First, thank you so much to everyone for your lovely wishes of good luck on my delivery. It was so wonderful to read all of your messages!
We arrived promptly at 5am on St. Patrick’s Day, with no expectations of what was about to happen. You can read as much as you want in a book, but the experience is uniquely personal.
I was hooked up to the pitocin drip by about 6am (after a really nasty round with the IV insertion) and didn’t really get much in the way of contractions. My OB arrived at 9am to break my water and jokingly said that she was going to wipe the smile off my face. She was so not kidding. Having my water broken was easily more painful than anything I dealt with in all of my infertility treatments. I was coming off the bed in pain. The pain then triggered a nice crying fit.
Once she managed to nicely wipe the smile off my face, my contractions came on very strong and very fast which really surprised me. I was in constant pain it seemed. They kept asking me if I wanted my epidural (which I ordered ahead of time – I knew I would want one and once I did, I would not want to wait) and I said no. I wanted to get a good idea of how I could handle them. After an hour, I knew I was done and wanted my epidural. I decided that I had experienced enough to know what they felt like but I didn’t need any more. Once I had the epidural, though, all was right with the world.
It also managed to speed up my progress – in one hour, I went from 2cm to 9cm. I thought my nurse was crazy when she told me. I quickly progressed to the full 10 cm, but unfortunately, Little B was still up pretty high (-1 station). After being at 10cm for about 2 hours, my OB called and instructed that they had me start to push. I pushed for an hour and didn’t make any progress. So, they let me rest for an hour and then we started up again – only, this time, I was put in every conceivable position to push to get him down – truly, the Kama Sutra of Birthing Positions. After about an hour and a half I managed to get him down and thank goodness for that – I was very close to a c-section. All of a sudden, there was just a flurry of activity – my OB was getting suited up, Mr. X was holding up my right leg and I was fitted with an oxygen mask to help me get air to Little B while I pushed.
And, Little B was born at 5:59pm! All of a sudden, there was a little alien on my chest looking right at me with beautiful blue eyes and a rather dazed look. We all wiped him down and I was just overwhelmed. Mr. X cut the cord and Little B was whisked away to the warmer to be weighed and cleaned.
I, on the other hand, was attacked with a needle and thread by my OB – I managed to get a 2nd degree vaginal tear pushing him out. They had to give me a boost on my epidural because it hurt so much while she was stitching me up.
So, our little boy arrived in the world in the usual way and is slowly working his way into our hearts.