A Baby Story - Olivia's Arrival

When I was in high school one of my favorite shows on TLC was "A Baby Story." For some odd reason I was always intrigued by it; maybe because I always knew I wanted kids.

Warning: Baby O's birth story is extremely long, and I may not remember everything because it's been a 5 weeks since it happened. Also, you'll probably think a lot of what's written is TMI, but oh well it's a labor and delivery story. What do you expect? lol But anyway, here goes:

I woke up at 1am on 12/15/2010 to potty like I normally did. Everyone knows that when you're 9 months pregnant late night/early morning bathroom breaks are the norm. Then I woke up again at 2am, 3am, 4am, 5am, and 6am. By the 4 o'clock trip I knew something just wasn't right. I'd never peed that much in my life, not even while pregnant.

When I awoke at 6, I felt different. My back was aching like my period was about to start. I may have been sleep-deprived, but I wasn't delusional. I knew I couldn't have a period at 9 months pregnant. Then it hit me: oh shoot, I'm in the early stages of labor. There was no other explanation for all the peeing and the back pain.

At 7am my suspicions were confirmed because I started having contractions. I told C, and he went on to work because the contractions were very sporadic. I called my mama, wished her and my daddy a happy 26th wedding anniversary, and warned her that their anniversary gift may be a granddaughter. I thought it would be beautiful to give birth to my daughter on my parents' wedding anniversary. I called my sister and my favorite cousin. Then it was time to wait for magic to happen.

Nothing major really happened, so I decided to take a nap around 2:30/3pm-ish. That's when the pain got worse, and I couldn't get comfortable at all to sleep. The back pain was major and the  contractions seemed a tad bit more intense. I tried getting on my hands and knees and rocking like the instructor taught in Lamaze and it kind of helped some. I still couldn't lie down to nap though so that sucked.

I talked to my favorite cousin after my failed nap attempt and she suggested I call my doctor. I called Dr. D around 5pm, and he said to time the contractions. The contractions were all over the place. Sometimes they were 8 minutes apart, sometimes 3, sometimes 20. It was a hot mess I tell you.

At around 7pm I had my bloody show. I thought that would be my ticket to the hospital. I called my doctor back and he said it was just a very early sign of labor. I thought he was an idiot because the very early sign in my book was peeing every hour on the hour, and having all these pains for over 12 hours without a break. But what did I know?

I talked to my mama again, and she tried to convince me to go straight to the hospital despite what the doctor said. She and my dad had jumped into their truck and started making the 3-and-a-half-hour drive from my hometown. They were too ready to welcome their grandbaby into the world. All the while I was still timing contractions, and they continued to be sporadic.

Around 9 or 10pm  I decided to shower just in case my water broke or my contractions got closer together in the middle of the night. My parents arrived around 11pm. I was irritable, sleepy, and in pain. I didn't feel like being bothered with anybody because I didn't think I'd ever get the green light from the doc to go to the hospital.

Around midnight or so, my parents and hubby tried to catch some sleep. I went to lie down, but I couldn't get comfortable enough to sleep. I kept tracking my contractions and at 3am they started getting more regular. I called the doc and he gave me the go-ahead to come to the hospital. He said that I sounded a lot more uncomfortable from earlier, but he warned that I may be sent home if I hadn't dilated though.

I woke C to tell him the good news, and he fell right back to sleep. I woke him again, and he jumped to action. I guess it really hit him that it was time to welcome his first-born into the world. He went to wake my parents while I tried to get dressed for the hospital. I still remember what I put on: a gray thermal, some pre-pregnancy blue jeans (yeah, I'm that girl who could still wear her pre-pregnancy bottoms without unbuttoning them lol), my black fuzzy boots, a heavy black sweater ( my winter coat didn't fit over my bump), and a black and  gray scarf with matching hat. I made sure to bring along a big black towel to sit on just in case my water broke in the car. Light gray seats don't go with amniotic fluid.

We left the apartment at 3:30am, and made it to the hospital in Chapel Hill at 4am. I was wheeled up to the 4th floor which was the labor and delivery floor. They took C and I to a triage room while my parents parked, found the waiting room, etc. Shortly thereafter Dr. D entered my room and I was so happy to see him. He checked me and I was at 4cm!! I was sooooooo excited that I made it all the way to 4 at home, and Dr. D was proud of me for laboring so long on my own.

The nurse strapped the monitors on me to time my contractions. They were 2-3 minutes apart. Apparently some of the pain I was feeling in my back were actually contractions. Holy back labor hell!! That's why my back was killing me.

The nurse took me to a labor and delivery room. We had only been at the hospital 20 minutes and the nurse informed me and C that it was snowing. We watched it through the window for a few minutes, and then I was given instructions to walk around with mobile monitors to track the baby's heartrate and my contractions. I was kind of bummed that I had to have an IV to drag around with me during my walk. I needed it because it had been so long since I had eaten and the doc didn't want me to become too hungry or dehydrated during labor. (Wait a minute;  what happened to the you can eat and drink what you want bull the Lamaze instructor had sold me on?)

C and I walked around the halls for a little while, but we were tired of seeing the same people over and over again. We decided to go back to the room so I could walk around in there and C could rest on the sleeper sofa thingy. I walked, I changed positions, I peed every hour like my Lamaze lady instructed in class. It was around 9am or so when I was started getting hungry. Or at least I thought I was hungry, and thirsty too. I asked my doc if I could eat, and he really didn't want me to. (Once again, what happened to the you can eat and drink what you want bull I was sold on?) Finally the doc gave in and let the nurse bring me some yogurt. At least it was the good Activia yogurt I liked. The nurse sneaked me in some cereal too.

At around 10am or so, I really started feeling the pain. C helped out so much by rubbing my back and pushing on my hips every time I had a contraction. I kept having to go the bathroom every few minutes and I learned that it's true that some women really do get diarrhea during labor. I was in so much pain and so weak that it got to the point I couldn't even drag the IV contraption all the way into the bathroom to go potty. I just left the door open and embarrassed myself time and again in front of my husband. Around this time Dr. D left because his shift was over, and Dr. W came in.

I liked Dr. W because she's an African American female like me. I thought it helped us relate during my prenatal care. Dr. W checked me at around 11am to see how for I'd progressed. I was in so much excruciating pain that I winced and almost screamed. After all my walking, position changes, and constant pain, I just knew I'd have to at least be 7cm. But boy was I wrong. I was only 5cm. I thought I'd been punked!! I was in so much pain and I had been laboring for so dang long that I couldn't only be 5.

That's when I broke down and asked for meds. I didn't want an epidural  because I wanted to feel my contractions and continue to walk around. I just wanted something to take the edge off. Dr. W obliged. When the doc left to order the meds, the nurse tried to convince me to get an epidural though. I thought she was crazy. Heiffer, I don't want a dang epidural!! I want to keep moving around and do this thing as natural as possible. She left the room to give me a chance to think about it.

As soon as she left the pain seemed to get worse. My contractions were literally ontop of each other with no break in between. I was tired as crap. I was thirsty and drinking so much water. C was massaging my back while I sat on the bed thinking about my pain management options. And then I started dry heaving. WTF??? I hadn't thrown up in over 10 years. Why the heck was I about to do it then? C grabbed the plastic vomit-catcher thingy and told me it was ok to go ahead and throw up. I didn't want to. I hate throwing up. I have like this weird fear of choking on vomit, so I don't throw up ever. But ummm, yeah, all that ended because the pain was too much and all the water I had drunk was on an escape mission. So once again I embarrassed myself in front of my husband. He didn't mind though. He just kept rubbing my back to try to make me feel better.

The nurse came back and I told her I wanted an epidural. There went my med-free birth plan right out the dang window. She told I had been doing wonderfully without meds, and that she was proud of me. But she also said that I was tired and the epidural would give me a chance to rest and to progress more because my body would be relaxed. Was she ever right!! Although I almost f---ed myself up by jumping during the epidural (there was a sharp pain that caught me offguard), when that thing went into effect it was the most amazing feeling ever! I thought I was in heaven. I turned into a completely different person. It was like the irritability I'd had for hours suddenly went away. I took a nap and everything. It was just a catnap, but I didn't care.

That epidural definitely worked wonders and by 5pm I was 8cm dilated. Every once in a while the nurse would come into change my position in the bed. It was a little strange because every time I was put on my right side, my baby's heartrate was drop. The doctors decided that I would have to stay on my left side. I didn't mind because the sleeper sofa C was resting on was to my left and so was the window. I was 10 cm by 8pm, and at some point around that time I was given oxygen. I really don't remember why I was given the oxygen, but it didn't bother me. My contractions stopped around this same time, and my water bag was still intact. The doctors wanted me to "labor down" so they let me be until about 9pm. At that time they decided to break my water, but as soon as they attempted to insert the tool they use for breaking water, my water broke on its own. Unfortunately there was meconium in the water. They said it wasn't cause for too much alarm and that instead of having skin-to-skin contact with Baby O right away, I'd have to wait for her her lungs to be suctioned out.

Finally it was time to push, and at this point I still hadn't had any substantial sleep so I was really tired. The nurse who was on duty at this point was not very friendly. She kept yelling at me when I was pushing like I wasn't doing it right. I kept asking the doctor if I was pushing ok because I felt like I wasn't making any progress. The doctors left the room to monitor me some more. Little did I know that every time I pushed, my daughter's heartrate was dropping drastically. She was in distress. I was scared.

When it was all said and done, I had  pushed for about 40 minutes or so. My doctor and the midwife called in another doctor to get a second opinion after it was determined that something else had to be done. The new doctor was an OB-GYN, not a family medicine doctor like Dr. D and Dr. W. She felt around in my pelvis, had me practice a push, and she and the other docs left the room to get yet another opinion. At this point I'm thinking WTF.

They came back in and the OB doc told me that she talked it over with someone with more experience and they decided that using a vacuum or forceps to deliver Baby O was out of the question. Apparently at this point everyone really wanted me to have a vaginal delivery, but it was impossible. The OB said there were two bones in my pelvis that prevented my baby from progressing down my birth canal. Every time I pushed she hit the bones, which caused her to go into distress. So it was time for my emergency c-section.

Everything happened so fast after this. I was scared as hell. I'd never spent the night in a hospital before, so of course I'd never had major surgery. C had to stay in the labor and delivery room to dress in his scrubs as I was wheeled to the OR. There seemed to be so many people in the room when I arrived. They were prepping things, joking around, hanging out, and having a good ol' time. At least someone was because I definitely wasn't.

It seemed like it took forever for C to get to the room. Before he got there I was given extra anesthesia to numb more of my body in my epidural catheter. My regular catheter was replaced ( I needed it after getting the epidural, but it was removed when I started pushing). I could feel the pressure of people touching me and patting me down, but it didn't hurt at all. It was such a weird feeling. And I was still so scared. There was a nurse by my side from the time I was wheeled into the room and she kept me sane while I was poked and prodded on in preparation for the surgery. She explained stuff to me and she warned me that some people get the shakes after taking a certain medicine I had to swallow. I was shaking like a crackhead feening for his next hit after taking that medicine, and I was so cold! She was nice enough to get me 3 blankets while I felt like my body was going into shock. C finally arrived and it was time to get the show on the road. At this point I think I started blocking out stuff. All I know is that I was squeezing C's hand with my left hand and holding on to my angel nurse's hand with my right. (I call her an angel nurse because she really seemed like an angel sent to protect me during the c-section. She was so sweet.)

Before I knew it my baby girl was out of my womb and C was saying how pretty she was. He had such a huge smile on his face to see his daughter, and all I could muster was "does she have hair?" C confirmed that she indeed had lots of hair. The NICU doctors were in the room to look my baby girl over and suction the meconium out of her lungs. That's when we heard her first precious cries. My baby had some strong lungs from the start. They announced her birth weight: 5lbs 13oz and the time: 10:11pm. They wrapped my little darling up and handed her to her proud daddy. He didn't want to let go of her, and he didn't for a long time.

After I was sewn up, they wheeled me to recovery and C got to wheel our baby to the room also. Initially, she was suppose to go to the NICU because of the distress and meconium, but I gave birth to a strong little woman who needed none of that. I was so happy, but so sad at the same time. I was sad because I didn't get to hold my daughter until a couple hours later. I didn't get to feed her from my breast till a few minutes after I first held her. The only reason I even got to hold her when I did was because I had finally been taken to my post partum room on the 5th floor, C had collapsed into a deep sleep on his new sleeper-sofa, and the nurse wanted me to change my daughter's first poopy diaper.

Tada! That was my birthing experience. It didn't go as planned, but what ever does? Kudos to you who made it to the end. :)