Emma's birth story

At my 39 week appointment, I didn't bother getting the midwife to check for any dilation, because I really didn't want to hear if there had been no progress. While I was still fine with pregnancy physically, I was completely over it mentally. There had been so much stress at work, that I just want to be done so I could start my maternity leave. She suggested that we go out for the day and walk around, so we went out to lunch and did some window shopping. That night we figured "what the hell, it can't hurt", so I made a batch of "break your water cookies" If nothing else, they are a yummy extra spicy gingersnap.

Very early Thursday morning (didn't look at the clock, I think it was around 4:30) I woke up with a typical crampy, got to pee pain. This was very typical for the last 4 months, so I thought nothing of it. What wasn't typical was having to repeat the process 4 more times in an hour. By 5:30, I gave up on sleeping and went downstairs to see if these pains were regular enough to time. They were consistently 10 minutes apart and lasting 45 seconds. At this point I was trying to decide if I should go to work or call our scheduler and tell her what was going on. I decided that I didn't want to be the girl that cried labor, and got myself ready. I did continue timing on the ride in, and the contractions stayed consistent. As I was walking in the door, Karen, the front store manager, started apologizing to me, saying that they tried their hardest to get the pharmacy cleaned up Wednesday night, but there was still a ton of work left undone. At that point, I just handed her the paper with the last hour's worth of contractions written on it. I decided to see if the change in stress did anything to the contractions and opened up the pharmacy. Things started getting crazy as soon as the clock hit 8 am, and I quickly lost the ability to actually time when I was feeling pain, but we knew they were still happening. By 10 am, my boss had come in to cover and told me to go home. By this point, I was pretty sure that this was going to be the real thing, but felt that it was probably still very early.

When I got home, my husband and I took a walk around town, returned some books to the library, and tried to encourage gravity to do its job. I spent the afternoon doing laundry, sitting on the exercise ball, and sort of cleaning the house. The pain was really manageable when I talked to my mom around 5:30. It didn't start to get bad until 7-7:30, at which point the contractions started moving closer together and I was having to make an effort to relax through them. By 9 pm they had jumped to every 3 1/2 minutes apart, and I was writhing on the floor. The midwife had originally told us to call the office when they were 5 minutes apart for 2 hours, but since they didn't stay that far apart for that long, we called then. Dr Henry (my Jamaican OB) got back to Peter very quickly and told him, "well, bring in her, mon"

Peter made a point of recognizing that we left our house at 9:39, but since neither one of us took note of when we got to the hospital, I have no way of knowing how badly he was speeding. All I know, is that contractions in the car were REALLY unpleasant because there was no way to move with them.

When we got up to labor and delivery, the nurse Anne got me settled into the triage room and checked to see where we were. This is (in my opinion) where things got frustrating. She said I was dilated only 1-2 cm, which would have been bad enough, but was made much worse by the fact that the contractions decided to slow down to every 6-10 minutes. Since they couldn't admit me with those stats, the plan was for me to walk the halls for 1 hour and get rechecked. As soon as we started moving, the contractions picked up again, which did make me feel a little better about coming in when we did. Half an hour into our walk, we had to go back to triage so she could recheck the baby's heartbeat through a couple of contractions. Once again, they slowed right down to 6-10 minutes, and my heart broke just a little. Thankfully,my sister arrived just as we were starting to walk again, and she and Peter started encouraging me. There were quite a few contractions while we were walking during which I declared that I could not do this, although I was only thinking that while the actual contraction was going on. In between (and they picked up to every couple of minutes again), I was still ok. At around 11:45 Anne checked me again, and there had been NO progress. I did manage to throw up the food I'd eaten hours before.

At this point, I kind of lost it just a little. I was feeling a betrayed by my body, and the though of having to get back in the car made me a crazy. Plus, I was getting really exhausted and if I'd only made 2 cm of progress in almost 20 hours of labor, I had NO idea how I would get through the next 8 cm. This is the point in the story that we have to applaud my awesome nurse, because she really went to bat for me. According to the hospital's protocol, I should have been sent home. She called Dr Henry and explained that I hadn't made any progress, but was really uncomfortable, and told him the little white lie that we lived 45 minutes away. She suggested that he admit me for 23 hour observation and order Demerol and Phenergan, because it was her opinion that I needed some good rest to be able to relax.

When we came in originally, she had asked what I wanted for pain management, and I had told her no meds, but when there was no progress she explained that she had had a similar birth herself and that my body was just not relaxing to allow it to progress, and that it was only going to get worse the more exhausted I was. Honestly, at this point, I could not have cared less, there was no way I was going to be able to keep up with what had been going on for much longer, and I REALLY did not want to go home.

Anyhow, after Dr Henry agreed to admit me (and let's be honest, he was probably just hoping to avoid having me call back in a couple of hours asking to be sent back to the hospital), Anne took us down to our labor and delivery room and tried to get my IV in so I could get the meds. 3 blown veins later (she blamed Julia's presence, the fellow nurse making her nervous thing), they finally got one into my wrist and hooked me up.

Now demerol is a pretty potent narcotic, but it really didn't do much for the pain of the contractions. It did make me able to sleep in between the contractions, which was such a blessing as we were soon to find out.

After about 1 & 1/2 hours of "relaxing", I made it through a really strong contraction and my water broke in a huge gush. At this point I started crying, knowing that contractions generally get worse after the water breaks, and I still thought that I had barely progressed. I know I told Peter that I was over the idea of no epidural, and I remember someone saying that they had just called the anesthesiologist for the girl next door and he could be there soon. Before that though, Anne checked me, and to everyone's surprise I was at 9 cm. No wonder the demerol didn't seem to do much for those contractions!

This point is a bit of a blur to me, everything started moving quickly and I was just trying to get myself into a place to get through the contractions. Julia and Peter called our parents to tell them to get on the road, Anne told one of the other nurses to call Dr Henry, and then a few minutes later said "if he doesn't show up in 10 minutes, call him again, he's got a bad habit of falling back to sleep", they lowered the end of the bed and she told me I could start pushing if I felt the urge around 3:15am.

Pushing did not give me the huge relief that most people say it does. It seemed like I had no urge through the beginning of the contraction, but really wanted to as I got closer to the peak. Everyone's encouragement was incredible, I really REALLY wanted to give up as her head started to crown, but they all just told me to keep pushing. Apparently her cord was around her neck when her head came out, but there was plenty of slack to it so Dr Henry just flipped it off before her shoulder came out. A couple more pushes and she was in my arms at 3:44am. Someone (I think it was my mom) asked what it was, and Julia, who was closest to the goods, told us "oh my god, it's a girl".