I KNOW You Are Not Texting Right Now! {A Birth Story}

Aline’s birth story, it’s gonna be long, and I might go off on random ramblings so bear with me.

On Wednesday, July 7th, we had an appointment with the midwife at the OB clinic. At that point, she expressed concern with me going very far past my due date since I have a heart condition. We went ahead and set an induction date, and hoped that I would go naturally before that. The next Friday, I started to feel some contractions and thought it was the real deal. Nope. Not the real deal. Ugh, how frustrating.

Saturday evening, my best friend called me crying because she’d had yet another fight with her fiance. He’s an alcoholic and has a lot of issues, and she’s just fed up with him. I told her that I was being induced on the 15th and that I’d love for her to come if we could figure out a way to get her out to Maryland from Indiana. We ended up booking her ticket the next day, and I sat and prayed that she’d make it out in time and I wouldn’t go into labor before she got here. Tuesday morning, Becky arrived and we went back to my house to hang out.

Thursday morning dawned bright and clear. I called Labor and Delivery at 0700 as requested. Nurses were in reporting, so they told me to call back in 15 minutes. Ugh. I didn’t WANT to wait, I needed to know when I was to come in. I called back exactly 15 minutes later, and got my time… 11 am. I tried to go back to bed, but that didn’t work out, so I just stayed up and watched the news. I took a long hot shower, shaved, and had some freak out moments.

Then we headed out the door and down the road to the hospital. We got there and waited for about an hour to get a room, I thought things would get going pretty fast, they didn’t.

First, the doctors wanted to evaluate my heart and make sure I was healthy enough for laboring. Yep, no problems there. Then, they wanted to make sure I’d be good to get the epidural. I have a genetic condition that can cause tumors or lesions to form on the spinal cord. Since they didn’t have a recent MRI of my back, I had to go get one of those done. Horrible experience! I had to lay on my back in the cramped quarters of the machine. Not fun.

Oh, did I mention I was in isolation the WHOLE time because of my MRSA infection? Yeah. I couldn’t leave my room, even before they hooked up all the machines and IV and everything. I couldn’t get up and walk more than just around my room. I understand why they had to do it, but it was frustrating as anything.

Anyhow, the MRI came up clean so they knew they were good to start the epidural. Around 4 pm, I started getting good solid contractions, even without the pitocin. It wasn’t hard labor by any means, but they hurt bad enough I asked for pain medicine. I cried when I asked for them, I had hoped to go without the narcotics, but I was miserable, and it was going to be a good 2-3 hours before I could get the epidural. They gave me the Nubain and Phenergan, and I passed out.

This is when the scary stuff started to happen. Around 8:30 pm, Aline’s heart rate plummeted into the mid 90’s, from around 130. I was very drugged at this point and don’t remember anything, so this is all just what I was told. They got me onto my hands and knees, and her heart rate came up with that and oxygen. I ended up on the oxygen mask most of the time I was laboring, and spent a good 75% of it on my side. They went ahead and gave me Terb to get the contractions to stop for a bit, and I passed back out.

A little while later, the anesthesiologists came in and gave me my epidural. I was so special, I got the head of all the OB anesthesiologist team to do mine, lol. Once it was in, they started me on a low dose of Pitocin. That went well, so they stepped it up every few hours. I wasn’t really dilating well.

Oh wait, I forgot something. That first night I was in, they put in a Foley bulb to try to get me to dilate, I got to like 3.5 and stalled.

Ok, back to Friday. I was making some slow progress with dilation, and was feeling pretty well. I hit about 5 cm and was really looking forward to getting this baby out and in my arms. She decelerated again and we had to stop the pitocin again. The Terb was HORRIBLE. Gave me the shakes like nobody’s business. I didn’t like that and if I can avoid pitocin in the future, I will. I just do not react well to it.

Anyhow, around 1 pm, the docs checked me again. They noticed that Aline seemed to be face up, so the midwife helped me roll over on my hands and knees and kinda hug the back of the bed. Not easy when you can’t feel your lower body!! I was there for about 10 minutes when I felt (and heard on the monitor) a very loud and strong kick. All of a sudden, I felt this WEIRD feeling between my legs. I don’t even know how to describe it now. It just felt mushy and wet.

Becky grabbed the nurse and told her what I felt, and she came and checked me. Turns out, my water broke all on it’s own! I was psyched about that, they had talked about AROM if it didn’t break soon since I was nearing the 24 hour mark. After that, everything started moving much more rapidly. Within an hour I was 6 cm, then another hour I was about 7.5. I was also effacing very quickly. I went from 50% to 90% in about 2.5 hours. Next check I was 10 cm and fully effaced. Now we just needed to wait for me to feel the urge to push. They were watching the monitors and could tell when my contractions were amping up.

Soon I could feel the urge to push, so we started pushing. By the second set of pushes, they could see her hair! Unfortunately, I had a long time in between contractions and she kept sliding back up. I pushed and pushed, she continued to not cooperate, 2 steps forward one step back, so to say. I was getting exhausted, my heart was starting to palpitate (symptom of my heart condition) and her heart rate was dropping again. They had me laying on my side pushing, they tried having me on all fours, but nothing was really helping her descend.

They finally asked me if I would be OK with the forceps delivery. I decided to go ahead with it. I didn’t want to make her suffer anymore and I just didn’t think I could do it by myself. Boy was I glad we went with the forceps. After about 4 sets of pushing with the forceps, she was born. She had the cord around her neck and was not looking well. She also wasn’t fully face down, she was kind of looking at my left thigh, if that makes sense. I did end up tearing when they brought her shoulders out, I have a second degree tear that had to be stitched up.  They don’t do routine episiotomies at this hospital, so tearing was to be expected.

The docs quickly cut her cord (I was a bit sad cuz I wanted Bobby to do it, but I understood why they had to) and got her off to the warmer. I still had the oxygen mask on at this point, and I couldn’t hear her crying over the sound of the air. Needless to say, I freaked out. Completely lost it. I was sobbing and asking why she wasn’t crying. They were all like, Don’t worry, she’s crying.. she’s perfect.. she’s ok.” I was still freaking out over on the table. Finally they went ahead and turned off the air and I heard the sweet sound of my baby girl screaming her head off.

They handed her to Bobby and she immediately stopped crying and just looked around for the source of his voice. I have the most precious picture of him holding her right after they handed her to him. My best friend was in there to get the picture. Daddy got to hold her while they stitched me up, and then she was handed off to me. Absolutely best moment of my entire life. Holding her made everything we’d gone through the past 9 months worth it.

She was born at 10:32 pm, July 16th, after about 28 hours of labor and 2 hours of pushing. She was 7lb 3.7 oz, and 20 inches long. She’s a skinny one! Too cute though, and she’s a wonderful baby. I am one hundred billion percent in love with this baby.

Funny moments from laboring:

In the middle of a contraction, I’m sitting there in pain, and I hear the BEEP BEEP BOOP of someone in the room (still don’t know who it was, I thought it was Bobby) texting. I growled out, “I KNOW you’re not texting right now”. He reassured me that he wasn’t and just held my hand. Apparently he had been trying to hold my hand the whole time but I had my eyes closed and didn’t see him. Oops.

While pushing, they told me to get mad at something. So in between contractions I was trying to figure out what I was mad at. Finally I came to a conclusion that I was mad at people who cheat in the online game Bobby and I play. I told him as much, and he just started laughing and called me a dork. Hey, it worked. I really hate people who cheat.

Another while pushing…I was starting to see spots from pushing so hard, and I let the docs know. I’m like, “Hey, I see a funny spot”. Immediately, everyone in the room looks at the ceiling. I then said, “They’re not REALLY there people, geez”. Everyone laughed once again, and Bobby told me it was good to have me back. I have a very out there sense of humor, and when I start to lose that sense of humor, like I did during labor, there’s something wrong going on.

That’s Aline’s birth story. {Told by mom, Lauren}