A Labour of Love. Gruesome details ahead....

On Sunday, December 8th at 1215am I started having contractions.   I was 39 weeks pregnant exactly and scheduled to be induced on Tuesday Dec 10th.  We knew this whole week would be a crap shoot.  Baby could make her own grand entrance, or she could sit tight until I decide that medicine needs to speed up the process.   Well this Sunday night it woke me up from a dead sleep and I immediately looked at the clock to start timing them.  They were different.  I counted three or four of them about ten minutes apart, but it became concerning because one of them was more than seven minutes long.  It just did not stop!  By this time, it’s 12:45 and Mike is asking me if it’s go time.   I tell him I don’t know!?  Poor guy.  He’s trying to help me, and I can’t even decide if we should go to the hospital or wait it out.   By 1 am he was dressed and told me to get my clothes on we’re going.  My mom is on Toddler Duty during Baby Watch 2019.   She’s known this for months: keep your phone on. We will call when it’s time.    She lives half an hour away, so we had to factor that in.  We're phoning grandma, she doesn’t answer- twice.  She’s not doing so good on Baby Watch.   So, we called grandpa Doug, he answered right away and jumped in the car.  (he already had a bag packed as we told him he was back up Toddler Duty).   After getting ourselves organized we lock up the house and get on the road.  With no traffic Doug should be there in about 15 minutes.   Kid is sound asleep, off we go. She’ll be fine.  

I manage to walk into the hospital under my own power, joking about needing a wheelchair or not.  I know I’m not that bad yet.   They put me into a triage room and monitor baby and me.   I try to explain to the nurse what’s happened in the last hour and she seems to not realize the pain I am in during these contractions.  She is arranging the shot of gravol+morphine they give you when you're in the beginning stages of labour, she's letting the doctor know I'm here and she's watching me from her station.  She leaves us alone for a bit but flies back in the room when my next contraction starts.  She asks if this is what they’ve felt like the last hour and I nod my head, I can't speak.  She declares loudly, “honey you’re in labour!”   I think I knew it was the start of it, but I wasn’t confident enough, it could have still been Braxton Hicks contractions.  After watching me a bit more she gives me the morphine/gravol shot and sends me home to sleep it off. I thought that in the morning I would end up back in the hospital for another shot, but the contractions never really started again. I’m scheduled to be induced Tuesday night at 8 PM and so Monday and Tuesday are mostly just normal days.  A few contractions but nothing bad. We go to the hospital Tuesday night at 7:30 ready to be induced and I have this fear of them giving me the medicine and sending me home.  I have done zero research about induction and what exactly entails.  I have a few ideas but every womans experience is different so who knows what will happen with me.   I really didn’t want to be sent home, I just wanted to be admitted and get some drugs going!!     

Tuesday comes and now I'm ready.  Get this baby out of me.  It's 8:30pm when they induce me with cervidil and after an hour being monitored, they send me home. :(. I'm distraught.  I want to be in the hospital on an IV, getting lovely drugs and playing on my phone.  I am instructed to come back overnight if my contractions speed up/get closer together.  And if none of these things happen, I'm told to come back at 8:30 the next morning for another dose of the cervidil.  I go home unwillingly and go to bed.  Luckily, I haven't had any terrible contractions like that Sunday night so I'm able to fall asleep.  Around 2:45am contractions start up but I'm able to sleep through it, at least a little bit.  At 4:15am they get way more intense.  Zero to 60 in minutes.  I start a timer and I'm counting that they are seven minutes apart but - every other contraction seems to be back to back with no break in between.  This is it.  I know it in my bones, even if I'm acting unsure or I can't articulate what I'm feeling.  So, at 4:45 I told Mike, this is it.  This is it!!  We had really quick showers, I barged into the nursery where grandma was sleeping (YES!  She showed up for Toddler Duty! LOL). "Hey, we were leaving, I'll call you with an update as soon as I can". In her slumber I don't think she really realized that I was gonna have this baby. 

The car ride is a complete blur.   I'd be willing to bet we hit every red light there is, but that may not actually be true.  I would probably blame Mike for hitting every pothole and taking his sweet ass time, which I'm sure he didn't.   It's foggy, my memory, and also when you're in that kind of pain anything is exasperated.  

At this point I couldn’t walk, so I finally got to take a ride in the wheelchair!  As we approached the unit desk the clerk asked me if it was just a contraction or I felt like pushing?  I actually told her "I don't know?!" with a forced laugh/cry/scream...it was more of a scream if I'm being honest.  I'm moved into a triage bed immediately and am hooked up again to the machines. When they check my cervix, I'm only 3cm dilated.  Goddamnit.   Get this baby out of me. I actually was worried they may send me home again with another shot - but there's no fucking way I can leave the hospital.  I'd have the baby in the car if you make me go home.  At that point I had more contractions and they were monitoring me, and someone decided it was time to admit me.  Even though I'm not dilated enough to warrant admitting me, the force and frequency of my contractions had them finding a bed for me PDQ as we call it in our house.  Pretty Damn Quick.   Before we left triage, they notified the anesthesiologist that I needed him asap because shit is moving.  Fast.  They put me in a wheelchair, and haul my ass down the hallways, me screaming like a banshee and praying for the sweet relief of Epidural.   

I'm in the room and somehow, I get myself on the bed, on my left side, facing Mike who was in the corner against the window.  There seems to be a plethora of staff around me, so he finds it best to sit back out of the way.  Little did we know he'd be back there the whole time :( I have a death grip on the railing of this bed while they wrap me in the monitors, one nurse trying to get my IV line going while the other nurse is trying to help me breathe through pain. Which for the record is fucking bullshit because me going hee hee hee and "blowing through" the pain doesn’t really make the pain any fucking better.

At this point I know she’s coming fast, and this is nothing like Madisons delivery and things are not going well.  I’m quite sure they won’t be able to get the epidural in me in time, a thought way in the back of my head but there, nonetheless.  I can't focus on that though.  But I do wonder why these nurses can't get my IV run and in a moment of clarity I realize that I am shaking uncontrollably.  It's no wonder- they can't get me to lay still.  If I'm not squeezing the shit out of this bedrail then I'm trembling in between contractions.  I am trying to breathe through the contractions but as each minute passes I know I have to push.  I am listening to the nurses telling me to hee hee and hoo hoo.  

I have to push.   I don’t know why I didn’t tell anyone though.   I watched three different nurses stab my hands and arms and not one could get it in.   Someone said to me my veins are too wiggly.   I am sweating all over.  My hair is matted to my head, I've given my glasses to someone? I can't see.  I have to push.  

They've moved on to trying the veins in my arms.  I’m vibrating in shock and pain and that isn’t helping anything at all.  My contractions are back to back basically by the time the anesthesiologist comes in the room.  I looked over my shoulder and saw more nurses than I could count and the doctor already in her full scrubs.  Basically, she's waiting by the sidelines for someone to tell her I’m at 10cm.   

A nurse starts to hook me up to the laughing gas - finally! A drug?! - she hands me the mouthpiece and is trying to explain to me how to breathe into it.  I feel like a total asshole because I’m sure I’m not doing it right.  I’m barley paying attention to her, due to the searing pain in my belly.  I try to breathe as she says, blowing hard in and out of the mouthpiece, and I feel it happen.  My water breaks.  And because I’m lying on my side it feels unreal.    Like imagine if you put a full water balloon between your legs and squished- but now imagine the balloon was in your tummy and it came out your hoo-ha !  GUSH.  I think I asked if I just peed all over, but again in my pain induced state I knew it was my water.   In the moment it’s hard to put two and two together so I may be asking questions that I know the answers to already.  

I remember the anesthesiologist coming to my bedside and looking at the veins the nurses had tried.  Four different spots and he said he was going to try one more time.  He flipped my arm over and took a stab.  He did get it in, and they hooked me up to the IV.  I have no fucking idea what I was getting via IV because it sure wasn’t an epidural.  I was way too far gone.  The whole time he was in the room was maybe five minutes?  That's being generous. He did get the IV settled in my arm.  And then the tall, handsome, richest doctor I’ve ever dealt with squatted down beside my bed and in the 17 seconds between contractions he said: "you can you this. You’re going to have a baby."

And he put his hand up in the air.  I unclamped my death grip from the bed and high-fived him.  I had no idea that it was literally about to happen. 

I looked at mike and cried.  He was so far away.  There was a rush in the air of the room, shit was happening, and it was going down now.  I went from 5cm dilated to 10 in what was close to 3.5 seconds.   There were too many nurses and doctors around me he had to stay back.  I watched him the whole time. I needed something calm to focus on when nothing else seemed to be going well.  I think at some point he got off the chair in the back and stood a bit closer, but he was still so far away.  All I wanted in the whole world was to hold his hand.  He was stoic and quiet, watching over everything, I wonder what he was thinking during all of this.  His true thoughts, not an artificial answer.   Mine, since I realized the epidural wasn’t going to happen, was I don’t think I can do this.  It already hurts this much, and I still have to push her.  How can I do this with no drugs. I have laughing gas why isn’t it working. I feel like it’s just a ploy to distract you from what’s really going on.  

The next sixty seconds went like this:  

Nurse : "okay keep breathing into the gas and you can push when you need to. you're doing great, you can do this"

Me. : *nods head*  Screams every fucking swear word I can think of while trying to breathe and push-  I recall breathing so hard and fast into the mouthpiece that it sounded like a drum roll and in my head it was comical.  I pushed, but truly it was my uterus doing the work. I felt every single contraction. 

nurse :  "ok keep breathing heee heee heee.  Hoo hoo hoo". (or some bullshit).

Doctor : "can you open up your legs?"  She asked me while pushing my knees apart.    

Nurse. : "Okay keep breathing heeeheee" 

Me :  "heee fucking helll no heeeeee. Rrrrfplfplfplfpfplfpfl. FUCKKKK"  (me pushing hard) 

Doctor :   "It’s a girl" !! 

Me :  What. The. Fuck.  

I felt every single moment of the last hour.  From hobbling into the unit to her perfect little body coming out I felt it all.  This is not a brag.  I did not want to feel. Lol.  I wanted to get a nice little drip of pain meds and read some books before I pushed.   

But when they laid this sweet little girl on my chest, I forgot all of the pain.  As you do.  If women remembered the pain of childbirth, they'd never have more than one kid.  

It took me a bit to come back to earth, the doctor talking to me about aftercare stuff, details I will spare you, and I asked her the question that had been on my mind.   How many times did I push?   It's been a running joke in my life that Madison came very quickly, and I only pushed four times in six minutes to get her out.  My jaw dropped when the doctor told me I only pushed twice.  Two times.  I could vividly recall those exact pushes, and I laughed out loud.  Damn girl.  5:20am triage.  6:38am delivered.  Two pushes, no drugs.   It's taken me over ten weeks to write this all out, but I'm busy with all the changes that come with a new baby.   Please send meals, cleaning services and beer/wine.  I have spit up on every shirt I own and I haven't shaved my legs in months...?  No matter, not having a third one anyway.  Probably best because at the rate I give birth I'd have a third kid in the car on the way to the hospital.