Labor & Delivery

Okay, I’m officially home and more or less settled in, so I can talk more details about my son. The hospital was weird, they had these monitors so you could get on the internet but absolutely no way to upload pictures from the hospital. So Paul had to figure out how to do it at home…despite his tech service days, it took him a while. Sorry for the delay in putting up the pics, but he’s so cute that it was worth the wait, right?

So here’s the whole story of Sam’s little journey last week. On Wednesday afternoon I noticed some bleeding so I called my doctor and they told me to go to labor & delivery to get it checked out. Sure enough, I was in the stage they call early labor, I was dilated to a 1 1/2 and 60% effaced. They kept me for like 6 hours to monitor my contractions, but they were too irregular to keep me there so I went home around 9:00pm. We ate some dinner, then walked the dogs around before coming back home and crashing; despite doing nothing all day I was exhausted! I woke up again around 1:30 and started logging my contractions, which were about 7 minutes apart at that point. They weren’t hurting me, though, so I called L&D to ask about it and they were like “ya, you should be really feeling pain and having to focus and breathe through contractions 5 minutes apart for 2 hours before you come in”. Yikes! Pretty sadistic, if you ask me. I just knew that I was going to have the baby the next day, so despite it being the middle of the night, I started getting things ready – I couldn’t sleep, anyway. I did the dishes, organized everything, paid bills, etc etc for a couple of hours until the house was in a state that I was satisfied with (told you I’m a clean nazi, hahaha) then went to sleep for a little bit.

I woke up with Paul at 4:00 and started logging my contractions again, which I could now definitely feel but were still 10 minutes or so apart. I couldn’t sleep so I watched a couple of episodes of Lost and then called my sister Emily, who lives on the east coast so didn’t mind talking to me so early in the morning. The contractions were getting a little more intense, but still not too bad, and I started thinking to myself “gee, this is actually not so bad, maybe I can stave off the epidural until I’m a 6 or something!” …I later laughed my head off when I remembered that I’d thought that. At 6:20 I stood up to go in the other room and said to Em “Ok, I either just totally peed my pants or my water broke!” The funny thing is, you seriously can’t tell the difference! It doesn’t feel different at all. I called the hospital to ask them if there was any way I could tell the difference without going in there and looking like an idiot if it was urine – there’s not. So I called my sister Sarah to come get me and called Paul to let him know.

It only took Sarah about 15 minutes to get here and I was really feeling the contractions by then. I packed half of our condo into a backpack & diaper bag, grabbed cameras & pillows & books, and off we went. I had this grand scheme of going to McDonalds on our way over there since they won’t let you eat anything until after you give birth, but by the time we got down the street to the McDonalds there was no way that I wanted to stop; the contractions were starting to get really killer. Sarah kept offering helpful commentary such as “wow, those contractions look really intense, maybe you’re going to be one of those women who go so fast that they can’t give you an epidural!” ….I hit her for that one.

We got to the hospital and, sure enough, I was in full-fledged labor. I asked for my epidural pretty much the second we got to the L&D floor, knowing that I had to wait an hour for a bag of fluids to empty into me before they could start the process. Unfortunately for me, not only did I have to wait for the fluids, I also had to wait for lab results to come back and then for the anesthesiologist to finish up a couple of other people before he got to me. Those were hands down the longest 2 1/2 hours of my entire life. My ENTIRE LIFE. The contractions were so intense, it is so hard to make yourself focus and breathe through them! I started panicking and writhing around but obviously that doesn’t help. You have to seriously retreat into your own little world and you don’t want anyone to touch you or talk to you because it will break the focus that you have. Paul got there and I could barely say hello to him. He was trying so hard to be sweet and rub my back & everything, and I pretty much said “thanks, but no thanks” and sent him in the corner with Sarah. I was in so much pain that I was vomiting my way through contractions…awesome.

When the anesthesiologist finally got there I was so happy I honestly almost cried. I have been afraid of that epidural needle for nine months, but when it got to it I was  like “bring it on!!”  They kept telling me how amazed they were that I could sit that still through 3 more contractions while they set up the epidural…I told them that I would literally be able to do ANYTHING to get those pain meds in me at that point. Once the epidural kicked in, I was the happiest camper around. I made up for my all-nighter and slept through a couple of hours of contractions, chatted with Sarah and called some relatives. I literally want to kiss whoever came up with that spinal tap heaven!

Sarah was great, she stayed until almost 1:00pm just hanging out with me, covering her shift while Paul went and got something to eat, picked some stuff up from home, etc. I found her lots funnier at this point. My labor progressed really rapidly, and by 2:00 I was ready to start pushing. That was a surreal moment for me, the nurse was like “ok, start pushing!” and I just sat there for a minute because it felt like it should’ve been a much bigger deal that I was starting to push than just “ok, go!” hahaha. My epidural was wearing off by this time, so there was a lot of pressure and some pain, but it was a good thing that I did have the sensation that I did because it made my pushing time decrease a lot. After about 45 minutes of pushing we were ready for Dr. Navi. He came in and almost immediately called for an episiotomy…bummer! He started snipping and I could totally feel it, it was awful! So I guess he just dumped this whole huge container of lidocaine or some kind of numbing solution on me and then proceeded. (Thank you, Sam for deciding to come out like Superman, with one arm up over your head – mommy loved the episiotomy ) I thought that I was going to be one of those embarrassing screamy labor women, but in the end I just yelled out a couple of times to give the pushing more momentum.

The moment I pushed him out was a crazy one. All I could focus on was the relief and trying to recover from that last big push, and then they laid her on my stomach and I just started crying, my little daughter was so beautiful! They rubbed her off and she cried a little bit, and all I could do was look at her as they picked her up and carried her away, until I saw the doctor jerk his head up and look at Paul with wide eyes. I immediately thought something was wrong; then I heard him say “what?! You thought it was a girl?? Did I tell you that? No, it’s a boy! You have a baby boy!” I just looked to Paul for confirmation and started laughing my head off. For months we’d been joking that the baby would end up coming out as a boy, and he did! Apparently what happened was that I pushed him out, they laid him on my stomach and started rubbing him off, and when they picked him up again Paul saw his boy parts and said “wait, what the heck?! She has balls!” and that’s where the doctor looked up all startled. Oh, man.What a story for the grandkids, right?

It’s amazing how seriously your whole life, your whole worldview and priority list and everything else, changes in the millisecond it takes for you to lay eyes on your child. I don’t know that anyone who hasn’t had a baby can really understand it; I couldn’t. I am OBSESSED with this little baby boy. I can’t stop looking at him (yes, Lani, I have kinks in my neck too!) and touching every little inch of him. I love his smell, his massive amounts of hair, and his tiny little bum. Paul and I both have been losing sleep in preference of just watching him breathe. I only feel a teeny pang of disappointment that pink butt ruffles will have to wait until the next one.

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