BabyRissmas' Birth Story
Oct 8, 2016 6:53:52 GMT -5
Post by merryrissmas on Oct 8, 2016 6:53:52 GMT -5
It took me forever to write this...oops!
On 9/29, we checked in for our induction at 5 am, everything was hooked up and started at 6 am. They turned up the Pitocin every 30-45 minutes so the contractions started getting stronger relatively quickly, but took a couple hours to get into a pattern. By 9 am I was at 4 cm and the contractions were starting to get painful. By 10:30 I was in a lot of pain and my methods for getting through the contractions were starting to not work. At 11 I had lost control of my pain and I asked for the epidural; luckily the anesthesiologist got there quickly at 11:30. It was definitely my worst epi insertion compared to the other 2 I've had, I got 2 awful lightning bolts down my left leg that were super jarring and a lot of pain in my back/spine when the needle/catheter were inserted. My right leg took forever to get numb so I didn't get complete relief until about 12:15.
My euphoria at the pain relief was short-lived, as baby’s heartrate kept crashing and my blood pressure and pulse kept spiking and dropping like crazy. My nurse called for help and 4 nurses burst into the room to put oxygen on me, rub on my belly, flip me from side to side, and move me around to try to find a position that baby would tolerate and would help stabilize his heart rate. I was terrified because the nurses, while totally professional and outwardly calm, were definitely concerned and working urgently. Poor DH looked so worried and I was so scared that baby was in danger and an emergency c-section might be in our future. It felt like a really long time but was probably only 5-10 minutes, and finally the baby’s heartrate stabilized and my pulse/blood pressure started to calm down. My nurse checked me and I was 5-6 cm and almost completely effaced, so I was making quick progress at the same time I got the epidural, which she said probably caused the baby’s heartrate to freak out a bit.
At 2:30 she checked me again and her eyes got huge – my amniotic sac was actually visibly bulging out of me (TMI sorry). She called the delivery nurses and my OB, who came sprinting in, thinking baby would be born imminently. My OB checked me and unfortunately I was only 8-9 cm, so she broke my water (I was kind of hoping baby would be born en caul since the bag was coming out, but no such luck). She predicted l would reach 10 cm in about 15-20 minutes – nope, that last centimeter was tough, it took forever and was so frustrating. Finally I reached 10 at 4 pm, but baby was still high so we waited for contractions to bring him down a bit. At this point the epidural was starting to wear off of the right side, which was terrifying as I was feeling every contraction on that side. Luckily, the button pump worked eventually to re-numb everything.
Finally, it was time to push at 4:45. I was so exhausted by that time, pushing was so hard and I had a hard time figuring out if my pushes were effective or not. I also had a headache by then and the pressure of pushing made it so miserable. My nurse was concerned about baby’s size since it was taking a long time to get his head past my pubic bone. Finally after almost an hour of pushing he started to move down. On a really big push, his head finally made it all the way down and the nurse said stop, don’t move anything! The doctor and delivery nurses ran in and got gowned up super fast, my OB asked me for a medium push and all at once, Declan Rhys was born at 5:38 pm. They put him on my belly to clean him up and stimulate him with towels because he wasn’t doing much crying. The doctor told me the cord was wrapped around his neck twice, but he was fine and was just a calm baby. Everyone was surprised at how big he was, we were all guessing 8.5 pounds or so. Turns out he was 9 pounds even, and 21.5 inches long. I was shocked that I had such a big baby, since my other 2 were so much smaller (less than 7.5 lbs each). My placenta was also huge, apparently. I got 2 stitches for over-stretched tissue/abrasions, but luckily avoided tearing. Once Declan was assessed (Apgars of 8 & 9), he went straight to nursing and stayed at it for 45 minutes. We really wanted the kids to come meet Declan that night but I wasn’t able to move to the mother-baby unit until 9 pm because my left leg was so numb (the epi was definitely crazy strong on the left side and not so much on the right!) The kids and my mom came to meet him the next day, and we were able to go home Saturday around noon. He is wonderful and we are all in love.
If you made it through that novel you deserve a cupcake and a cup of coffee.
TL; DR: I got induced, got the epi, pushed for an hour, had a giant baby boy after 11.5 hours of labor.
Here is a pic of me & Declan (8 days old) yesterday:
On 9/29, we checked in for our induction at 5 am, everything was hooked up and started at 6 am. They turned up the Pitocin every 30-45 minutes so the contractions started getting stronger relatively quickly, but took a couple hours to get into a pattern. By 9 am I was at 4 cm and the contractions were starting to get painful. By 10:30 I was in a lot of pain and my methods for getting through the contractions were starting to not work. At 11 I had lost control of my pain and I asked for the epidural; luckily the anesthesiologist got there quickly at 11:30. It was definitely my worst epi insertion compared to the other 2 I've had, I got 2 awful lightning bolts down my left leg that were super jarring and a lot of pain in my back/spine when the needle/catheter were inserted. My right leg took forever to get numb so I didn't get complete relief until about 12:15.
My euphoria at the pain relief was short-lived, as baby’s heartrate kept crashing and my blood pressure and pulse kept spiking and dropping like crazy. My nurse called for help and 4 nurses burst into the room to put oxygen on me, rub on my belly, flip me from side to side, and move me around to try to find a position that baby would tolerate and would help stabilize his heart rate. I was terrified because the nurses, while totally professional and outwardly calm, were definitely concerned and working urgently. Poor DH looked so worried and I was so scared that baby was in danger and an emergency c-section might be in our future. It felt like a really long time but was probably only 5-10 minutes, and finally the baby’s heartrate stabilized and my pulse/blood pressure started to calm down. My nurse checked me and I was 5-6 cm and almost completely effaced, so I was making quick progress at the same time I got the epidural, which she said probably caused the baby’s heartrate to freak out a bit.
At 2:30 she checked me again and her eyes got huge – my amniotic sac was actually visibly bulging out of me (TMI sorry). She called the delivery nurses and my OB, who came sprinting in, thinking baby would be born imminently. My OB checked me and unfortunately I was only 8-9 cm, so she broke my water (I was kind of hoping baby would be born en caul since the bag was coming out, but no such luck). She predicted l would reach 10 cm in about 15-20 minutes – nope, that last centimeter was tough, it took forever and was so frustrating. Finally I reached 10 at 4 pm, but baby was still high so we waited for contractions to bring him down a bit. At this point the epidural was starting to wear off of the right side, which was terrifying as I was feeling every contraction on that side. Luckily, the button pump worked eventually to re-numb everything.
Finally, it was time to push at 4:45. I was so exhausted by that time, pushing was so hard and I had a hard time figuring out if my pushes were effective or not. I also had a headache by then and the pressure of pushing made it so miserable. My nurse was concerned about baby’s size since it was taking a long time to get his head past my pubic bone. Finally after almost an hour of pushing he started to move down. On a really big push, his head finally made it all the way down and the nurse said stop, don’t move anything! The doctor and delivery nurses ran in and got gowned up super fast, my OB asked me for a medium push and all at once, Declan Rhys was born at 5:38 pm. They put him on my belly to clean him up and stimulate him with towels because he wasn’t doing much crying. The doctor told me the cord was wrapped around his neck twice, but he was fine and was just a calm baby. Everyone was surprised at how big he was, we were all guessing 8.5 pounds or so. Turns out he was 9 pounds even, and 21.5 inches long. I was shocked that I had such a big baby, since my other 2 were so much smaller (less than 7.5 lbs each). My placenta was also huge, apparently. I got 2 stitches for over-stretched tissue/abrasions, but luckily avoided tearing. Once Declan was assessed (Apgars of 8 & 9), he went straight to nursing and stayed at it for 45 minutes. We really wanted the kids to come meet Declan that night but I wasn’t able to move to the mother-baby unit until 9 pm because my left leg was so numb (the epi was definitely crazy strong on the left side and not so much on the right!) The kids and my mom came to meet him the next day, and we were able to go home Saturday around noon. He is wonderful and we are all in love.
If you made it through that novel you deserve a cupcake and a cup of coffee.
TL; DR: I got induced, got the epi, pushed for an hour, had a giant baby boy after 11.5 hours of labor.
Here is a pic of me & Declan (8 days old) yesterday:
