Ok, I've been needing to get the stories down for a while, especially Audrey's, before I forget them. You might be surprised how different they are.
**WARNING- It's a birth story. It might get a little graphic. I mean, hey, it's birth. So, you can stop reading now if you're chicken! :) J/K **
I feel like I might leave out some details, so this post might be edited several times. But here it goes:
The week before Audrey was due, I was beginning to worry about Matt's vacation time at Starbucks. He was acting manager at his store that was soon to close (during all of those shut-downs of Sbux stores) and they were being VERY difficult about not knowing when Matt would be out of the store. I began feeling pressure from corporate America to have a scheduled birth. (Shocking, I know.) They told Matt he would need to start his "vacation" on Audrey's due date. Well, that's a lot of pressure on my uterus! I had wanted to go natural, ALL-NATURAL, so I did not want to be induced. But I weighed the options and I really didn't want Matt to miss being at home with his new daughter. He only had a week, after all. I knew that every day he was off and we didn't have the baby would just be more and more stressful, and that is not what we needed. (If I had been thinking correctly, and known what I had known now, I would've told Matt to tell Starbucks that he would start his vacation at my 42 week point because my doctor would've definitely wanted me to be induced by then, and that would've given me time to go into labor on my own. And I'm pretty sure they would've just dealt with it if Matt had to be off before that. That was so dumb.)
So we scheduled Audrey to be induced on her due date, Jan. 20th. I saw the doctor the day before and he (**WARNING** hehe) swept the membranes to try to induce labor naturally. He knew I did not want to be induced with pitocin. All that day we walked and walked and ate things that were supposed to induce labor. (Honestly, we didn't do the one thing that probably would've helped out, if you know what I mean!) It was really cold that day, it even snowed. I think that I wore myself out, because I came home that night and felt horrible. I crashed on the couch. Woke up and had a fever. These are not the things you want right before the huge physical marathon you are about to encounter. Still, I got my things ready for the hospital. Matt and I prayed and prayed about our decision that night. He went to bed and I... well, I laid in bed that night, and prayed even more. When we woke up at 5 am to call Labor and Delivery to see if there was an open bed, we prayed that if this was the wrong decision, that there would not be "any room for us in the inn." Well, there was. So with almost a heavy heart, we left for the hospital. The whole ride there all I could think about was my baby girl and what she might look like and tried to wrap my brain around the fact that I was about to be a MOTHER. Heavy stuff.
So we arrive at L&D and they strip me down and stick me up. And although I had pre-registered, asked me a million questions. When the nurse put the monitor on me she said, "Oh, you're having contractions." I said, "Oh, so that's what those are. I couldn't tell if it was a Braxton-Hicks contraction, a real contraction, or just gas, haha." (And knowing what I know now, I have prodromal labor, and I had been having those contractions for months. So that doesn't mean that I was necessarily going to have the baby soon, it just means that my body does the preliminary work of labor a little stronger than normal. It's kind of cool, actually. In Jack's birth story, this will play a key part.) Anyway, I really didn't enjoy my time with this nurse. She was totally unsupportive about me wanting to go natural, even while being induced. And in my ignorance, I totally wasn't prepared for the "battle for natural" that I was going to face during the whole process. I told the nurse that Dr. Ross, my primary OB, told me that it was fine if I got up and moved around during labor even after the pitocin. Of course, I did not have this in writing and he wasn't there when this nurse wanted to put in my IV, so of course I was stuck in the bed for the rest of the day. (Things I wish I could go back and do over...) At this point, I kind of conceded to the fact that if I couldn't get up and manage my pain, I was probably going to get an epidural.
Dr. Ross comes in around 7am, I think and says that I look about the same as yesterday, so he's going to break my water to help me progress a little faster. That was not enjoyable. He told me that was the most painful internal that I would have all day. He was right. So my pitocin is up and going at this point and so was the Presidential Inauguration, btw. It took a couple of hours for the pit to really start working and for me to really start to feel the contractions. Around noon-ish I asked for them to come and check me because I was starting to get uncomfortable and I wanted to know how much progress I had made. (They promised they would not do any internals unless I asked for it so that I would not be bothered by them, which I really respected.) I knew that I was NOT going to get an epidural before 4 cm and I was sure that I was past that point. Ha, I wasn't. I was at 3 1/2cm. So close. So I sat back and thought to myself, great, we're going to be here for a while. But I was more determined than ever to take that pain head on.
By that point, Matt, my mom and my friend, Kristen, were in the room. (OH YEAH, and at some point during this time, the woman from admitting came in demanding my half of the bill, and in a rather unfriendly, I'm a repo-woman kind of way. That was super annoying. I was in LABOR and she was hounding me and my family about money. Like she needed to get it before the baby was born, because if they didn't, I could just go home.) Anyway, we had all been casually talking and watching the inauguration, but like I said before, the pain was getting more and more intense. I'm pretty sure they upped the pit around this point and put in a Foley, but I don't remember for sure. Either way, I could not take the talking anymore. I definitely needed low lights and quiet. So, trying to be as polite as possible, I asked my mom, haha, to quiet everyone down. I asked for some pain medicine because I knew the epidural was coming and I HATE needles, especially huge ones in my back that could paralyze me permanently. :) (Praise the Lord for them, but I did not want to get one.) I really need to get my hospital records so I can look at what actually happened and when and what drug they gave me at this point. It was terrible. All it did was make me feel loopy and I still felt every bit of every contraction. But possibly the one thing it did (which, I actually don't think it was the drug, because I did it without drugs when I had Jack, but to give it the drug the benefit of the doubt) was help me snooze in between contractions, which were now coming every 30 seconds-2 minutes at this point. I was in the zone, I tell ya. I was using my relaxation breathing, I was imagining my contractions moving my baby down, I was dreaming about holding her in my arms. It was cool. I'm sure everyone in the room was a little uncomfortable though because all they could do was look at the silent tv and listen to this moaning woman in the background. I finally came to a point where I could not take the pain anymore and I asked for an epidural.
I deduced later that it had been about an hour and a half since they checked me last, but at that point I had really no concept of time. So, they didn't even check me and they called the anesthesiologist in and kicked everyone else out of the room. They told Matt that I would need about 15 min after the epi for it to set in so he should take the time to go get something to eat, make some calls, etc. So the dr. came in and got set up and tried to wait for a point in between my contractions, but like I said, they were coming so fast, that it was very difficult. I think I did pretty well through all this, especially since I didn't have Matt or mom in with me to help calm me down. Right after that I don't remember who checked me, the nurse or the doctor, but I was 10 cm. Why they didn't check me before-hand, I don't know. I wouldn't have gotten the epidural if I had known I was so close to the end. (Another good reason to have a doula!) It was around 2:00ish pm and Dr. Ross told me that I could start pushing. Well, Matt wasn't back in the room yet! I tried to call him on my phone, but it was either dead or didn't have service or something, so Dr. Ross even let me use his phone. Well, after that I realized Matt's phone was still in the room, (duh, we were listening to my labor playlist on it) haha. Matt and mom finally came back and they hiked my dead legs up in the stirrups and I began "pushing." I say that because, when you're dead from the hips down, you can't tell what real pushing feels like. I don't think I got into the real pushing position until about an hour of non-productive pushing.
I'm a little cloudy on when they noticed this, but they saw a little trace of meconium in the amniotic fluid, so when I began pushing, NICU also arrived to check Audrey out after she was born. Add on to that, I still had a fever when I was admitted, so they were afraid I could pass that on to Audrey, too. So these factors, plus the fact that I was pushing and pushing and not getting anywhere, were slightly leading down the road to the big C. I had stressed the fact with Dr. Ross several times that I DID NOT want a C-section, so I feel he was in my corner on the issue. Now whether or not he gave me the best advice on how to avoid that is debatable (one unnecessary intervention leads to another and on and on,) but once we were actually in the situation where I was all numbed up and pushing, i really think he was trying to keep me out of the OR. Around 4:00 pm, we had finally made progress enough to see the head. It was down to the final round, and I was just praying and praying that God would give me strength to get this baby out of me soon!
Dr. Ross said he was going to get the forceps because her heart rate was dropping and she needed to get out. I asked him to give me just one more contraction to try to push her out. He did, but I couldn't. So, he gave me an episiotomy and got out the forceps. Audrey came out all blue and Matt said that this was one of the scariest moments of his life. I don't think he expected to see her so discolored. (I've seen A Baby Story before, so this did not surprise me.) I could slightly see the top of her head. They had talked about getting me a mirror, but I suppose since NICU was there and they were probably all expecting a C-section, they forgot and didn't offer me one. I still had the shoulders to push out, and those were not coming out successfully at all. Once again, I was praying and praying and could tell by the concern in Dr. Ross' voice that it was getting a little serious. He told me, "Ok, with this next push, I'm really going to need you to get her out. Push as hard as you can." So I did. And nothing happened. Then I see him tell the nurse, (which, incidentally, was not the nurse I didn't like, but another one that came in during shift change) something and with the next contraction I pretty much had double the staff around me and the nurse on top of my belly pushing and kneading downward. Honestly, it all didn't register what was happening, I just kept thinking, "Should she be on top of me like this, she's pregnant too!" Dr. Ross then says, "Push, Katie, PUSH!" and I thought, "Why is he calling me Katie? Doesn't he know my name after all 9 months of this?!?" haha. Luckily I didn't say anything because I realized after the fact that he was talking to my nurse, telling her to push on my belly. Audrey had shoulder dystocia.
And PRAISE THE LORD, after all of that, out came sweet Audrey Dylan, weighing a whopping 9lbs 8oz, 21 1/4 inches long at 4:08 pm. And so swollen and beautiful that I couldn't believe she was mine! And the NICU nurses checked Audrey out and she was healthy, the only complication was her elevated temperature from the temp that I had while in labor, but even that didn't turn out to last. She nursed very well and she was super alert. She took maybe three 10 minute naps the next day, all day. (Yeah, 30 minutes. All day.)
