My brother Owen came to visit on Friday evening. The plan was for him to spend Saturday with us, pick up his girlfriend Julie at the airport on Saturday afternoon, we'd have a nice evening together, and they would leave to drive up to Idaho on Sunday morning. Owen had been joking that it would be cool if the baby came while he was here. Haha, the joke was on him...
I woke up around 8:00 Saturday morning and felt some gooey moisture between my legs. I knew I hadn't peed myself, so I excitedly told Jeff that my water had broken. When Owen came upstairs and I told him too, he just stopped and looked at me for a second. "Seriously?" I don't think he really believed me at first, but it eventually sunk in that I wasn't joking - Audrey was coming during his visit after all!
I put on a pad (it felt more like a slow leak than a gush) and we went about our morning routine of getting the kids dressed and getting breakfast ready. Jeff made French toast and then Jeff and Owen worked on installing our gas dryer while I was making phone calls. I called Mom and told her about my water breaking, and she reminded me that I needed to call the midwife.
So I called the midwife. By this time, it had been a bit over an hour and I was starting to get contractions. Since I was already dilating and the baby was still high up (according to my last checkup), the midwife wanted me to come in and be monitored a bit since there was a chance for cord prolapse.
My contractions were coming pretty regularly, about five minutes apart though not yet uncomfortable, so I figured we would probably not be coming back home if we went in. Owen cheerfully volunteered to watch the kids while Jeff and I were at the hospital, we took the car seats out of the van and showed Owen how to use them (so he could take the kids when he went to pick up Julie), we gathered all the stuff we needed to take with us, and headed out to the hospital.
It was a bit after 10:00 when we got to the hospital. The contractions had been coming 3-4 minutes apart, but they slowed down quite a bit on the ride over. At triage I was hooked up to the monitors, which showed that the baby's heart rate was just fine. They checked to make sure that the fluid I had felt really was amniotic fluid, but it turned out it actually wasn't. It was just super watery and prolific discharge. I felt a little silly about that - you'd think I'd recognize amniotic fluid by now. Oh well, it ended up not really mattering, since I was dilated to a 5 and 70% effaced. I was in labor and we were going to stay until the baby was born!
Since contractions weren't really feeling strong yet, and the delivery room wasn't quite ready, the midwife encouraged us to get out and walk around for a while before being admitted into L&D. So off we went. First we walked around the halls of the second floor (where L&D is located), then got more adventurous and headed downstairs to walk around more of the hospital. As long as I was up and walking, contractions were consistently 3 minutes apart. But if I sat down at all, they immediately slowed to 5+ minutes.
We started getting hungry, so we headed down to the hospital cafeteria. Just for fun, to see if we could get these contractions to pick up, we ordered the spiciest sandwich we could from the deli - Cajun turkey with spicy brown mustard, pepper jack cheese, and pepperoncini, with jalapenos on the side. It was one spicy sandwich, but it sure tasted great! Then we were back to walking the halls.
After a bit more walking, we went back up to report that things still weren't picking up, and we would be walking some more. I had Jeff grab our jackets out of the room, and we headed outside for more walking (there's only so much to look at in the hospital, it gets boring walking the same halls over and over). We headed out of the hospital, off of hospital grounds, and down the hill. There was some great scenery, we got to look out over the whole Salt Lake Valley, which was cool. But we didn't want to venture out too far, so we headed back.
With all this walking, I was getting a bit tired, but every time I sat down, the contractions slowed again. I was getting really frustrated and discouraged at this point. It was feeling more and more like false labor, and I was getting tired of things not happening. We went back up to L&D to talk to the midwife about options. She was out on rotations at the time, so we sat in our room and waited. Jeff took a nap on the hospital bed (poor guy had worked the night before, and only gotten 4 hours of sleep), while I sat in the chair and listened to my relaxation CD and music. That was just what I needed - I was getting so worked up over labor not going anywhere, I really just needed some time to calm down and relax.
The midwife came in and told me basically that she didn't want to send me home since I was already at a 5 and really effaced. After discussing a couple options, we decided that she would check my progress, strip my membranes, and break my water. When she checked, we were a bit relieved to find that all those ridiculously inconsistent contractions really were actually doing something - I was dilated to a 6 and 75% effaced. So the membranes were stripped and the water broken, and then we just sat and waited.
Here's where it started to be really cool. I have been practicing hypnobirthing techniques for months, and it was really paying off. I started getting fairly strong contractions, but the midwife and nurse said they could hardly tell when I was having one because I just slipped into my relaxation and deep breathing, totally calm and relaxed. Jeff took a video of one of my contractions just to document how calm I was, even though the monitors were showing really high peaks. I seriously look like I've got an epidural, with how easy I make it look (shameless brag there). Unfortunately, I can't load the video on here because it's too large of a file. Maybe I'll try to put it on youtube or something, but that can be done later. Just take my word for it, I was doing awesome!
Things went on like that for a while, the midwife kept commenting on how awesome I was doing, and how amazing I was. I was pretty proud of myself as well, considering how I was yelling my head off at this stage when I was in labor with Thomas, and in an epidural-induced sleep at this stage with Zaylee.
My contractions were still coming at pretty slow intervals, so the midwife had Jeff and I get up and walk the L&D halls for a little while. However, the contractions started getting harder to breath through, and I didn't want to be standing through them, so we went back to the room. I would walk around until I felt one coming on, then immediately sit down on either the labor ball or the chair, whichever was closer, so I could focus on my breathing. My deep breaths were starting to get a little shallow and shaky, and my relaxed face was starting to look a bit harrowed.
Finally I reached the point where I just couldn't deep breath through my contractions anymore. They were consistently stronger and more intense, and the pain was more than my breathing could conquer. The midwife and Jeff helped a great deal at this point by pushing hard on my knees every time I had a contraction, it provided good counterpressure, and I started to vocalize with low "aahhhhhh"s. Using a low-pitched moan actually helps the cervix to relax so it can open more effectively, as opposed to high-pitched yelling. I told Jeff and the midwife that I just didn't want to do this anymore, I wanted it to be over with. I knew that this was a common thing to think when in transition, so logically I knew I was almost done and everything was going to be okay. But as I told the midwife, "That doesn't change the fact that I still don't want to do this anymore!"
At this point, the midwife checked my cervix. I was incredibly disappointed to find that I was only dilated to a 7, when I had been expecting at least an 8 or 9. But I was 100% effaced. Here's where things got really crazy. Just after she checked my cervix, I felt an incredible amount of pressure and realized that I was ready to push (remember, I had just been checked and found to be at a 7!). So I started pushing (still doing my "aahhhh"s, which were starting to sound a little frantic), and after only a couple pushes the baby's head was crowning. Another couple of pushes and her head was out, but her shoulders were stuck. So the nurse and Jeff lifted up my legs and bottom, and pushed my knees up into my chest. This unstuck her shoulders, a couple pushes later and the midwife was handing me a baby!
I went from 7 cm dilated to holding my sweet little Audrey in 2 contractions, after only 4 minutes of pushing. Whew, what a whirlwind delivery!
I had wanted to "catch" the baby myself, but my position when she came out (knees to chest and all that) was such that I couldn't. Still, the midwife handed her to me as soon as she was out, and I got to put her on my belly myself. What a physical relief to have labor done with! I just dropped my head down onto my pillow and heaved a huge sigh, holding my baby close to me as they wiped her down and tried to get her to cry.
But she wouldn't cry. They rubbed and rubbed, trying to stimulate her to cry, or at least to breathe well, but she wasn't cooperating. As soon as the cord stopped pulsing and was cut, the nurses took Audrey to the warming table and continued trying to make her cry, suctioning her nose and mouth. This continued as I birthed the placenta. Finally, they brought her back to me to hold, but only briefly, then they took her to the nursery. Jeff went with them.
I was left alone. I wasn't completely alone of course; the midwife needed to stitch up the tiny perineal tear I had experienced, and the nurse kept rubbing my belly painfully to get the uterus to contract. But I felt more alone than I ever had before. I didn't have my baby with me. Before, after delivering a baby, I always got to hold and nurse the baby while I was getting stitched up and during that immediately-after-birth period. But now, I had just had a baby, but she was somewhere else, and it just felt so wrong, and so
lonely!They finally brought her back a little over an hour later. Apparently, only being in the birth canal for four minutes, all the fluid in her lungs hadn't had the chance to be squeezed out like it normally would in a vaginal birth. So they had to suction her out, and she finally coughed up the fluid after they gave her the vitamin K shot. Once they determined that she was going to be fine, they brought her back to me. I was so relieved and so happy to finally be able to see and hold my baby! I put her to breast immediately and she latched right on and fed like a pro. I might add that she's been feeding like a pro ever since and my nipples are killing me!
A little while later Jeff had to go home. Owen and Julie needed to be rescued from the kids (though they had been doing a great job and the kids really had a lot of fun with them). So then it was just me and Audrey, and the million nurses and aides who kept coming in to check on us all throughout the night.
Anyway, the nurse and midwife told me that they were so impressed at how well I had handled birth, with the hypnobirthing and relaxing through the contractions. They told me I was strong and amazing, and that they would share my story because it was so inspirational. I really am proud of how well I did. All my practicing and conditioning paid off, and I had an absolutely wonderful birth as a result.
