Birth story (long, but condensed)

[Cheesecake]

As promised, not waiting until I'm on a computer though, 'cause that could be next year.

On Thursday the 17th contractions came in, steady, at 1 per 1 minute per 5 minutes, but not that painful. We saw our own doc around 5pm ish that day where I asked about whether this was the real deal. He then gave his zebra-quote, which I promptly posted on GBCN (the GP board).
Contractions kept coming at.this pace, but I was able to sleep through them for an hour or 2. Yay!
Around 4 am something felt different, so I had a doc.check me and she told me I was nicely thinned out, but not enough dilation to break my waters and more me to the delivery room. She didn't give a cm count.
Around 10 am the day shift midwife came by and checked (she had the least gentle hands of the 3 different people who checked me. Yikes, ouch!) and I was at 3cm so ready to move to a delivery room to have my waters broken.
That internal hurt like hell, again, her no-nonsense approach did not sit well with my lady parts! But in the end the water was broken and baby had a heartbeat monitor on her head so all was good.

Midwife wanted to speed things up despite my med-free wishes and birth plan and wanted to hook me onto the oxytocin drip (apparently they use a slightly different stuff here than the pitocin in the US). I fought her on that and got 3 hours extra to progress on my own.
Around 2pm they came in for the IV and the oxytocin. I was still at 3cm, so I had no choice anymore. I freaked out. Completely. I have a very strong, irrational fear of IVs and I really didn't want the meds so I cursed and cried and whatnot. (Having only had a couple hours sleep in the last 28 or so hours didn't help either.)

Contractions got horrible after that. You guys, really, natural contractions are super awesome and fun compared to those sucky chemical ones.

I worked through those for a number of hpurs until around 7/7.30pm I was just exhausted. I couldn't handle them anymore and asked for the oxy to please please be shut down.
They (new, gentle midwife) did another internal and I was still at a 3. I cried.
Midwife calmly and completely explained all the options we still had left and while she didn't mention the qord c-section, she made sure we realized that if we didn't do something to progress, that's where we would eventually be headed.
We talked it over and decided to go for the epi after all. I really didn't want it, but after 28 hours of contractions my body was just done.
We let the midwife know and she called anesthesiology to ask them to come down. It was about 8pm when she let us know that due to it being crazy busy in the ORs, it would take an hour before they'd come down. I asked for the oxy to be turned down/off for that hour and since they figured we could actually up it way quicker with the epi in, they agreed.
I was still having contractions, but the non-oxy ones were much more bearable.

Around 9 pm the anesthesiologist came in, together with the midwife and the nurse. They prepped me for the epi and DH sat on the floor in my line of sight to focus on. When testing the epi it turned outto not be perfectly positioned, so they did a second one, which did go in correctly.
Abouta half hour laterthey came to test the epi and were happy with it. The left side was better than the right, but both were numb enough to get me through. They upped the oxy and DH and I watched some Netflix while riding outthe contractions.
A couple hours later it startes getting more and more painful on my right side again until at some point I could feel everything again. We called for the nurse who tested the block again and confirmed that the right side wasn't numbed. Anesthesiology was called to ask what to do.
Shifts changed and the night nurse and OB came and re-administered the meds to hopefully get the block going again completely. Once I was tested again and found to be numb again the OB (who was super super gentle!) re-checked my dilation and found that I was still at a 3. After seeing my ultra disappointed face she made it '3 to 4'. She said she was going to way up the oxy to the max to see if they could get me to a cm per hour. She also said the oxy couldn't go higher and couldn't stay on that level for hours, because that could cause hemorrhaging after delivery. After she left DH and I were convinced we were headed towards c-section.

I fell asleep thanks to the epi and really woke up abput 2 hours later. I was starting to feel the contractions again so I figured that was it. They couldn't re-do my epi anymore, they couldn't up the oxy, it had only been 2 hours and we were hoping for 1cm per hour with 7 more to go. Also, DH had seen the monitors and my contractions had become less severe while I was sleeping.

I called for the nurse to see what's up when I felt the contractions change and felt my body starting to push. I was super scared and tried to hold back the urge, which hurt like a mofo. Pressed the call button again a couple of times, then sent DH into the hall to fetch someone because I couldn't hold back anymore.

The nurse came in and got the OB who checked me while I was mentally preparing myself for an emergency C-section, after all you can't push on 5, maybe 6 cm. So I was completely stunned when the OB told me that I was fully dilated and shouldn't hold back the urge to push anymore, but that it was still way too early to start full on pushing. She'd check back in a little while to see whether the baby was coming down nicely.
2 contractions later the nurse came in to do some practice pushes with me. That apparently works better than going at it from never before. Baby was still up high, so they told me to lay on my ledt side with a towel between my knees as that can help bring baby down. She'd check how far we'd come in about half an hour.
The next contraction came and I went along with it when I felt a weird little 'plop' near my cervix and then felt the head coming. I pushed the call button, then kept feeling it coming so DH ran to get someone NOW.
A junior/student nurse was the first person he saw, so he brought her in and she looked, got wide-eyed and said 'I see the head'.
She ran outside and got the first OB available, which wasn't ours, but we did know her and she told us that she'd stay with us until ours came. She also told us that she was on her way to the OR for someone else, which was why she was dressed half in scrubs, half in regular clothes and a plastic apRon. She apparently really rushed to us while halfway through changing. She told us our OB was in the OR, because she was going to assist, but she had been.called and would be there ASAP. A few seconds later our OB came in, panting from running.

A contraction came, she had megrab my legs and really push, then hold it in to let it stretch until the next contraction. That ring of fire is hell, but she and DH helped me focus on my breath and I got through it. She had me feel the head, which was half out, thwn another contraction came and I pushed the head out and had to wait again for the shoulders and everything.
The 3rd contraction, not even 10 minutes after that nurse got the other OB I delivered my daughter. She was placed on my chest immediately, got a hat and some blankets and I just couldn't stop staring at her. She was perfect! 38 hours of agony were nothing compared to how awesome and cute and magical it qas to see her.
I had 2 tiny tiny little tears, which didn't require stiches, but since I was focused on my daughter she did suture them after all, for cosmetic purpose only.

She told me her apgar scores were 9/10/10 and I cried out of happiness that all the drama was over and my baby was super healthy despite my health and the whole L&D process.

We were cleared to go home 2.5 hours later, but since I fell asleep we stayed an extra 2 hours to let me nap

If you made it all the way thrpugh, kudos! I know it was epic - sorry!!!

Our baby girl *poof, if you missed her name, PM me if you want to know* was born on October 19th at 4.43 am, at 38w4d weighing 7lbs 2oz. She is perfect and I couldn't be happier!

Picture and name will go poof after the weekend.


Sent from my Xperia Z, please don't mind typos!

[degal99]

Hurray! I'm glad you for your healthy daughter despite a couple of set backs. Wonderful!

[snickers]

Congrats!!!!

Were you and DH left alone in the room without a nurse? Even in the beginning while starting to push? Or am I just too tired to comprehend this lol.

[Cheesecake]

Well, not on purpose. She wasn't far down enough yet to start pushing and with my progress ygus far and how long it wpuld usually take, they expected it to be at LEAST an hour before I could start pushing, possibly longer. At that same time 2 people needed emergency surgery so they said they'd check regularly and be back in 30 minutes to check progress, which in best case scenario should've been halfway towards the point where I'd be allowed to start pushing. However what should reasonably have taken at least an hour, took only half a contraction.
Oops...

So no, they didn't leave me alone to push, it just almost turned out that way.

Sent from my Xperia Z, please don't mind typos!

[G22]

Congrats! She's beautiful!

[daisy24342]

Wow, what a story! Congrats on a beautiful daughter. I love her name!

How's your recovery been?

[Cheesecake]

Recovery has been pretty smooth except for my stupid hip/leg hurting and now intestinal cramps. But on general baby and I are doing great. I'm just super hormonal. I wasn't all that hormonal/crazy during pregnancy, (at least that's what DH says and how I feel) but now, post partum, it's terrible!

Sent from my Xperia Z, please don't mind typos!

[statlerwaldorf]

Congrats! She is adorable. Postpartum hormones were a lot worse than pregnancy hormones for me. I even had more cravings during the first few weeks postpartum than I did during my entire pregnancy.

[ilovecandy]

I clearly missed everything but yay for finally having a baby!