Neil's birth story

It's appropriate that I'm writing this a week later.

So last Monday in the morning there was freezing rain and our plan hadn't been touched. Dave and I both stayed home (I worked from home). I had planned to go in at lunch when roads were better and then I wouldn't lose any working time. Dave drove in around 9am when the roads actually looked better. But I got a really achy back pretty early on and did most of my work from the couch with the laptop in my lap.

Around 4 or so I started feeling this pressure on my lower stomach area. It felt a lot like when I had an ultrasound less than a week before and they were pushing down really hard trying to get his head measurements. I actually told Dave I thought I might be have very early contractions, and told him to just stay at work because if these were early we had a long time. I also decided to get on my treadmill- I walked about 1 mile in 30 minutes, just set it at 2mph with Friends on the TV and walked. I also asked a friend who's an OB/GYN nurse if these could be contractions and she told me to try to time them.

I was having trouble figuring out when they started and stopped. It seemed like they were very long with a short break in between. Walking definitely felt better even though I kept it slow.

By the time Dave got home from work though it had spread around to my back and I was feeling it more. I talked to a few people on the phone and eventually called the midwife center. Everyone just said yeah you're talking through these (although I was consciously breathing through them too) and it's hard to time them so it's probably really early labor. The midwife told me to try to take a bath if that would help, and to take 2 benadryl to sleep off the early labor since at that point it was around 7:30 or 8pm.

Dave drew up a bath and I got in. I felt instant relief. But the water cooled off pretty quickly and my stomach was sticking out because it was too big. So I didn't last long there. After the bath, I had taken benadryl, and tried to get in bed. By this point I was moaning through contractions and preferred being in an upright position. So as soon as I lied down in the bed, another contraction came on and I think I pretty much jumped out.

I kept walking through these and telling Dave if these were early labor pains I was in big, big trouble and there is no way I'm going to be able to do this. I also said they were early because I could talk through them. Dave tried to tell me that I wasn't talking through them, I was talking in between them, but I didn't really listen.

Around 10:30pm I decided I needed to go to the midwife center. I was very discouraged, still thinking that I probably had at least 24 hours or so and how was I going to do this for that long... And I was figuring I'd go in, they'd check my progress, and send me back home. But I finally decided I needed to know how much progress I had made. When the midwife on call called me back, I had to hand the phone to Dave when I had a contraction and moaned through it. She agreed to let us come in and said to aim for 11:30pm and that they would meet us there.

The car ride was fun- I could not get on my back so I ended up on my hands and knees in the back seat. It wasn't like they talk about on tv- I wasn't yelling at Dave about bumps or telling him to slow down/speed up. I barely noticed anything around me as I kept having contractions.

When we got to the midwife center (around 11:40pm), it was a little wet out but not raining. My shoes were slip on and had fallen off in the car so I walked in without shoes. I didn't mind my socks getting a little wet. Dave didn't even realize because I wasn't doing a lot of talking at that point.

It took awhile to be able to get on the bed and check for progress but when we did, the midwife (Aoife) said I was 5cm dilated. That's halfway. It was a relief because it meant we weren't being sent home but at the same time the contractions had been strong enough so far that I wished I'd been further along.

For the rest of the labor, I had a hard time hearing things around me. I didn't even consciously do it but was just so focused on what was going on. I wasn't even sure for the most part what I said and everything just happened. At one point, I wanted to show Dave that I knew he was there and appreciated it but I couldn't voice that to him. So I leaned over to kiss his arm. Vanessa, the nurse, immediately tried to give me a towel so I could bite it. I guess women get the urge to bite and who better to bite than the person who put them where they are? (Haha.) I don't think I even explained what I was doing but I think I did tell her I meant to kiss him and wasn't going to bite.

I went from 5cm to 6cm in an hour and was really feeling the urge to push. You aren't going to REALLY push until you're 10cm but Aoife said if it felt natural to do it because our bodies know what to do. So I did and I progressed to 10cm in another half hour.

Finally came pushing. I have heard from a number of people that pushing is welcome because it's a change and you know the end is coming. Maybe it's because I progressed so quickly before that but I absolutely hated pushing. I just wanted to be done and that feeling was awful. I kept asking how many more pushes and saying I can't do this. They couldn't tell me how many more pushes (depends on me) and that I was doing great and making good progress. But it was hard to keep motivated. Every time I pushed they would say "you're almost there!" and I wanted to yell at them that they kept saying that. (In fact, I don't think I yelled AT them but I did say they just kept repeating that.) So I ended up pushing for an hour.

At 2:02am, less than 2 and a half hours after we walked into the midwife center, we welcomed Neil into this world. I was kind of out of it- they placed him on my stomach right away and cleaned him off on me, but everything was such a whirlwind at that point.

The midwife center does everything right there so you aren't separated from your baby.  We had to stick around for about 12 hours because I had tested positive for Group B Strep, and if something is going to happen to the baby it's most likely in the first 12 hours. My water didn't break until 24 minutes before I had him, though, so that really was only a 24 minute window for him to get it. That made my odds even greater. (I know that this will irk some people but I did refuse the treatment for Group B Strep. I just couldn't handle the needle.)

I delivered Neil without any drugs at all. They did give me a shot of pitocin afterwards to help stop the bleeding and deliver the placenta, but I barely registered that because of so much going on.

I'm so glad I was able to have a birthing experience without the IV and being able to talk about what I wanted. Aoife and Vanessa were great, and so was Dave. And I only yelled at him once! (I told him to shut up when he started trying to encourage and said you've run a half marathon, you can do this. The shut up was pretty mean... the way I said it.)

Aoife checking Neil's vitals

Dave changing his first diaper