Part One (January 6 – 40 weeks 4 days):
Wednesday night (Jan. 6) I was feeling very crampy and just sort of blah. I had been having random contractions for the past two weeks, but nothing regular or promising. We put the kids to bed a little early and Leroy and I went upstairs to watch a movie but I just couldn't get comfortable. Every position I got into hurt. Finally we just gave up on the movie and I found a semi comfy position and started to read.
After awhile I start noticing a pattern. I was having contractions every 6-10 minutes. After awhile longer they evened out to every 9 minutes and they were getting stronger. This went on for almost two hours no matter what position I was in. Well I started thinking – it was after 10 already and we were supposed to have a major cold snap with sleet and ice. I didn't want to have to get the kids up in the middle of the night and I didn't want to be in a position where my mother in law might have to drive them anywhere in sleet and ice. Leroy and I talked about it, and decided to send them to grandma then, even though we knew we were in the early stages. So he got everyone up and packed for school the next day and took them to his mom's. Of course they were all excited and kept asking, “is she coming? Is it time for Lucy?”
Around 11:30 I was still having contractions, but I knew it was going to be a long time so I decided to go to sleep for awhile. 1:00 I woke up with horrible menstrual type cramps, still contracting with a ton of pelvic pressure and loose stool and nausea. “Ok,” I thought. “We're getting somewhere.” I got in the shower for awhile and just let the hot water run until it ran out. The sound of the water was really relaxing, so I just focused on the the sound and let things happen. Sometime after 2:00 I managed to get back to sleep but kept waking up from cramping and contractions every 30 minutes or so. Cool. Progress.
Then suddenly I woke up and it was 8:25. No cramps. No contractions. No baby. Leroy wanting to know if he should even go to work or not – I had no idea what to tell him. Had to call the mother in law and tell her no baby. Upset kids. Upset me.
Part Two (January 7):
I had a midwife appointment at 11:00, so Leroy decided to just call in to work and tell them he’d come in after lunch. I spent the morning puttering around on the computer and feeling just completely depressed. I was so ready to have a baby. I was also exhausted since I hadn’t slept very well. Hubby went and ran some errands and then came back to take me to the midwife. When we got there I told her about the contractions from the night before, but that absolutely nothing was happening anymore and she (Amber) asked me if I wanted an internal. I said yes because I wanted to know if anything was happening in there. I went to go pee in a cup and I overheard the other midwife (Joanie) saying something about my face being puffy. “Oh great,” I thought. “I must really look like crap.”
Amber did the internal and said that I was at 5 cm and 85% effaced but that the baby was still high. She and Joanie started telling me that my labor would probably pick up again that night. She asked if we were ready and Leroy said we needed groceries. They told us to go grocery shopping so I could walk around and get gravity on our side, eat a high protein lunch and then take a nap. At this point Joanie was taking my blood pressure. It was 140/90 for the second week in a row (even after me spending most of the previous week lying around). They told me I could get dressed and stepped out of the room.
When they came back there was a whole new set of instructions. I was NOT to go to the store, I was to go home and go to bed where I needed to stay. They gave us instructions on how to make a warm castor oil compress that I was supposed to put on my abdomen while I napped. When I woke up, Leroy was supposed to make parsley broth which I was supposed to drink every half hour and I was also supposed to take Calcium Magnesium to try to get my BP to start falling. Amber said, “you need to have this baby now.”
So once we got home I called my mom and then went to sleep for about an hour and a half with the castor oil compress (so glad I didn’t have to drink it) and then the parsley broth started – which wasn’t too bad. Around 6:00, Amber called and asked if I was having any contractions. I wasn’t. She told me to take a hot bath before I went to bed and to use my breast pump for about 15 minutes. If she didn’t hear from me during the night she would be there first thing in the morning and we would “get aggressive.”
My mom called around 7:30ish and while I was talking to her I started getting contractions that I actually had to breathe through. See ya, Mom! I ran my hot bath and called downstairs to tell Leroy he needed to call Amber and tell her the contractions were 7 minutes apart, intense, and I lost my plug – just as a heads up that yes, we would probably need her tonight. She didn’t answer her phone, but at that point I thought I had plenty of time. I was in the tub and having a lot of back labor, when she called back and asked if we needed her to come now or wait. I didn’t want to make any decisions at that point. It seemed soon to be telling her to come, but I realized that I was moaning through contractions and since I’d been 5cm that morning… I said, “Tell her I transition REALLY fast.” Then I had a contraction. Leroy said, “judging from her face – you might want to come now.”
The water started to get cold so we moved onto the bed and I started having contractions more or less on top of each other and it was getting tough to breathe through them. I started to think about blowing down a straw. I tried to make my breath as narrow as I could and then blew it in a spiral down an imaginary straw (white with blue stripes)
Joanie and Amber got there. I didn’t really notice when they came in. They took my BP and made me lay on my left side. (I guess my BP was pretty high) After that I wasn’t really aware of them. Someone was rubbing my back with warm oil and someone was rubbing my legs but all I really knew was that it felt good – like disembodied hands, kind of a strange sensation. All of a sudden I felt tremendous pressure. I tried to push a few times on my side but I couldn’t really do anything productive and I thought I would try to sit up a bit, but somehow I got flipped flat onto my back. This was horrible, but I couldn’t physically move myself and I couldn’t seem to articulate that I needed to move. It seemed beyond hard to push and I couldn’t figure out what the problem was until she started to crown and my water broke – then everything got much easier! I wasn’t just trying to push out a baby, but a bulging bag as well. She gave her first cry before she was even born. They put her up on my chest and covered her with a towel, and there she was all pink and perfect and vernixy. 10:14 pm – only about two and a half hours since the first contraction.
Then things got confusing. They cut her cord immediately and I couldn’t figure out why because we had discussed waiting until the placenta delivered. Then they gave me a shot of pitocin in my leg (which immediately began shaking like crazy) and told me we needed to get the placenta out. I was just laying there thinking why? What’s your rush? I wasn’t having any contractions and I felt no urge to push. Amber was telling me that the cord (which was over 3ft long) was too thin at the placenta end and she couldn’t help me so I needed to push it out. I tried but nothing happened and mostly I just wanted to look at my baby so I wasn’t being particularly co-operative. It took me a minute or two but I realized that something was going on that wasn’t quite in the plan because Joanie and Amber both kept pushing me to push. After about 5 minutes the pit took effect and I was able to deliver the placenta. Apparently, it was much larger than average and part of it had ruptured at some point during the delivery. Also my BP had risen alarmingly high to the point that if I hadn’t been basically having a baby when they got there, they would have taken me to the hospital (they didn’t tell me that until the next day though – probably a good idea).
From this point on everything was wonderful. They made the two of us a nice herbal bath to soak in while they cleaned everything up (they even folded two loads of my laundry) and then when we were ready they weighed and measured her. Everyone was surprised that she only weighed 8lbs because she just looked so fat – we were all guessing closer to 9.
They left around midnight with strict instructions that I was on bed rest until further notice and they would be back the next morning.
By the next afternoon my BP had started to head back to normal and I was shedding vast amounts of water weight. On Sunday night I finally got the all clear to get up, but still take it easy. I bruised or cracked my tail bone when she was born so that was a little uncomfortable, but other than that I was very happy.
I’m fairly sure that if I had been going the OB route, they would have induced me the week before and I’m really glad I was able to avoid that this go around. My BP had been well in the normal range until the last two weeks and I wasn’t experiencing headaches or upper abdominal pain or any other Pre-E symptoms (which I had never had with any other pregnancy) – so it was nice not to be pressured into induction.
I was amazed afterwards, by the realization that, when drugs weren’t even an option, I didn’t even think about them. I’d never had an epidural before, but in the hospital they’d always given me something “to take the edge off” – not that it did a whole lot.
Amazing.
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