Harper's Birth Story

We stupidly came in yesterday under the impression that we would be holding a baby by the end of today. As time ticks by, I am starting to sense that I'm going to be missing turkey AND still not having a baby.  Rip off.  Since we may be here for a while I have decided to chronicle each day separately.

Before I begin talking about the day thus far let me say that Ambien is amazing.  I took two last night around 11:30pm and by midnight I was passed out.  I did tell my sister that I could see two of her because I did, but after that I was in a deep, dreamless state.  At 7:30am when the nurses came in to take out my Cervidil I was bright eyed and bushy tailed.

7:30am - Cervidil was removed, cervix was checked, and found that I'm STILL only 1 cm and 50%.  Super sad face.  On the bright side I was allowed to take a shower AND got to walk around the maternity ward for about 20 minutes.  FREEDOM!  My dad was up to visit again so it was really nice to be able to walk out to the waiting room to get him.  He didn't want to come back to the room at first.  I think that he must have thought that the room was small like a typical hospital room.  Not the case.  My delivery room was easily half the size of our house.

9:00am - Back in bed.  I had two jello cups and a shitload of candy for breakfast (Lifesavers and Werther's Originals) because I'm not allowed to eat anything else.  The jello count is now up to six for the 17 hours that we've been here. Yummy.  I should be stoked that I get to eat bags of candy, but when that's your only option it's kind of depressing.

Waiting for the doctor to see what the plan of action for today is...

9:45am - The new doctor on call came in and ran down the options that we had to work with today.  I really don't see them as options since I have no clue what is best at this point and I have no idea what my body will or will not react to.
option #1 - another round of Cervidil, which is what I had last night.  She threw that out immediately.
option #2 - start a slow drip of Pitocin and gradually increase it over a few hours to jump start labor.
option #3 - cervical balloon (see below -- very weird -- glad we didn't do this one)

ripening balloon goes on the inside and
outside of the cervix.  The balloons put pressure
on the cervix forcing it to start dilating

We went with option #2 (I like to pretend that I actually got to decide today's course of action) - slow drip of Pitocin.  I have been on it now for about an hour and am getting contractions about every 7-8 minutes.  Nothing exciting yet, but I think that shows that my body is responding favorably to the drugs.  For all you ladies out there, I feel like I'm getting period crams every time I have a contraction.  On my pain scale (0-10) I would say that they are a 0.5 just because I actually feel them every time they happen as opposed to before when I'd be having a contraction and have no idea that it was happening.

Now that I have the Pitocin drip I am restricted to ice chips, popsicles, and gum.  What do I do about that?  I start watching Man v. Food on the Food Network.  What is wrong with me!?  I think I'm going to try napping.  That might make me forget about how hungry I am.  Next cervical check will be between 12:00-1:00pm.  Will update again after that.

1pm - WATER HAS BROKEN!
This was by far the weirdest/coolest thing to happen thus far.  We were just hanging out in the room talking: me, Bryan, my mom, sister, step-dad, and dad. When out of no where I felt something drop (down onto my pubic bone), felt a pop (like when you pop a water balloon in your hands, and next thing I know I have a river flowing out of Ladytown and into my hospital bed.  Now, I had been waiting for my water to break at work or at home so that we could experience the,"Oh my gosh my water broke!  Let's go to the hospital!" panic.  Now that I know what actually happens when your water breaks, I am glad that I was not sitting in a classroom teaching math when it happened.  So... much... liquid!  What's worse about that was that I was being induced due to low amniotic fluid.  Imagine if the sack was a full as it was supposed to be! Don't worry.  There are no pictures of this.  I do have some kind of filter.  I freaked a little telling everyone to leave and for Bryan to get the nurse.  He nicely reminded me that I had a nurse call button right next to me.  I pushed it and in she came to confirm my suspicions.  Water had broken.  The down side of that was that the real contractions shortly followed.

Still have a long way to go!

1pm-3pm: Contractions feel like THAT!?
Holy hell.  Let me remind you that I was going for a medication-free labor and delivery.  At 3pm I came to my senses.  I know that I was on Pitocin, which is supposed to make contractions harder and more painful but DAMN.  I cannot even BEGIN to describe what that shit felt like.  There is no way.  Not only were they gut wrenching but they were irregular so sometimes I'd have a 7 minute break in between contractions and then other times I would have 2-3 right on top of each other (within a minute).  When a contraction came I had to cover my face, hold my right side, breathe deeply, and no one had better make a peep of noise.  My legs were getting tired from tensing up to refocus the pain and Bryan had to rub my lower back a few times because the contractions were starting under my belly button and radiating around to my lower back.  It hurt like a mother.  I knew the nurse was coming back at 3pm to check my cervix so I was doing my best to wait for her before crying out for drugs.

3pm: 2 cm and 70% effaced - time for pain meds.
When the nurse told me I was only 2cm. I knew that drugs were inevidable.  I had to get to 10cm. and knew that the contractions would only get more excruciating.  While I was waiting for the epidural I got a shot of something in my IV to 'take the edge off'.  When she shot it in she told me that I would feel like I had a few cocktails.  I think what she meant was that I would feel like I had been binge drinking all night long.  It was instant.  Instant drunkenness followed by me passing out (asleep, not bad passing out).  I was woken up by a HORRIBLE contraction around 4pm, hit the nurse button, and started to get ready for the epidural.

4pm: epidural - why wouldn't you?
Ok.  I originally wanted to try to do this birth thing unmedicated.  I don't know if it was the Pitocin or if that was what 2cm contractions feel like, but there was no way in hell that I would have made it 10 cm. dilated AND pushed a baby out without that epidural.  It was around 4pm when Mike the epidural guy came in to do his thing.  What was funny was that he asked Bryan to sit down in a chair.  Apparently husbands pass out when they watch an epidural being administered.  I can't say that I blame them.  You may remember my epidural post many months ago.  I got a little queasy watching it and I LOVE crazy medical procedures.  While Mike was placing the epidural I got one of those never ending contractions.  I thought that it would have been hard to stay still through them, but knowing that there was relief right around the corner made it a whole lot easier.  Once the epidural was in my right side instantly felt tingly and soon after that the contractions were a thing of the past.  I could still feel my left side and a spot on my lower abdomen about the size of a softball still radiated with each contraction.  The nurse said that I might have a hot spot, which is a place where my nerves can't be blocked.  Epidural guy came back in to try to fix the problem by shooting something down my spine.  Eureka! Bye-bye pain and pressure. From that point on I was in and out of sleep and I felt SO much better.

I thought my water breaking was the coolest thing so far -- for Bryan it was watching the epidural get placed.

5pm: 3 1/2 cm. dilated

6pm: 6 cm. dilated
We were NOT expecting that much progress in such little time.  Bryan and I were both convinced that Harper wouldn't come until Friday at the earliest.  I hadn't made much progress in weeks let alone today. So jumping from 3 1/2 cm. to 6 cm. in a hour was crazy.

6:45pm: 10 cm. 100% effaced
You think we were shocked at 6pm?  We were beyond 45 min. later when my nurse said that we needed to prepare to push because I was ready to go.  The only thing they needed to try to do before I started was to try to get the baby to drop down more.  To do that, they put me into 'throne' position.  All they did was sit the back of my bed straight up and then put the leg portion of the bed in a downward angle.  I sat like that for about 45 minutes and then it was time to push.


7:35pm: Pushing begins
Our original agreement was that Bryan's job was to stay at the head of the bed as to avoid being scarred for life by accidentally (or purposefully) seeing into the depths of my vagina.  Let's face it, that thing stretched out to the size of a softball, God only knows how far up you could see.  What we did not know was that he was going to be more involved in the birth then we thought.  The only people in that huge delivery room were me, one nurse, and Bryan.  My job was pretty self-explanitory: push baby out when I'm told to.  Nurse and Bryan were each in charge of holding one of my legs.  This gave Bryan prime opportunity to see what you can never un-see.  I remember about half-way though asking him if he looked.  He said no.  I didn't believe him.  That was really nice of him to lie to me at that point though.  He later admitted that he saw everything and that it was like a train wreck.  Once you looked, you couldn't look away.  He did say that it was pretty cool to see his daughter being born.

So what happens in the birth room is that the nurse coaches you though the entire pushing process and when the baby's head starts to crown she calls the doctor in to deliver.  The problem, at times, was that my nurse would forget to tell me that my 10 seconds of pushing were up.  She would start counting and then trail off and not tell me when to stop.  Pushing out a baby is hard work especially when I can't feel anything.  I don't know when it started to happen but I was able to get some feeling back from the epidural.  That was actually a good thing because I could feel where/what I was supposed to be pushing.  I was convinced that the nurse was telling me that I was getting close so that I would keep going, but finally I was able to tell that Harper's head was in fact moving down.  Progress!  Later when I told people that I pushed for about an hour and a half they give me this grimaced/horrified face like that is the longest anyone's ever pushed before.  I seriously doubt that it is.  Honestly, everything went by really quickly.  Did I mention that the movie Elf was playing whilst I delivered?  Yes, it was.  I pretty much pushed through the whole movie.  Anyway, I could tell that Harper was very close to her birthday time so I put more effort into my pushing, which was when the doctor was finally called in...

The doctor who delivered was, of course, one of the doctors at my practice that I had only seen once throughout the whole pregnancy.  Not that it mattered a whole lot, but at this point I was determined and she underestimated my pushing skills.  Within one or two pushes I hear, "Ok.  Stop, stop, stop!"  Mind you, I was in the middle of an epic push.  Yeah... so doctor didn't think I was as ready to deliver and I actually was.  Next thing I know there is a swat team (by swat team I mean 2-3) of nurses who resembled the pit crew at a Nascar race.  They started taking the end of my bed apart (I guess so that I didn't have to scoot down to the edge where my butt would be hanging off) while my doctor was slapping on her gloves and whatever else she had to have on to deliver.  In the meantime I'm lying on this bed with my daughter's head halfway in and halfway out.  This... did not feel good.  While I was waiting I leaned my head back to take my mind off of the stretching, pulling, and pressure I was feeling down below and I forgot the nurse's advice from when I started pushing which was:

"If you do not want to see what is going on down there then don't look up at the ceiling because you'll be able to see your reflection in the light fixture that's above your head."

AHH!!  That's right... I saw what cannot be unseen.  Let's just say that the movie Knocked-up is veerrrry accurate.  The doctor was ready after that, but my body apparently wasn't.  They wanted me to wait for the next contraction to push again, but it didn't seem that a contraction was anywhere in sight.  I didn't understand it.  Why did I have to wait for a contraction?  After a minute or two of this 'waiting' I asked if I could just push on my own.  They gave me the go ahead and in the next minute Miss Harper Grace was born!

Harper Grace Townsend
Born Thanksgiving day (11/24/11)
9:04pm -- 7lbs. 7oz. -- 19.5 inches

Before I sign off on this never ending post (yes, I have been writing this for 3 weeks now) I have to tell you all what Bryan was doing during the pushing process.  I mentioned above that he had to hold one of my legs whilst I pushed but I did not mention what he was doing while I rested in between pushes; he was texting.  That's right folks!  He joked and joked that I'd be the one either blogging or Facebooking while in labor, but in fact it was him who was texting our family and friends in the waiting room.  After a while the sound of his text notifications began driving me crazy and I told him to put it on silent or ignore the incoming texts.  He told me that everyone waiting was curious and he didn't want them to think that anything was wrong.  My response?  I don't care what they think or how long they have to wait because I'm busy having a baby here and it's not going to happen quickly -- that was my only 'bitter moment' or as Roxy would call 'creative verbal vomit'.  I just wanted to go ahead and set the record straight that I was not the only abusing technology while in labor.  Once my water broke that was it, I was down for the count so much so that Harper will be 3 weeks old tomorrow and I'm just now finishing her birth post.

Will this blog continue?  I haven't decided yet.  Stay tuned.