Our big day was June 27th, baby boy decided to arrive 4 days ahead of schedule. Kinda funny, considering L.L. arrived 4 days late. Let’s hope that’s not foreshadowing.
It all started on Wednesday night. I could tell that the Braxton Hicks had changed. Gil’s high school buddy was in town, so he had gone out to dinner to catch up with him and I stayed home to try to squeeze in one more freezer meal. By the way, I got three of 5 of them finished! I think it’s pretty substantial considering I felt like I was in labor all week long. When Gil got home from dinner, I told him I wouldn’t be surprised if I didn’t make it through the night. Alas, I was wrong. I made it through the whole night and then to the afternoon!
Thursday morning I had planned to do some last minute running around, or maybe fit in one more freezer meal, before the in-laws arrived, but my body had another idea. I was pretty miserable and couldn’t get off the couch. Good thing L.L. didn’t mind because even though I wanted to I could barely move without more pain than I would like to have experienced. Luckily, Gil was scheduled to come home early from work to pick up his folks at the airport (I told you baby boy was going to be good to them).
After calling my doctor we were off to the hospital. She wanted me to get checked, just in case I had a slow amniotic leak. L.L. stayed with the grandparents. I’m pretty sure that Gil wasn’t thinking we would be admitted, but we were! It took them a while to get the culture back but when the nurse came in and said “they saw the fern!” (meaning, there was amniotic fluid present) I was relieved. We were taken into a delivery room, I was hooked up to machines and then we waited. Well, first I got an epidural. Since I had been feeling contractions for so long I wanted to get that thing, pronto!
This time around I felt the needle, the cold of cleaning and more cold of numbing, then the medicine going in and whatever else happened for me to not feel all that pain of contractions. I don’t know why I felt all of it…the IV going in, taking blood for us to donate the chord blood, and the epidural (several different sensations with that one). What I didn’t have a problem with was the penicillin (positive for Group B Strep, again!). Not sure if you recall, but that was the worst part about my last birth story. Check it out here. I told the nurse that the penicillin felt like acid in my veins so she diluted it and IT ACTUALLY WORKED! I only felt it when they had to switch back to hydration before receiving the epidural – which was nothing, comparatively.
THEN we waited, and waited, and waited…the good part about that was we were able to sleep. Both of us needed it, badly. I had been sleeping like crapola from the pregnancy and Gil had been on call where he was up since about 2AM. Naps were necessary and we were VERY lucky to get them. Gil said it was probably a good thing that he was beyond exhausted, because the chair that converted into a bed wasn’t all that comfortable.
Next came a huge POP, which felt like a balloon popping from inside my body…however, in actuality it was my bag of waters completely breaking. I couldn’t believe I felt it that strongly. It woke me up like someone had kicked me! I woke up Gil and then called the nurse. When she got there I was still feeling fine. But before she could get back to the nurses station I was calling again saying that I was feeling the need to bare down.
I cannot properly explain how it all felt. First, I was consumed with pain, then I realized that I wasn’t sure I could keep the baby in to wait for the doctor to arrive. It felt like his head had started to come out and was laying inside my left bum cheek. You see, I had been sleeping on my side and didn’t feel like I could turn to my back without the baby slipping out on his own. The whole thing was surreal.
Luckily, the nurse and Gil helped me through the whole ordeal (breathe slowly, in and out, while holding Gil’s hand as hard as I could), AND my doctor arrived quickly (whew!). When she got there she seemed annoyed that the nurse didn’t hand me the epidural button so I could feed myself some more. I pushed the button one more time and then it was time to push the baby out. Honestly, I was so relieved. Just waiting that short period of time “not pushing” was exhausting because the urge to push was insurmountable. During the whole waiting period I kept telling Gil that I had no idea how people keep having kids or do this without any pain medication.
Now, onto “the pushing”. I did three rounds of pushing and then, wah-la! We had a baby boy. Luckily, I had enough of the epidural to take the edge off, but I could still feel everything happening. First, the head, then one shoulder, then second shoulder and BABY! After that I felt the placenta ooze out. None of that was painful, but I could still feel it. It was pretty cool. The plus side is I didn’t feel all drugged up, like last time, leaving the delivery room. That high that you get after running a marathon is the elated feeling you get after birth, too. It’s all pretty rad, if you ask me.
We kept a little time chart, again, so we could remember when everything happened. Here it is:
4:00pm Arrived at the hospital
6:20pm Admitted into Labor and Delivery
8:30pm Received Epidural
2:20am Bag of Waters Broke (spontaneously)
2:35am My OB arrived
2:41am Baby Boy was Born!
June 27, 2014 | 2:41 am | 8 lbs. 2 oz. | 20 inches
Our little family is complete and we couldn’t be happier. There is more to this story, but this is getting too long so I will save the after birth stuff for another day.
Here is our little prince! I have yet to come up with a clever nickname for this blog, so for now I will just go with whatever comes to mind.
Oh my gosh, in the pic of you and Gil, he is smiling!!!! I have more so say but off to sewing class and running late…was just reading all of this over my breakfast….so amazing. If I do my math right, it seems your labor, the pushing part, was only 21 minutes?!
Thanks Jamie! Yeah, my labor was pretty quick. The first one was, too. Kinda nuts, but good for me. Even though I’m told that it’s ‘active labor’ once you start to get contractions. That would make it over 24 hours!
The boys like the ones with LL the best. Of course! They adore their cousins and miss them!!
Of course! 😉 She adores them, too. I’m sure the boy will too, when he can remember!