birth story

so last friday evening, mikey and i were hanging out in his playroom around 7 pm.  phil was on call at the hospital and called me just to check in and to tell me that ‘deal or no deal’ was on tv.    i told him that i’d had a few irregular contractions again but it didn’t look like it was going to turn in to the real thing anytime soon.  this was my 3rd (or 4th?) bout of ‘false labor’ and was beginning to lose hope that the baby was ever going to come.  phil was sure this was it though, mostly because he really didn’t want to round in the morning and would rather have the baby to get out of it.  heh.  so i told him i’d do my best!

i put mikey down to bed around 9 pm, still having contractions but they remained 20-30 minutes apart.  though i did walk out of mikey’s room feeling a touch sad that this might be our last night together of just him and i. 

phil called again at 10 pm.  now, contractions were about 12-15 minutes apart and finally getting a bit stronger!  phil said i should call the hospital to see what the nurse thought and he said he’d find the resident to let her know that he might have to leave.  we debated whether or not to call our babysitter to give her a head’s up that we might be calling later in the night. 

phil called again soon after to say he was on his way home!    he said the resident and the rest of the staff told him he should go home.  we were both happy he’d be home even if the baby didn’t come that night.  i then called jessica, our babysitter, to let her know that we might be calling in the middle of the night.  she was excited for us!

once phil got home, i called the hospital and talked to a labor & delivery nurse.  i told her my contractions were about 15 minutes apart, and explained how quickly my first child was born (a little over 4 1/2 hours start to finish).  she said it was good that i called so that they could start my paperwork in case i did come in later.  she said to call again when the contractions were 7-10 minutes apart and longer/stronger. 

phil ran around tidying up the house as i finished packing my hospital bag.  around 10:30 pm, contractions were getting to where i had to breathe through them.  i decided to take a shower (this helped ease the contraction pain last time) and phil called jess.  this was it!

strangely enough, the contractions completely stopped by the time we were waiting for jess to arrive.  i totally thought they were going to send us back home.    we left for the hospital around 11:30 pm and still no more contractions.  we were just about to the hospital and still nothing.  i told phil we might as well turn back and return the dvd we’d rented from blockbuster a few nights ago.  i figured we might as well do that errand and avoid a late fee since i apparently didn’t need to get to the hospital *that* quickly.  and i was hoping my contractions would start up again as we drove around.  thankfully, it worked!  they started up again just as we got close to the hospital.  good thing too as they were coming a lot faster than before.  there are some good things about having a baby in the middle of the night– the hospital is really quiet with almost no one around, and lots of parking spaces!

it was around 12:30 am when we got to the birth center and 1 am when i was all hooked up to the monitors.  at that point, i was 3-4 cm dilated and 80% effaced.  the nurse said she’d check me in another hour to see if i’d made any more progress and then that would determine whether i’d be staying.  c’mon, progress!  at 2 am, i was 4-5 cm and the nurse said they’d be keeping me!  yahoo!    i mostly wanted to not be sent home because i didn’t want jess, our babysitter, to have come over for nothing.  contractions were 2-3 minutes apart and peaking pretty high.  amazingly though, they weren’t that painful at all and the nurse commented that i seemed to be handling them really well. 

at 3 am, the nurse asked if i wanted pain medication.  i was still feeling fine but wanted to keep my options open.  she got an iv started just in case i wanted an epidural.  my first iv and she did a great job without lidocaine!  i wasn’t able to get an epidural the last time and got pretty jacked up from the pain meds they gave me and really wanted to avoid that this time around.  but i still wanted to give the epidural a try.

at 4 am, i was 6-7 cm and the nurse asked if we wanted to call the anesthesiologist.  my contractions were still very manageable but this was my window of opportunity that i missed last time.  so i decided to go for it!  best decision i ever made.  heh heh.  the epidural ended up slowing down my contractions to about 5 minutes apart and gave phil and i the opportunity to rest for a while before having the baby.  phil got in a few hours of sleep and i ‘rested’ in between the blood pressure monitor and the nurse coming in and out.

the nurse popped my water at 5:30 am and started a little pitocin at 6:30 am to speed up the contractions again.  at just before 7 am, i was 10 cm and ready to push.  i remember it being 7 because the nurse called the doctor and said this would be a ‘change of shift’ delivery.  the doctor arrived and 6 minutes of pushing later, allison was born!  not bad, if i do say so myself!  and this time around, i had only a couple of very minor first degree tears.  yay!  afterward, both the doctor and nurse said they hoped this wouldn’t be my last baby as i seemed ‘made to have babies!’ 

definitely the epidural was the way to go!  not that it would have been terrible without it, very likely it would have been faster as my contractions wouldn’t have slowed down, but it was nice to get some rest during the night and have the baby in the morning.  i did have a small bout of nausea afterward, but nothing like when i had mikey.  this time i was able to enjoy meeting allison in those first moments without feeling all dizzy and trying not to throw up on her.  though allison’s body temp was pretty low (95.7) so they had to keep her under the warmer for a couple of hours before they could bring her back.

everything since then has been going awesomely well and i’ll post an update later.  now it’s time to go feed the little girl again.