Since sleep is lacking for me I figured I could use all the random hours I’m up to start putting her birth into words. Like a lot of people, my birth plan didn’t go as expected but in the end we had to do what was best for our baby girl. Sunday morning I wasn’t feeling the best so we stayed home from church to just let me rest. By that time I was 3 days past my due date so I was just kind of waiting. My doctor was out of town until Tuesday so I wasn’t in a hurry to go into labor without her. I woke up with small contractions, but didn’t think it was that big of a deal. Soon enough I was leaning over the couch trying to find relief while counting contractions. We live 5 minutes away from our hospital so I wasn’t too worried about getting there if my contractions were too close. What started from random times (9 minutes, to 5 minutes, to 10 minutes, etc....) quickly went to consistent contractions every 4 minutes for a good hour. I hadn’t been very dilated so I wasn’t super worried, but we decided to go to the hospital to get checked. The worst that would happen would be they would just send us home. We got to the hospital and checked into triage, they took my vitals, checked my cervix and told me they would monitor me for an hour before deciding if I could stay. So I continued to have contractions while they monitored me and we just watched football while we waited. I was continuing to dilate so they transferred me to a different room and offered the epidural. I planned on getting one but didn’t plan to get it twice....when they did the epidural I was good for about an hour, when all of a sudden I realized I could feel everything on my left side. My right leg was total dead weight, but my left was completely normal. It would have been okay if it was just my leg but I was able to feel my contractions only on my left side and it was weird and painful! They had to take my epidural out and redo it between my contractions to make sure it was getting to my left side. Honestly I’ve heard so many horror stories about epidurals I thought it would be way worse than it was so I’m very grateful for that. I was in labor all night and dilated from a 3 to a 7 naturally. They said they wanted to see more spikes in the baby’s heart rate so they put me on oxygen to monitor. Everything was going fine, heart rate did what they wanted, so they gave me Pitocin to help get me to finish dilating so I could push. I honestly lost all track of time during the process but I just know it was long and exhausting. I ended up pushing for three hours with the nurse and the on call doctor with breaks between to see if the baby dropped. Unfortunately, every time the head went right back up in the birth canal. The doctor came back in and broke the news. He told me he let me push longer than most patients in this situation. I had spiked a fever, baby’s heart rate wasn’t doing what they wanted, and now there was meconium present. We had to c-section. I cried because it was the last thing I wanted, but he explained the situation, the reasons, and said it would be in the best interest for both of us. After calming down, the anesthesiologist came in and explained the process. I don’t think my surgery would have gone as well without him. He literally walked us step by step through what would happen, how I would be able to feel pressure but no pain, what all the steps would be, and how long it would take. He was there the whole way talking to me and my husband, telling me when the pressure would come, and then took photos for us once our baby came. It was a long process, I started in labor around 9:00 am on Sunday and had our baby girl at 7:42 am on Monday. I think the best part was that every single person in the room and waiting on standby was so excited because we didn’t know the gender. They told us this rarely ever happens anymore and once that baby was out there was so much excitement in the room for my husband to tell me what we had - our beautiful baby girl.
2 Comments
Brandy Goldstien
10/18/2018 10:33:24 am
What an honer to be a part of your story like this. And though you may see the C section as a glitch.....both the scar and the pain may be preferable to that of an episiotomy! (have you seen this procedure) LOL
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Lauryn Conrad
10/19/2018 12:07:04 am
Thank you so much for sharing your birthing experience. I’m so glad that little Stevie was able to be delivered healthy and beautiful! ❤️
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