The time has officially come when I’ve started thinking about labor, so that makes me want to blog about this stuff. I don’t believe I’m about to be graphic, but this is a story about child birth. If this makes you uncomfortable in any way or you are too young/male/squeamish to read about this stuff, please enjoy the other post I’ve put up today instead.May 25th was my due date. It was also the day that I would have been back in my hometown for my brother’s graduation if I hadn’t been 12 hours away and 9 months pregnant. I was, of course, expecting to go early because I think all new moms think that once they are full term they can “go any time”. However, I did go into labor on my due date. So, when I called my family, they were all quite excited to pass this information around the ongoing party. (Sorry to the little bro for stealing some of you thunder.)
My contractions started at around 5 minutes apart from the beginning. After several hours of contractions, we called the hospital. They said to wait because they were fairly busy that day. Even though I wouldn’t have the baby for several hours, this still seems kind of awful in retrospect, and like it could lead to things like people having babies in places not the hospital.
So, we waited a while longer, but when things were still happening at 11 (I went into labor around 3:30). I just had Bryan tell them that we were coming so we wouldn’t have to drive in the middle of the night. When we got there, I was 4 cm. They ruptured the membranes, and very shortly I was 7 cm. I thought maybe we could have Emma on her due date or shortly thereafter at this point.
But this was not to be. Emma has always liked being able to see everything that was going on, and birth was apparently no different. She decided to come posterior which was stalling out labor and making it take much, much, much longer.
Luckily, I had a fabulous nurse who had lots of suggestion and sympathy for me. Of course, they did suggest I have the Nubain stuff which probably stalled out labor more. I also think more moving around could have progressed things faster, but the nurse was still incredibly sweet, and I was probably one of the few attempted natural births they see there.
During the 6 or so hours of transition labor, poor Bryan was exhausted. He was leaning on the bed by me and would fall asleep in the 2-4 minutes between contractions, wake up to hold my hand during the contraction, and then drop off again. Of course, with me being loopy with the Nubain, I didn’t get irritated.
Finally, around 7, the doctor came in to check things out. Things had been sparse during the night (which is probably good and how I avoided other interventions) because 8 babies had just been born. The doctor took a look and told me I was at 9 cm. She figured she could push the rest of the cervix out of the way with the next contraction. She did, and Emma was born less than 15 minutes later.
She was 6 lb. 1 oz. and 20 inches long. She was so skinny and tiny. She didn’t even have a little round baby butt. However, she made up for that by eating around the clock for the next few weeks 🙂
We were delighted, of course, and the next night Bryan slept, but I was wired (probably a combination of coming off drugs and adrenaline). Emma also didn’t really sleep well unless she was on someone (probably a body heat issue with being so tiny). So, I picked her up, and held her and adored her that first night.
All in all, I found that labor was a fairly do-able thing, so if you’re expecting labor. Remember that, labor is a do-able thing. It’s painful and not all that fun, but you can do it!
