BAM! Birth story.
I'm going to try to keep this to a reasonable length...
At 2:30 or so Tuesday morning, I woke up from a dream that I was having painful contractions, to find that it was true. They seemed to be about 10-12 minutes apart, so I tried to stay in bed and get some more sleep, but I don't think I managed to do much more than doze. I already needed to move through the contractions, even though I was trying to let hoshiadam get some rest too. They were already as strong as my transition contractions with SAM, in my back, with pain going down through my hips into my upper legs, which only happened at the very strongest of labor with SAM. With him, labor started with my water breaking, then I had completely painless contractions 6 minutes apart for 9 hours before they started to hurt at all, then moderate ones for four hours or so, then five hours of what I'd consider strong, transition-level contractions (with 3.5 hours of pushing, pushing contractions still felt like transition to me). This time was so different that it threw me off. I think that was my biggest problem through the whole labor, just struggling with my own expectations.
SAM came to the bed around 5, and we let him stay until 6, then hoshiadam put him back in his bed so he'd sleep later. I got up and ate a little around 6:45. I made a visit to the internet, which kept me amused for a while. The birth ball made the contractions a bit stronger, I think. For a while they got closer together, anywhere from 2 to 7 minutes apart. At 8 I went to lie down for a little rest, and contractions almost stopped! That should have been a nice break, but I couldn't sleep. I wanted things to keep moving, not slow down. :) I got up again and made chocolate chip cookie dough with SAM. My mom arrived at about 10, and I abandoned the rest of the cookie-making process to her, except I kept coming back to steal more dough. I greatly prefer the dough to the cookies. Maybe not the best labor food, but yum. :) My mom tried to give me the phone to talk to phoeclipse, but I had already decreed that I was not touching the phone during labor. :) Rejection for him!
After my rest the contractions had stayed rather widely spaced, and I was annoyed with it by that time. They were strong enough that each one left me sweaty and slightly nauseous, but I didn't feel like I was getting anywhere. I had had to stop what I was doing from the beginning, and lean on something, or do some hula-type movements. The best position seemed to be a sort of modified kneel, leaning forward and rocking. I even tried walking through a couple of contractions later on, but that just seemed to make them keep going and going. Hoshiadam was really good about rubbing my back when I wanted him to, but sometimes it worked so well that I was afraid he'd made the contraction go away. I was encouraging labor in my head, with each contraction telling my body to open up, and giving the contractions permission to be longer and stronger and closer together. That was something I wasn't able to do very often in labor with SAM - I didn't like it when the contractions got stronger! But this time I wanted to get finished, so I kept it up. While I was doing that, I started getting double-peaking contractions sometimes.
My mom cooked meatloaf for lunch, which smelled really good, so I had some. She didn't think that was the best idea, but it was very tasty. :) By 1, contractions were about 6 minutes apart, with me being careful not to lie down. I watched some Olympic ice dancing for a while, but I missed bits of it with every contraction. I wanted to get into the birth tub, but somehow we neglected to tell my mom not to use up the hot water, and she had started up the laundry AND the dishwasher. *sigh* I got in anyway, and it wasn't bad, but too chilly. Hoshiadam tried warming it up with limited success. Getting out was difficult and shivery, but in just a few minutes I was feeling too hot again. The hot-and-cold transition feeling lasted most of the afternoon. At 2:30 I had passed the point of having the nice short 12-hour labor that I had gotten in my head as a reasonable expectation for the second time around, so that made me grouchy. Things were getting more intense, though. Looking at my pregnancy journal, my last labor entry was just before getting into the birth tub. After that hoshiadam took over timing contractions for a while. I took a short rest, I think I even slept for seven or eight minutes between contractions, then wandered around feeling grumpy for a bit longer, then hid out in the bathroom. I was starting to think about calling the midwife, but for a while I waited for hoshiadam to suggest it - but he never did! (We had called her in the morning to let her know I was in labor, but I had never planned to have them arrive until quite late in the labor.) Finally I said something about it to hoshiadam, and he suggested waiting a few more contractions. I found that so weird... I had thought he would be the impatient one. By that point, though, I REALLY wanted to have the baby, and somehow I felt like calling the midwife would magically make that happen faster. :) At some point, maybe around four, he called her, and came back and said that she would take her time and show up eventually. That was exactly what I would have wanted her to do at any point in the planning stages, but I wasn't very happy about it right then. *shrug* A few weeks before, the midwife had had her gallbladder out, then proceeded to get a chest cold that she didn't seem able to shake. She was still feeling pretty horrible this day - this has been the winter for everyone in the world to be sick.
Labor went on. Around 5:30 I finally got sick. With SAM I threw up three times in transition - part of me was waiting for that as a sign that I was nearing the end of labor. So I didn't mind, but I was still happy that it only happened once this labor. Around that time, before or after the throwing up, I started bearing down a little. That was another thing I hadn't expected. With SAM I never felt "the urge" to push, and I felt like I just decided I would try it out. I thought maybe that had something to do with my long pushing stage, so this time I had decided I would definitely wait until I felt an unmistakable urge. But the same thing happened as with SAM - I felt like I was fed up with labor, wanted things to be done, and I started pushing just a little, and once I started I needed to keep going. Maybe that's my pushing urge. Maybe I just overthink it, and think I'm deciding to push in my head when really it's happening anyway? Who knows. It is odd.
Anyway, not long after I got sick the midwife and apprentice arrived. They were a little busy all around trying to get their equipment set up, but by that point it would have been hard to disturb my energy. I just ignored them. I did want the midwife to check my dilation - another surprise. I thought I wouldn't want any exams. *shrug* I was dilated to 7, with a bulging bag of waters. Hoshiadam had gotten the birth tub almost hot enough again, so I got in for a while. I kept pushing slightly with most of the contractions. Towards the end, the midwife noticed, and suggested that I only push if I couldn't help it, but I tried not pushing for a few contractions and threw that idea out the window. :) I was making a good bit of noise by then, I think. Eventually SAM noticed. He'd been watching movies and playing with my mom all day, not paying much attention to the labor, but when he heard me making noise, he came in and wanted to know where the baby was. :) I told him I was working on having the baby, and he got in the birth tub with me. He was a bit splashy, but I didn't mind. :)
I started to be able to feel the head descending then, but I was still only halfway pushing. I was really making a lot of noise too - SAM didn't entirely like that, but I reminded him of the stuff we'd told him, that I was working hard and liked to make noise, and he didn't get upset. He made a few grunts and groans of his own. :) Things felt weird with the head - I have no experience with cervical dilation, but when I felt the head it didn't feel like a bag of waters, it felt like skin stretched thin over the head. Cervical lip, the midwife confirmed it. I tried pushing a little harder, and after a while, I could feel the edge of the cervix. I tried pushing it back, but I couldn't reach very well. I might have been making progress, but had the midwife try, and with a bigger push she got it out of the way. I've heard that such things are pretty excruciating, but it didn't make much difference with the way things already were. I was having some pretty serious stinging and burning by then. I never had the renowned "ring of fire" with SAM, just a bit of stinging that I pushed past, maybe because things went so slowly with him. I was yelling at the top of my lungs with each push by then. (I think that disturbed my parents - my dad had arrived about the same time the midwife did, after driving all the way from Memphis - but I wasn't worried about that.)
Once the lip was gone, I could feel the bag of waters bulging - then I pushed and bang, it popped - and the baby's head came slamming down! Ouch! I could feel his scalp - people talk about how wrinkled they are, but I didn't realize how extreme the wrinkling was. I felt like I could pinch his scalp between my fingers, the ridges of skin were so big. I was having trouble finding a good position in the tub - squatting wasn't quite working. The midwife said the baby hadn't moved in the last few pushes and wanted me to try another position. I wasn't a big fan about moving - I didn't care at all about being in the birth tub, but moving seemed pretty impossible. I did it, and ended up on the edge of the bed with my feet on the midwife's legs. I don't know what happened to the birth stool idea - I had suggested the toilet, since that was a great pushing place with SAM, but the midwife didn't think that was a good idea. In hindsight she was right, I didn't have as much time left as I thought. I think the trouble with pushing in the tub was that I had not yet switched over from halfway pushing to really meaning it. Finally, once I was on the bed, I started REALLY pushing. The midwife and assistant were putting olive oil on me, which seemed to help more than I would have expected. Once I felt the baby's head start to actually move, I got my head in the right place, and realized I could actually finish this. I gave a really strong push, the baby was crowning, pushed even harder, and there was his head. SAM was on the bed next to me watching, and I asked him if he could see the baby. He could, he seemed happy. Then the midwife said she had a tight cord around the neck, and asked me to push again. So I did, and with a couple of pushes, out came the rest of the baby. It was less instant and slide-y than it was with SAM - I had to keep pushing even once the chest was out. But I ended up not tearing this time around, which was nice. :) I had an easy recovery even with my tear with SAM, so I didn't actually notice the lack of tear making things easier this time, but still, it's good.
The cord ended up being around the baby's neck twice, and around both arms too! A cord around the neck is very common and not usually a problem, but the midwife said she'd never seen a cord wrapped like that before. *shrug* She unwrapped him and put him on my belly - he was rather purple and not crying, but we rubbed him and he started making some little noises. He was a bit gooey so the apprentice used a suction bulb on him. After a minute or so he gave a couple of little cries and then started rooting around. :) I was tempted to try to let him find his own way to nursing, but I'm not patient enough. He ended up not being quite ready to actually nurse. His apgars were a 9 at 1 minute and a 10 at 5 minutes. And by the way, it was a boy. I was pretty sure I felt boy parts under the towel, but figured I'd let someone check before I announced it. I think my mom peeked in around then and asked the gender, and no one knew to tell her. :)
The placenta came out not long after (it's always so annoying to have to push AGAIN), and after I got better arranged and sitting up the baby nursed for quite a while. We still hadn't quite decided on a name. I had lots of trouble committing to a name this time around, not sure why, but we got it decided by morning. :)
This has taken several days longer to type up than I planned, so I'll cut it short here. :) When SAM was born, I spent lots of time at the computer just holding him, but now he wants to play and be fed meals and things like that. :)
At 2:30 or so Tuesday morning, I woke up from a dream that I was having painful contractions, to find that it was true. They seemed to be about 10-12 minutes apart, so I tried to stay in bed and get some more sleep, but I don't think I managed to do much more than doze. I already needed to move through the contractions, even though I was trying to let hoshiadam get some rest too. They were already as strong as my transition contractions with SAM, in my back, with pain going down through my hips into my upper legs, which only happened at the very strongest of labor with SAM. With him, labor started with my water breaking, then I had completely painless contractions 6 minutes apart for 9 hours before they started to hurt at all, then moderate ones for four hours or so, then five hours of what I'd consider strong, transition-level contractions (with 3.5 hours of pushing, pushing contractions still felt like transition to me). This time was so different that it threw me off. I think that was my biggest problem through the whole labor, just struggling with my own expectations.
SAM came to the bed around 5, and we let him stay until 6, then hoshiadam put him back in his bed so he'd sleep later. I got up and ate a little around 6:45. I made a visit to the internet, which kept me amused for a while. The birth ball made the contractions a bit stronger, I think. For a while they got closer together, anywhere from 2 to 7 minutes apart. At 8 I went to lie down for a little rest, and contractions almost stopped! That should have been a nice break, but I couldn't sleep. I wanted things to keep moving, not slow down. :) I got up again and made chocolate chip cookie dough with SAM. My mom arrived at about 10, and I abandoned the rest of the cookie-making process to her, except I kept coming back to steal more dough. I greatly prefer the dough to the cookies. Maybe not the best labor food, but yum. :) My mom tried to give me the phone to talk to phoeclipse, but I had already decreed that I was not touching the phone during labor. :) Rejection for him!
After my rest the contractions had stayed rather widely spaced, and I was annoyed with it by that time. They were strong enough that each one left me sweaty and slightly nauseous, but I didn't feel like I was getting anywhere. I had had to stop what I was doing from the beginning, and lean on something, or do some hula-type movements. The best position seemed to be a sort of modified kneel, leaning forward and rocking. I even tried walking through a couple of contractions later on, but that just seemed to make them keep going and going. Hoshiadam was really good about rubbing my back when I wanted him to, but sometimes it worked so well that I was afraid he'd made the contraction go away. I was encouraging labor in my head, with each contraction telling my body to open up, and giving the contractions permission to be longer and stronger and closer together. That was something I wasn't able to do very often in labor with SAM - I didn't like it when the contractions got stronger! But this time I wanted to get finished, so I kept it up. While I was doing that, I started getting double-peaking contractions sometimes.
My mom cooked meatloaf for lunch, which smelled really good, so I had some. She didn't think that was the best idea, but it was very tasty. :) By 1, contractions were about 6 minutes apart, with me being careful not to lie down. I watched some Olympic ice dancing for a while, but I missed bits of it with every contraction. I wanted to get into the birth tub, but somehow we neglected to tell my mom not to use up the hot water, and she had started up the laundry AND the dishwasher. *sigh* I got in anyway, and it wasn't bad, but too chilly. Hoshiadam tried warming it up with limited success. Getting out was difficult and shivery, but in just a few minutes I was feeling too hot again. The hot-and-cold transition feeling lasted most of the afternoon. At 2:30 I had passed the point of having the nice short 12-hour labor that I had gotten in my head as a reasonable expectation for the second time around, so that made me grouchy. Things were getting more intense, though. Looking at my pregnancy journal, my last labor entry was just before getting into the birth tub. After that hoshiadam took over timing contractions for a while. I took a short rest, I think I even slept for seven or eight minutes between contractions, then wandered around feeling grumpy for a bit longer, then hid out in the bathroom. I was starting to think about calling the midwife, but for a while I waited for hoshiadam to suggest it - but he never did! (We had called her in the morning to let her know I was in labor, but I had never planned to have them arrive until quite late in the labor.) Finally I said something about it to hoshiadam, and he suggested waiting a few more contractions. I found that so weird... I had thought he would be the impatient one. By that point, though, I REALLY wanted to have the baby, and somehow I felt like calling the midwife would magically make that happen faster. :) At some point, maybe around four, he called her, and came back and said that she would take her time and show up eventually. That was exactly what I would have wanted her to do at any point in the planning stages, but I wasn't very happy about it right then. *shrug* A few weeks before, the midwife had had her gallbladder out, then proceeded to get a chest cold that she didn't seem able to shake. She was still feeling pretty horrible this day - this has been the winter for everyone in the world to be sick.
Labor went on. Around 5:30 I finally got sick. With SAM I threw up three times in transition - part of me was waiting for that as a sign that I was nearing the end of labor. So I didn't mind, but I was still happy that it only happened once this labor. Around that time, before or after the throwing up, I started bearing down a little. That was another thing I hadn't expected. With SAM I never felt "the urge" to push, and I felt like I just decided I would try it out. I thought maybe that had something to do with my long pushing stage, so this time I had decided I would definitely wait until I felt an unmistakable urge. But the same thing happened as with SAM - I felt like I was fed up with labor, wanted things to be done, and I started pushing just a little, and once I started I needed to keep going. Maybe that's my pushing urge. Maybe I just overthink it, and think I'm deciding to push in my head when really it's happening anyway? Who knows. It is odd.
Anyway, not long after I got sick the midwife and apprentice arrived. They were a little busy all around trying to get their equipment set up, but by that point it would have been hard to disturb my energy. I just ignored them. I did want the midwife to check my dilation - another surprise. I thought I wouldn't want any exams. *shrug* I was dilated to 7, with a bulging bag of waters. Hoshiadam had gotten the birth tub almost hot enough again, so I got in for a while. I kept pushing slightly with most of the contractions. Towards the end, the midwife noticed, and suggested that I only push if I couldn't help it, but I tried not pushing for a few contractions and threw that idea out the window. :) I was making a good bit of noise by then, I think. Eventually SAM noticed. He'd been watching movies and playing with my mom all day, not paying much attention to the labor, but when he heard me making noise, he came in and wanted to know where the baby was. :) I told him I was working on having the baby, and he got in the birth tub with me. He was a bit splashy, but I didn't mind. :)
I started to be able to feel the head descending then, but I was still only halfway pushing. I was really making a lot of noise too - SAM didn't entirely like that, but I reminded him of the stuff we'd told him, that I was working hard and liked to make noise, and he didn't get upset. He made a few grunts and groans of his own. :) Things felt weird with the head - I have no experience with cervical dilation, but when I felt the head it didn't feel like a bag of waters, it felt like skin stretched thin over the head. Cervical lip, the midwife confirmed it. I tried pushing a little harder, and after a while, I could feel the edge of the cervix. I tried pushing it back, but I couldn't reach very well. I might have been making progress, but had the midwife try, and with a bigger push she got it out of the way. I've heard that such things are pretty excruciating, but it didn't make much difference with the way things already were. I was having some pretty serious stinging and burning by then. I never had the renowned "ring of fire" with SAM, just a bit of stinging that I pushed past, maybe because things went so slowly with him. I was yelling at the top of my lungs with each push by then. (I think that disturbed my parents - my dad had arrived about the same time the midwife did, after driving all the way from Memphis - but I wasn't worried about that.)
Once the lip was gone, I could feel the bag of waters bulging - then I pushed and bang, it popped - and the baby's head came slamming down! Ouch! I could feel his scalp - people talk about how wrinkled they are, but I didn't realize how extreme the wrinkling was. I felt like I could pinch his scalp between my fingers, the ridges of skin were so big. I was having trouble finding a good position in the tub - squatting wasn't quite working. The midwife said the baby hadn't moved in the last few pushes and wanted me to try another position. I wasn't a big fan about moving - I didn't care at all about being in the birth tub, but moving seemed pretty impossible. I did it, and ended up on the edge of the bed with my feet on the midwife's legs. I don't know what happened to the birth stool idea - I had suggested the toilet, since that was a great pushing place with SAM, but the midwife didn't think that was a good idea. In hindsight she was right, I didn't have as much time left as I thought. I think the trouble with pushing in the tub was that I had not yet switched over from halfway pushing to really meaning it. Finally, once I was on the bed, I started REALLY pushing. The midwife and assistant were putting olive oil on me, which seemed to help more than I would have expected. Once I felt the baby's head start to actually move, I got my head in the right place, and realized I could actually finish this. I gave a really strong push, the baby was crowning, pushed even harder, and there was his head. SAM was on the bed next to me watching, and I asked him if he could see the baby. He could, he seemed happy. Then the midwife said she had a tight cord around the neck, and asked me to push again. So I did, and with a couple of pushes, out came the rest of the baby. It was less instant and slide-y than it was with SAM - I had to keep pushing even once the chest was out. But I ended up not tearing this time around, which was nice. :) I had an easy recovery even with my tear with SAM, so I didn't actually notice the lack of tear making things easier this time, but still, it's good.
The cord ended up being around the baby's neck twice, and around both arms too! A cord around the neck is very common and not usually a problem, but the midwife said she'd never seen a cord wrapped like that before. *shrug* She unwrapped him and put him on my belly - he was rather purple and not crying, but we rubbed him and he started making some little noises. He was a bit gooey so the apprentice used a suction bulb on him. After a minute or so he gave a couple of little cries and then started rooting around. :) I was tempted to try to let him find his own way to nursing, but I'm not patient enough. He ended up not being quite ready to actually nurse. His apgars were a 9 at 1 minute and a 10 at 5 minutes. And by the way, it was a boy. I was pretty sure I felt boy parts under the towel, but figured I'd let someone check before I announced it. I think my mom peeked in around then and asked the gender, and no one knew to tell her. :)
The placenta came out not long after (it's always so annoying to have to push AGAIN), and after I got better arranged and sitting up the baby nursed for quite a while. We still hadn't quite decided on a name. I had lots of trouble committing to a name this time around, not sure why, but we got it decided by morning. :)
This has taken several days longer to type up than I planned, so I'll cut it short here. :) When SAM was born, I spent lots of time at the computer just holding him, but now he wants to play and be fed meals and things like that. :)