Birth Story

I didn't really write down LMS' birth story when she was born, partly because the whole experience was quite hazy, partly because it was a bit traumatic for me. I had a completely different experience this time around, and thought I'd record it. 

I thought The Little Mister would come early, given all the contractions I had all summer.

nope.

I hoped he'd come on his due date.

nope.

I thought maybe he'd come during the day and a half between when Mr M's mom left and mine arrived. Murphy's Law and all that....

nope.

********

Friday (almost a week late)- I spent some time on the treadmill for the first time since the Four Mile race. My Ob/Gyn said walking wouldn't help, but I thought maybe running would. I jogged a total of 15 minutes during the 45 minutes I spent on the treadmill. The first half hour I felt a bit rusty and stiff, but everything loosened up and felt good after that. I was sore for the rest of the day but that wasn't unexpected since I was almost 41 weeks pregnant and hadn't run in a month.

I thought how I felt while on the treadmill boded well for being able to start running again after the baby's birth.

Unfortunately, I didn't go into labor.

Of course, I'd also been building furniture the last two months without bringing on labor, so I hadn't pinned my hopes on it happening after one stint on the treadmill.

Warning: 

Pregnancy-related TMI ahead. 

You may want to just skip to the picture :)

The next day (Saturday), I woke to crampy contractions. I felt these lower down than the Braxton Hicks contractions I'd been having, so the difference caught my attention. As the morning progressed, the contractions got closer and more regular, but I was still planning on going to LMS' soccer game with Mr M and my mom.

I thought that we might go to the hospital afterward the game, but one last stop in the bathroom (there's no facilities at the soccer field) changed that.

So my mom took LMS to soccer and Mr M and I headed for the hospital.

********

•   When we got to the hospital, I was dilated to a three.
•   They wanted me to walk for a bit before getting in the tub, so we walked the halls for about 20 minutes or so and the contractions got a lot more painful and frequent.
•   They checked me again and I was dilated to a five. I was given the choice of getting an epidural or spending time in the tub- there wasn't time for both.
•   Even though I'd really been looking forward to using the tub, I chose the epidural. I don't need a drug-free labor and delivery to consider myself a "real" woman, and I've been scarred by very painful periods and various procedures (done in the name of figuring out what's wrong with me) that were even more incredibly painful. So give me the drugs- I don't want to feel what's going on.
•   A little later they checked me and I was dilated to an 8, but the baby hadn't dropped yet. They had me lay on my side for awhile to see if he'd start descending.
•   While I was laying on my side, my water broke. Or, more accurately, it exploded. The  monitors picked up the noise, so Mr M and I heard it, and the force was enough to make the leg on top lift up. The fluid had some trajectory, too, and made quite a mess. Icky, but funny at the same time :) I'm really glad I wasn't at church or in a store when that happened. No sedate trickles of fluid (like they try to reassure you is all you have to worry about) for me.
•   At that point, the baby was facing up, so they changed my position so I was half on my side, half on my stomach to encourage him to roll over.
•   We waited a bit (I think I even read a magazine), and then I was fully dilated and ready. I started pushing and after about 45 minutes he was out. I think it took 10 or 11 pushes. One thing I was aware enough to realize was that the pushing is not constant and is just done with contractions. In fact, I was the one saying "OK, I'm ready to push again." With LMS, I really don't think that was the case- I was just too out of it then. 
•   The Little Mister had flipped over like we hoped he would, so he came out face down, though the cord was wrapped around his neck once.
•   They unwrapped the cord, wiped him up a bit, and laid him on my chest while the doctor stitched me up because I'd torn along the epesiotomy scar leftover from LMS' delivery.

********

The doctor kept saying "it was a good epidural, well placed." Between the post-birth haze and his Russian accent, it took me till the next day to realize he meant the epidural had worked just as it should since no other anesthesia was needed while he was stitching me up. I'd explained about the last one wearing off and my concerns about a repeat, so I think he was being encouraging :)

On a side note, while we were in the early stages of getting settled in the room, the doctor was making small talk and asked Mr M what he did. When Mr M mentioned where he worked, the doctor said "don't tell me any more, I don't want to know". I don't know how long he's been in the US, but apparently it hasn't been long enough to be forget how things were done in Russia. Not that Mr M does anything super secret or scary or anything, but we did think his reaction was amusing.

********

There were only two bad-ish parts. One was that not long after the epidural was started my blood pressure dropped and the nausea hit pretty hard. They had me lay flat on my back for a bit and I felt better.  The other was that towards the end of pushing I started getting shaky and had to be given some oxygen. Neither was that bad to deal with and didn't leave lasting problems.

********

This labor and delivery (and the pregnancy, for that matter) were a much better experience than LMS' pregnancy, labor, and delivery. The two experiences were like night and day.

•   No induction this time.
•   The epidural worked and didn't wear off early.
•   The baby's head didn't get stuck and cause damage to me.
•   No vacuum was needed to assist the baby out.
•   No unwanted epesiotomy- I'm still bitter about that one.
•   No torn/pulled groin muscle that made it painful to walk for quite awhile afterwards and had a long healing time
•   I was actually present and aware of what was going on.

********

So why the difference?

Two words: Activity Level.  I was (and had been for several years prior) very sedentary when I got pregnant with LMS because of work, school, and low energy levels caused by undiagnosed and untreated celiac.  That was definitely not the case this time around: I've been running consistently for a number of years now and completed four races, one of which was a half marathon, while pregnant. I also built quite a few pieces of furniture and ran LMS all over the place to all her activities.  And I've been gluten free for four and a half years now. I still had nausea, but I rarely got heartburn this time,  my energy levels were a lot higher, and most of the time I wasn't super uncomfortable physically. In fact, despite going past my due date, I never reached the "just-get-this-kid-out-of-me-now" point, though I definitely reached it with LMS. I did get a little antsy the last week because I wanted to know how much time I had left to work on my projects :) and because I was starting to worry about having to be induced.

We don't  know if I'll be able to get pregnant again and I think this really contributed to my desire to have a better experience this time. And I'll freely admit that as the due date approached we were really praying that the L & D would go well and be a better experience. Our prayers were answered, and if I don't get pregnant again, I have the more recent and more positive memories of this pregnancy to overshadow the more negative memories of the previous pregnancies (LMS and the miscarriages). Definitely a blessing.

our second miracle baby