a walk we went. And it did the trick. As we walked around, I finally started to feel contractions, and a fancy iPhone App was doing a great job at keeping track of how irregular they were.
Once we made our way back to L&D after a coffee stop at Robin's Donuts at 11am, they wanted to check to see how far along I was before putting any more thought into inducing. Well, to our surprise, four hours after my water had broke, I was at 6cm. Just like we had hoped, this process was going on it's own.
It wasn't until we headed to our birthing room and I noticed the nurse was in a mad dash to get my IV antibiotics started, that I realized how fast this whole labour was going, and that it wasn't slowing down any. See, I knew that since I hadn't had my Group B Step swab done, that the antibiotics had to be running for at least three hours before the baby was born. At the speed the nurse was moving, I knew they didn't expect me to have three hours left. This was the point where I thought, “how silly of us for bringing a lunch kit full of snacks and drinks to get us through the hours and hours we should have ahead of us”.
In the meantime, my contractions were still coming along, more regular now, but not too painful. It was also at this point were we talked about an epidural. On one hand, my contractions were very manageable and didn't hurt all that bad. On the other hand, I knew they were bound to get worse. So, while we hummed and hawed about it, and after walking in circles around the room quietly breathing in and out, I decided to have a nice hot bath. And oh did that bath feel good. My husband sat on the the toilet and we chitchatted. Every now and then I went silent so I could breath away my contractions while my husband kept on talking. After about 45 minutes, the contractions started to get stronger and stronger. It was time to get out of the tub. This is when things started to speed up into high gear.
The few steps between the tub and the bed was when I decided that I was getting that epidural. These contraction things really do hurt! But before I could get it, I had to be checked again to see how far along I was. At 12:30pm, five and a half hours after my water broke, I was 9.5cm, which I found out in a hurry equals no epidural. Au natural it was going to be.
So off goes my nurse goes in a hurry to call my doctor in from her clinic, but we were pretty sure this baby wasn't going to wait for her to get there. About a minute after the nurse went rushing out the door, I had “the urge”. One never truly understands what it means to have the urge to push until it happens, and at that moment, there was no stopping me. So there we were, me standing by the bed pushing and screaming “I'M PUSHING”, and my husband hitting the call button in a frenzy yelling back at me “STOP PUSHING”. Ha, stop pushing was not what I was about to do.
In ran my team of helpers, two interns and two nurses. At 12:37pm, after getting me back on the bed and my “transformer bed” switched into a birthing bed, we were ready to get this show on the road. The pushing began. Once I figure out the breathing, the pushing and that trying to pull my husband's shoulder out of it's socket was a bad thing, I felt totally in control. After every set of pushing, I made sure to ask my intern, “am I making progress?”, to which I got the answer yes followed by a little giggle. I was just making sure my pushing wasn't in vain.
I knew I was making progress when I reached “the burning ring of fire”. WOW, and I even said it out loud, that really does burn!!!! This is about the time they asked if I wanted a mirror. Serious? You want me to look at whats going on down there? No thank you I politely said. I'd rather just close my eyes and keep on pushing.
After a few minutes of pushing, out came the baby's head, and in walked my doctor. She made it to the end of the bed just in time to catch the rest of the baby's body that was on it's way out. After a quick few seconds and hearing, “It's a boy!” my beautiful slimy little baby was put on my chest for my husband and I to adore. He really was beautiful and perfect in every way. He had all his fingers and toes, ears and nose, weighed 5lbs 15oz and was 19in long. His name was Braxton Avery, a name we came prepared with.
I couldn't have asked for a better labour and delivery. It was fast at six hours with 19 minutes of pushing, and totally manageable without any drugs. My baby was born alert and perfect and I felt like a million bucks. I even said my “please and thank yous” right until the end and never said a bad word to anyone. I had a second degree tear, but I didn't feel a thing after getting my stitches and had only needed a couple Tylenol. Today our baby boy is 3 months old, hitting all the milestones, and is flashing his toothless smile all day long.
