Colin's Birth Story - Part 1

I will begin with a couple of things:

1 - never thought I would be into writing a birth story (not that I wouldn't have one, just that I wouldn't write one)

2 - I will be in "overshare" mode, so if you don't want to hear words like "dilated", "mucus plug", or "episiotomy", then I recommend reading no further -- well,  I suppose you could go a couple of paragraphs in, but do you really want to risk it??

3 - I probably am providing too much commentary for this and most of this is something no one will care about - but I feel like I should record it somewhere before I forget..

Week 40 - Due Date Friday, March 8, 2013

I had a doctor's appointment on Friday morning on my due date.  I walked in to my doctor saying "welcome to your due date, where's the baby?".  That's EXACTLY how I felt about it, so at least we were in a joking mood.  She checked me and I was still only 1 cm dilated, slightly softer as she said.  But generally speaking, not looking like I was making any progress.  We agreed to schedule me to come in on Monday so that we could discuss induction the next week and see how I was doing.

That weekend, we relaxed a little bit.  We didn't think we were having a baby any time soon, and at the same time, we were making plans for having an end in sight, and that felt good too.  Since we didn't know if we were having a baby any time soon so we actually had nothing specific to do.  It was fantastic.  Although, we didn't know what to do with ourselves.  I told my work that I was still pregnant, did some work over the weekend to try and get ready to go on leave.

Monday, March 11, 2013

My doctor's appointment was in the morning, nothing had really happened over the weekend.  It was rainy and so we had done as much walking as we could, but we had been limited by the weather.  I had started using Evening Primrose Oil to see if I could kickstart labor.  I was on red raspberry leaf tea to see if that would jumpstart contractions.  It hadn't done anything yet, but I figured if nothing else it would be the placebo effect and make me relax.  She checked me again, and I was still only at 1 cm.  On a note, I'm pretty good with pain.  I mean, I'm not like super woman or anything about it, but I would like to think that I handle pain pretty well.  It is the most UN-comfortable thing in the world to be checked for dilation.  That made me pretty nervous for the actual labor part, if I couldn't handle a little dilation check.  After talking with the doctor, there was the general feeling that I was probably going to be induced.  We scheduled me going into the hospital on March 17 to get settled in and then get started with either breaking my water or pitocin - depending on how I was looking.  We were going to have a baby by next Wednesday, essentially guaranteed.  How crazy!  My doctor said that she was the on-call doctor Thursday night, so she recommended me to start taking castor oil on Wednesday to get him moving.  I picked it up at the store that night, and I have to say it sounded nasty from what I was reading online.  I'm glad that I didn't end up needing to take it.

That day, I started having some minor contractions.  They felt like menstrual cramps, but they were pretty mild.  I figured they were just some practice contractions, maybe some Braxton Hicks.  The last few appointments with my doctor, I could feel some contractions after but I assumed it was just because she had gotten all up in my business and ticked him off.  I was still convinced that I was going to be an induction case - after all, pretty much everyone in my family was late - excessively late.  So, I just assumed that I would be the same way.  Especially since I had such little progress over the last few appointments.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013 - 2am

Around midnight or 2 am I was woken up by contractions.  I no longer had to google what a contraction felt like (what I had spent much of my Monday doing), I was definitely able to identify that these were the real deal.  They weren't excessively painful, but they were rough.  I didn't want John to know because I figured that they would pass, and he was supposed to be going to work so I didn't want him to be tired and cranky.  I guess eventually my moaning, rolling, and rocking woke him up and I told him that I was timing and they were between 2 and 10 minutes apart, depending on what position I was in.  They were still irregular, and varying in intensity.  John sat up with me and kept timing.  At one point in the morning we finally decided that he shouldn't go into work because they were getting closer and closer together.  (That was a back and forth conversation.. ha)  We called the doctor in the morning to explain the situation, and she recommended that we go ahead and go into triage since they were around 2 minutes apart.  What-what?!?!

I took this picture right before leaving, thinking it might be the last picture of me pregnant - it was, but only because I didn't take one on Wednesday.

We took our time getting everything finally together and in the car.  I figured that we still had a lot of time, and it was really scary to think that if I was in the hospital and admitted it meant that a baby was actually coming!  We got to triage, checked in, and went back to start getting monitored.  What's really strange to me, I was feeling my contractions really low on my abdomen, they put the bands high on my stomach for heartbeat and contractions.  The nurse left the room and said that she would be monitoring from the nurses station, so we started looking at the monitor to see if we could follow along.  It made absolutely no sense.  So, I started freaking out that the monitor wasn't picking up my contractions and that they would think I was making it all up.  (I'm insane)  So, I was watching and worrying that they wouldn't believe me.  After about an hour the nurse came back in and let us know that she had talked to our doctor and even though my contractions were every 3-5 minutes (phew, they WERE registering), they weren't intense enough and I wasn't dilated enough to admit me so she had to send us home.  She kept apologizing, and seemed to genuinely feel bad about not being able to admit me.  But at that point, I was still only 1 cm dilated, so they just didn't think I was making enough progress to stay at the hospital.

We got back in the car and headed home.  At that point I called my dad and let him know the deal, we called John's parents and filled them in.  My dad decided that he would go ahead and hop in the car to head up, since the worst that happened he would be here for a few days, the best that happened he would be here in time for Colin to be born.  John and I went home to start walking around the neighborhood.  One of the slower walks I've ever taken... needing to stop every so often to go through a contraction, and just generally making slow progress around the block.  Once home, I alternated between sitting on my exercise ball (good idea) and walking around the condo (not as good of an idea).  When my dad got in, I was still joking and working my way through the contractions.  John and I both went to bed early since we hadn't slept that much the night before.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

What is it about 2am?  That's apparently my labor bewitching hour.  Around 2am the contractions were crazy.  I had been able to start sleeping through my other ones (a good indication that the intensity was in fact too low for me to be admitted to the hospital I guess) - but these woke me up with a vengeance.  I started timing, but they were around 8-10 minutes - meaning that while they were crazy painful, they weren't close enough together to warrant going into the hospital.  At 3:30 am, we decided to call the doctor because John and I were at a disagreement over whether we were told we only needed increased intensity (no timing), and if we needed intensity AND timing.  The doctor was not exceptionally pleasant - I realize we were calling at 3:30 in the morning, but it's our first baby and we have NO idea what we're doing.  After explaining our false alarm on Tuesday and then explaining what had happened this morning he said "is this your first baby?"  "yes."  "Then you have a long way to go."  I think that was a terrible thing to say to a woman who has had contractions for the last 24 hours.  Not cool man... So that just put me in a bad mood.

At about 4:30 am, I noticed that my pants were wet.  I assumed it was just the continuation of the mucus plug (gross!) that had been making its way out over the last few days and didn't think too much of it.  I changed my pants, mentioned it to John, and went back to bed to get through the contractions.  A couple of hours later, I got up and realized that I was still leaking fluid and that it seemed a little different than before - so I started thinking it could be my water breaking.  I texted my friend (who had her water break) and asked how she "knew".  I suppose at that point, if I'm questioning it enough to ask - I really should just call the doctor.  But, I was gun shy.  I had already gone into the hospital and been turned away, called overnight and been shot down... I didn't want to go for three.  I made my way out to the living room, and started realizing that with sitting and walking the contractions were back to being really close together but the intensity was lower... When laying down, the timing was more spaced but the intensity was really high.  That was extremely confusing.  After talking with my dad (who agreed that these seemed different and that I should call the doctor) and talking with John (who had been trying for hours at this point to have me call) I finally dialed in.  We explained what had happened, she agreed it could be my water breaking, and had me go into triage once again.

We loaded up the car and made our way over to Prentice about 11am.  I got in a triage room, and at this point was hoping that my water was broken since then they would absolutely have to admit me.  The contractions were ROUGH.  I was ready to be admitted so that I could get some relief from the pain.  This is when I discovered that Prentice had a dumb pain scale.  They asked me my pain on a scale of 1-10, so I assumed my own scale of 1 meaning no pain, and 10 being the worst pain I had ever experienced.  So, I ranked this at a 7/8.... compared to Tuesday when I ranked it at around a 5/6.  The nurse kind of looked at me like I was a crazy person, which is when I found out their pain scale was 1 meaning no pain and 10 meaning getting your arm cut off with no pain medicine.  Umm, that's a jump. So, my 7 wasn't quite accurate, because I don't think it was anything near cutting off my arm.  But, it did hurt and was some of the worst pain I'd ever had.  After that I had to amend it back to the 5 - which then made me feel like a complete wuss that I couldn't handle it.  I was whistling and humming through them.  It was not melodic, but it was helpful.  The nurse did a check to see if my water was broken, left to get results and talk to my doctor.  They hooked me up the machine to monitor me, and John and I kicked back and watched the Vatican Pope coverage on TV.

While the nurse was gone, I was just hoping that my water was broken or I was at 3cm so that they wouldn't make me go home.  I didn't think I could handle it if they once again said no admittance.  If the contractions had to get more intense to be admitted .... I was screaming uncle on this labor thing.  When she came back in we found out that my water was indeed broken (woohoo) and when she checked me I was ALSO at 3 cm!  Double whammy for hospital stay.  Thank goodness!!!  They were about to wheel me up to labor and delivery and the pope was about to be selected.. what a great Wednesday!

They finally brought us up to the room at 2 pm... It had been 36 hours since my contractions had started on Tuesday morning, and I was so excited to get this show on the road... and even MORE excited for that epidural.  I figured at this point I would have a long wait until he would actually be born.  I was ready to get settled in, get the pain meds, and relax for a little bit since neither John or I had slept the last two nights.  We were very mistaken.... in less than 6 hours our little guy was making his debut!

I had the nurse take this picture - the last picture where it was just the two of us!