When Sam was born, I wasn't yet blogging. Now that I have a new baby on the way, I know I will want to tell the story of his/her birth. I thought that first, I should tell the story of Sam's birth. The details are a bit fuzzy since it was a while ago and I was pretty drugged up for some of it but I will do the best I can :)
If I remember correctly, it all started Friday night, 8/3/07. I consider that the start since that's when the mucus plug thingy came out. I knew then that it wouldn't be long and I was super excited. I never thought I would be so happy to see something so icky come out! During the day on the 4th, I talked to my Doula a couple times and she gave me some tips to hurry things along - sex and showers. I did as I was told and by Saturday night, I started to feel what I thought were contractions. Sometime in the evening my Dad and Step-mom came over and brought donuts. I think I ate 5 of them. I don't know if that was smart or not but they were awfully good! As the evening went along, I realized that I was definitely in labor. I walked around a lot outside since I knew walking was supposed to be good. I kept track of my contractions like a good girl and called the midwife when they got to where they were supposed to. We headed to the hospital and our Doula met us there. I was only 3cm but they admitted me anyway because I was group b strep positive and needed an IV. My plan was to give birth in the ABC. I had to stay in triage for a while until they found an ABC nurse. I walked around as much as possible. Things were really starting to hurt. I was trying to do low moans like my doula said but it hurt a lot and I usually ended up screaming. I was wandering around in the waiting room but they had me go back to triage because I was too loud.
The ABC finally opened and I went there. I was looking forward to the water tub since I had heard that might help a lot with the pain. I got in but it didn't do anything for me. I didn't like being confined in the tub so I got right back out. I ended up finding a comfortable position on a peanut shaped exercise ball thing. For the first time in a while, I was able to be relatively comfortable during the contractions. The midwife needed to listen to Sam's heartbeat but couldn't get it while I was on the ball. I had to lie on the bed which made the contractions super painful again. While I was on the bed, they broke my water. There was some meconium in the water. The heartbeat was not quite strong enough for them to be comfortable keeping me in the ABC so they moved me up to the regular labor area. By then I was quite out of my mind in pain. I was banging my head on the wall and trying to chew on my fingers to try to put the pain somewhere else. For some reason, this disturbed everyone but I thought it was perfectly logical. Anyway, since I wasn't doing a very good job of managing the pain, the mw recommended that I consider an epidural. By then I was ready to murder someone for one so I readily agreed. When we got to the labor room, I overheard one nurse tell another that it would be a while before the epidural arrived. This really freaked me out and I started to scream and yell and threw up all over the place. They gave me this other drug to use in the meantime till the epidural could get there. It was very nice and allowed me to lie quietly and wait to be fully dilated. I could still feel the contractions as a lot of pressure - very uncomfortable bordering on painful but no where near as bad as before. I felt bad taking it since I new it would get to Sam but I didn't see how I could handle the pain any more. It was so bad. I'm not really sure about the timing on all this. I know we go to the hospital in the middle of the night between Saturday and Sunday but don't know how long everything else lasted. After vomiting, I ended up being at 9cm. Only one cm left to go - yay! I finally got the epidural and it really didn't do much more in addition to the other drug. During this time, they had been monitoring Sam's heartbeat and it wasn't exactly where they wanted. But it wasn't horrible either. They did feel a c-section might be necessary and got me prepped for that.
I finally ended up at 10cm. Must have been somewhere around 3pm. They got me ready to push. I was told I had to hold my legs to push. I had kind of hoped I could just prop them up on something 'cause I really didn't feel like I had the energy to hold them. So, with each contraction I started pushing. It was hard! The mw was impressed though with the progress I made with each push. Happily it didn't hurt. The heart beat was still worrisome so they were trying to get me to rush Sam out before a c-section was deemed necessary. It seemed like I only pushed for a few minutes but I guess it was more like an hour. I was till a bit out of it from the drugs.
So, final push and Sam was out. They had warned me they were going to need to pretty much whisk him away due to the meconium they would need to suction out. They did hold him up for me to see and he was so beautiful!! He looked like himself right from the start which surprised me. I expected a more generic baby without recognizable features. He didn't have much of a cone head which made me happy. The medical people did their stuff and then brought him back to me. I made sure Warren followed when they took Sam away so that no one would steal him. When they brought Sam back, I just held him and stared in awe at him. He was so perfect! Everyone started to leave the room so I decided to try to nurse Sam for the first time. He did so good! I was happy since the main reason I wanted a drug free birth was to make sure nursing started out okay but he did so great even though I had to use the drugs. I loved him right from the start and felt that Mommy bond right away which was amazing to me. I had been scared that wouldn't happen for me.
The End :)
Sam (duh), while we were still in the hospital
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