Last time this was the class I took to prepare me for what I was about to encounter. This time, it's the real thing and yes, it was just that fast.
It all started Wednesday night after I got back from a pedicure with the girls. I had to have pretty feet for the labor room. :) I started to feel contractions, but nothing out of the ordinary. They were the same darn things I've been feeling since I was 32 weeks. After a few hours of noticeable ones, I began tracking them. Still only 10 minutes apart, I kind of brushed them off being this has happened before and they just stopped. Another hour went by and they were still coming, but not really painful or uncomfortable. Aron got back from golfing and we decided that we should pack the bags since they were now coming every 7 minutes. That night we went to bed and I'll tell you what, I couldn't sleep a wink. I just sat there tracking marginal contractions the whole night long wondering if this was it. When we woke up in the morning, the contractions were 3-5 minutes apart. But still nothing too painful. So Aron and decided to do everything we could to kick them into INTENSE "Let's go to the hospital" type contractions. I don't think I've ever been on a walk that long.
The first walk pushed the contractions into every minute, so we called my Mom to come to the house. By the time she got there... they pushed out to every 7 minutes. Not good. With that being the case, we set out for our second walk. This time they seemed to be more intense, but sporadic. Of course!! When we finally got home the contractions pushed out to every 10 minutes... Alright, so this wasn't it. But it WAS time to take a nap. All this waiting had me on edge and i just needed to rest now that I was pretty sure it wasn't time yet.
The first walk pushed the contractions into every minute, so we called my Mom to come to the house. By the time she got there... they pushed out to every 7 minutes. Not good. With that being the case, we set out for our second walk. This time they seemed to be more intense, but sporadic. Of course!! When we finally got home the contractions pushed out to every 10 minutes... Alright, so this wasn't it. But it WAS time to take a nap. All this waiting had me on edge and i just needed to rest now that I was pretty sure it wasn't time yet.
As I woke up Aron and I decided that it WAS going to be the time. Contractions were kicking up again, every 3 minutes, some actually were uncomfortable. We had heard of one home remedy to kick contractions into full force. CASTOR OIL... now I know it has some crazy side effects (for me, not the baby) but I was sick of the teasing and wanted the kid out. At 11am, I did it, I gulped the grossness down and sat there waiting for it to kick in. 6 hours later, it finally kicked in, side effects and all. 5pm and I wanted to know if I should go to the hospital. When I called my Dr., she seemed to think it wasn't the real thing, but wanted us to come in if they sporadic contractions continued through 7pm.
Well, 7pm rolled around and they were still there...as were the side effects. It made it hard to leave the house and get in the car for a 10 minutes to drive to the hospital. Between baby contractions and sphincter contractions, I wasn't sure I was going to make it.
When we finally got to the hospital, it felt like a blur. They put me in the "holding room" for women who aren't 100% sure they are in labor. Strapping me up to monitors, checking dilation, and poking me with an I.V. we got to watch these marginal contractions BLOW off the charts. Apparently, I have HIGH pain tolerance. The monitor goes to 100 and my contractions were going up to 130-160. It was official, I was in labor!
I was immediately chauffeured into the big room where I would continue to contract painlessly for only a few more minutes. Because my water hadn't broke yet, the Dr gave me two choices. 1) Break my water and get the labor rollin'. 2) Patocin to make my contractions more intense. Now I've heard the patocin route was HORRIBLY painful, so I opted for #1 and took the water break.
POP! Let's get this labor rolling...
The very next contraction was 1 MILLION times more painful than the earlier ones. I won't even try to relate how painful it was. I powered through about 4 of those retched contractions before I reached for the call button and yelled into the speaker "EPIDURAL ROOM 19!!!" Thinking that my relief was just minutes away was very stupid of me. I think I may have badly bruised Aron and my Mom's hands through all the pain. I will tell you this, epidurals don't hurt AT ALL. By the time I got the epidural it was about 10pm. I've been at the hospital since 8:30, water broke at 9:30pm and now I the pain should be over. NOT!!
My friend Mr. Epidural didn't work. It seemed as though the magic drug made it all more painful. I think that beast with the big needle injected me with some kind of wizardry drug that made labor worse. She innocently kept saying "I don't know why it's not working...give it more time." Lady, it's been 30 minutes and this $hit hasn't kicked in and I'm going to rip your head off if it doesn't work. The nurse talked to her and suggested that we either wait for it to kick in or reinsert the epidural in case it wasn't in the right position. I may have been a bit demonic when saying "REINSERT IT!!!" Of course, they wanted to check my dilation in the mean time... Well, I blew from 3 cm to 7cm. WATCH OUT... HERE I COME!! I don't mess around.
Alright, so epi round 2 begun. 10 minutes in...still painful as HELL. 20 minutes in... there aren't enough profanities in the world to explain it. I believe at one point I went to grab Aron's hand but missed and almost clenched off his manhood. Good thing he jumped... that would stopped any additional children in the future. The nurse felt so bad at this time that she gave me an injection of something that made me felt like I had just drank 10 margaritas. Still in pain... but too drugged up to really complain about it. :)
Now it's about 11:45 and they decided to check me again to see how progression was going. What do you think?? Let me explain how this check went. "Oh my...you're complete. The baby is on her way, you need to start pushing asap...!!" Lights dropped from the ceiling, 5 more nurses and the Dr. came in. I felt like I was stuck in a movie scene. I was flipped around as the bottom half of the bed came off. I looked at Aron and cried a little bit...there was NO WAY I was pushing through this pain. I am pretty sure I didn't sign up for the natural birth...yup, pretty damn sure. But, there was no choice...6 pushes later, little peanut came out blue and skirmy.
No cries yet, but she was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Who knew you could love someone so much you've never met before. At 6lbs 15 oz, 20 in long and a full head of dark hair, it was only apparent that I had just given birth to Aron's mini me. You all remember the sonogram from months prior? In the womb she was her father's daughter... now that she was in our arms, it was reality. Daddy's little girl!
