I am going to be very honest, birth was NOT what I expected it to be. I 100% was that person who watched movies and television shows and believed that each birth would be a long painful process. It was actually one of the reasons I waited so long to have kids. I was terrified of giving birth. Well, if I could do it all over again, the birth was a relatively easy process for me actually. It is the after birth that I did not feel prepared for/ I think is hard! (Blog post on that coming soon). SO, with that being said, I want to share our birth story, but remember, it is different for everyone. I want to share my side of things, but please do not think that this will be it for everyone because everyone’s body is very different. But here is my story.
On Wednesday, June 24th, I woke up around 4am to the sound of the weather alarm on Jon Luke’s phone. It was wailing only to inform us that we were under a tornado warning. Now, I hate storms in the evening/dark hours because I feel like I can’t see it coming. They make me very anxious. So I got up, turned on the weather channel, and went to the bathroom. Looking back now, I think my visit to the bathroom was when my water broke, but at the time I was not paying attention to that, so I got back in bed where I sat and watched the weather man tell me about the funnel cloud that was about five miles from our house. Thankfully it was moving the opposite direction and after about thirty minutes, the warning eventually lifted, but it was during this thirty minutes that I realized my pajama bottoms were rather wet. I was not feeling any kind of contractions so I googled signs of water breaking to be sure. It told me to change my bottoms and lay back down and if they became wet again then to prepare for labor basically. So that is what I did and sure enough, my new bottoms were again…wet.
By this time it was about five thirty in the morning so I got up and came into the kitchen to call my doctor. Jon Luke was asleep so if this was a false alarm, I did not want to wake him up. I found the number, called the emergency line then waited about ten minutes for my nurse to call back. After explaining that I was having no pains, she still said we should make our way to the hospital since my water had most likely broken. So, I calmly woke Jon Luke up, took a shower and threw some very last minute things in the hospital bag. We loaded the car and were at the hospital by about 6:50am.
We both had to get our COVID screenings once we arrived, so we did that, I filled out some paperwork, then we waited for just a minute. A nurse came to get me and took me back to complete paperwork/check my vitals/etc. then we grabbed Jon Luke and went into a temporary room. In a another tornado warning at this point, it was storming and I was super anxious because again, I had no pain and had expected the worst. They ran a test to see if my water had broken (which it had) and checked to see how far dilated I was. I was 3cm, which was no shock since I had been sitting at this amount for about three weeks, so they called upstairs to get my room ready and that was that. We were moved into our room by 8am.
Now, this is where it gets a little comical. My nurse came in and started asking how I was feeling. “Great!” was my response because still…NO PAIN. So she got my IV hooked up and the monitor for the baby’s heart rate and said she would check back later. Jon Luke pulled out his computer to do some work, so I thought, well, I will do the same thing. I ended up taking several work calls, was on a conference call, answered emails, & wrote a blog post…all between 8am and about 5pm. My coworkers kept telling me to stop but I felt great and honestly was getting so much done so it was a good distraction. My doctor came in to check on me around noon and decided to start the Pitocin so they hooked that up around 1pm. Once that started, I could tell the contractions were kicking in and after about four hours I called for my epidural. If you watch my IGTV I was explaining that it was hard to tell if I was in a lot of pain, but being very tough, or if I was in a little bit of pain and being a baby, but again, it was not like the movies for me. I just sat quietly on the bed and let the contractions happen but once I was about 5-6 cm dilated and feeling what I thought was a good amount of pain, I got my epidural.
Getting the actual epidural was not painful (also something I didn’t expect) so when it kicked in, I felt great. I got the epidural around five so I just rolled on my side and took a little cat nap and let it run its course. I could not feel anything from the waist down, but I was freezing, which my nurse said was a side effect of the epidural. Finally around 9:45-10pm, I was 10cm dilated so my nurse decided it was time to push. Here we go.
To start, it was just my nurse, JL and I. And it was relatively chill. She thought his head might be turned so she called in another nurse to check who then stayed in and helped us, but basically I did a few practice pushes to see if we could turn his head. After a few, she turned me on my side and put the peanut ball in between my legs to try to help him get adjusted, then we started again after about 20 minutes. Finally, my doctor came in around 11:15pm and we pushed some more.
After about two hours of pushing (it was almost midnight) my doctor said that I might need some assistance in getting him out. She offered for me to keep pushing, use the forceps or a C-section, but at this point I was too close to opt for a section. I asked if I could push a few more times to see if he would move, which she granted. During these few minutes, I started to feel some kind of acid reflux and told her that I didn’t feel right. She asked my nurse to get a bag that I could get sick in but I was convinced I did not need it…and was wrong. Before I could finish the sentence I was throwing up (sorry TMI). Finally, she looked at me again (you could tell she was feeling my frustration) and told me that she thought he was stuck at my pelvic bone. I went ahead and opted for the forceps and our hospital room went from zero to Grey’s Anatomy in about 30 seconds. Lights came on, two nurses who were assisting my doctor came in, the baby’s nurse, my original nurse and two extra nurses all within a matter of seconds. As they came in, my doctor explained who they all were and how they would be assisting but at this point I wasn’t listing. She got situated in just a few short minutes, waited for my next contraction, told me to push, I assume entered the forceps, and he was out right away. Literally, he just needed assistance around my pelvic bone.
Once he was out, they handed him to me while they stitched me up and JL and I just couldn’t help but be in awe of him. I am sure JL was overwhelmed at the entire process and we were both exhausted, but our little boy was here and it was the greatest feeling in the world. He was born at 12:47am and by the time they fixed me up, ran his tests/gave him a bath, it was about 3:30am when they moved us to our new room. I was finally able to eat something once we got there and the boys went to sleep. From then (Thursday morning) on it was all about resting and learning how to feed him. I definitely started to feel pain as my epidural wore off, but the nurses were great about coming in and giving me my pain medicine, helping me walk, go to the bathroom…you name it, they did it. On Friday, I worked up the energy to shower and it was AMAZING. Thankfully, we were able to come home on Friday afternoon to a sweet welcome committee of my parents and grandma and even though I was hurting, made it all so sweet.
It was a whirlwind for sure and people are right when they say you don’t remember the pain/much of delivery. But I will say, I was glad I had the epidural because when he came out, all of the nurses (and my doctor) in unison said, “wow! that’s a big boy!” Could you imagine feeling that the entire time? Nope, not me.
