I rang Elizabeth, the midwife, after 7. She's already at the hospital (turns out she ended up doing two births before mine since the night before). She recommends hanging at home longer as the contractions are close enough, but not long enough. Kristen is coming along to the birth as an extra support person, so I ring her not long after to give her the heads up that today is the day.
I wonder about the house until about 10:30. I'm pacing and doing the stairs. I'm talking to Kristen and Jeremy. Rocket knows that today baby is coming. He asked me earlier if I was waiting for baby to pop. Ha! I don't know where he heard that from, but it's hilarious.
After arriving at the hospital about 11, I go directly into my labouring room. As it's close to lunch, Kristen makes a Subway run to get us all food. By the time she comes back, I go into active labour. I'm hooked up to a wireless monitor. We're watching the contractions go up and down. Elizabeth finally turns it away from me as it's not really helping me watching it. :-)
I'm standing at the end of the bed with my stress balls in hand. I'm pushing the bed as hard as I can with the contractions. The visual in my head is that I'm pushing an elephant.
I'm burning up wishing for a fan. Where Kristen is sitting at the corner of the room has the best air flow, so I move over there. Pushing on the counter doesn't feel as good as pushing on the bed, as the bed had a little give, so felt like I was doing something. It wasn't long before I was fully dilated. Eventually my water breaks. It turns out not to be all of it, just a bit. After that I decide I'd rather be on all fours. They put me on the bed, leaning forward against the raised back.
After a bit of being on the bed, my water fully broke. It was quite forceful and explosive. Elizabeth commented that she was glad her head wasn't there, as she'd just looked down there to see how things were progressing. I imagine it was something akin to a Tarantino movie! After this, my dialation goes back down to 8. Elizabeth suggests sitting on the toilet for a while. I'm quite unhappy with this though. I can't get comfortable. It was a nice relief for my legs and arms though to not be leaning on them for a short time.
I go back to the bed and Elizabeth checks my dialation again. She can tell I'm not progressing and the baby's head is leaned back. She tries to move it, but it doesn't go down. She brings in the on call OB. Luckily, it was the OB I'd seen about 10 weeks earlier when checking to make sure I'm good to try for a VBAC. He recommends I get an epidural so he can try to move it better. He then says I'll get 30 minutes before they make me do a c-section. We're all hoping and praying for the head to move during this time. This whole time they keep telling me to not push. Not pushing when you feel like you have to push is brutal. I'm not particularly successful at this. I tell them a lot that I can't.
The anaesthetist comes in and does the epidural. Let's just say we don't like him. He does a good job on the epidural, but his bedside manner is lacking. They strap my legs up. The OB says that they do this so I won't kick him in the head. To which I reply that "that's probably a good thing". Everyone laughs. I think they were happy to know I was still mentally present to some extent. The OB still couldn't move the head. I break down and cry at this point. I really really don't want another c-section. Everyone stops and work on consoling me. The baby isn't having too many issues, so we're not in a rush to get him out. The Dr decides to put in my catheter for the surgery. He can't get it in. The baby's head is blocking something, so the catheter won't go in correctly. He checks again, and I was fully dilated. The time I had crying gave my body time to do its thing. He says I can try for ventouse, which is where they vacuum out the baby while you push. The OB says he's go ing to go get his party shoes on (which turn out to be white wellies). So we did more pushing and by the time I hit their time limit they gave me to try, they'd hit the point of no return. I was out of the running for a c-section. Yay!
So, with the help of the Dr, a vacuum, an episiodimy, and a secondary tear, the baby comes out. All the while being told to push and not push, push and not push. Aggravating and exhausting, it is. The baby is taken over to a table to be checked after he's on me for all of a minute max. The SCBU nurse had to do some things to get him breathing correctly. It wasn't major. All the while, I get to stay exposed while the Dr stitches me up. I asked how long it would be, after 5 minutes. He said about 10 more minutes. Kristen reckons it was more like 30, which confirmed what I was thinking. I know he had to give me some local anaesthetic as he couldn't wait for more epidural meds as I was bleeding too much.
I get to stay in the hospital for 4 days. I am pleased. I can't sit down as my tailbone is pretty damaged. (It still is 7 weeks later). My right hand fingers are actually worse off for numbness. It went from intermittent numbness and pain to constant numbness. I'm seeing an Osteopath for it and my tailbone.
So, there it is as I can remember things. I'm sure I'm forgetting a few things, but the basics are here.
