Labor

So I finally found some time to figure out all the facts, and put things in order of how they actually happened during the delivery. This is a VERY detailed description of what happened that day. I am sick of retelling the story and reliving it every time, so now I can just tell people to read it on our blog if they really want to know. I wish I could say that we went to the hospital, got the epidural, everything went smoothly, and I really didn't feel much pain. Then I wouldn't be typing this up, of everything that went wrong.
There were a couple of times I thought my water had broken a few days before it actually did. But when it did, there was absolutely no doubt. We had put a shower curtain on our bed underneath our sheets just in case it happened during the night, and I'm so glad we did! At 4 A.M., I woke up and there was water gushing all over the bed. I said, "Chase! Chase! My water broke!" He sat up and he said, "Really?" I said, "Yes! Check the bed and see if it is wet." (I was still a little delirious as I was running to the bathroom and water was dripping down my legs). At first he said, "No, it's not wet." And then I thought, great, another false alarm. Chase is going to be really sick of my crying wolf. Then he said, "Oh yep! There IS water all over the bed! Aren't you excited?" I then got back in bed since I wasn't having any contractions yet and thought it would be a good idea to try to sleep since I knew it was going to be a long day. As soon as I laid down, I started having contractions so I timed the first four and they were about ten minutes apart. I decided to just get up since it was too uncomfortable to sleep, and take a shower and get ready. By the time I had showered and gotten ready, they were about six minutes apart. I told Chase he had better get up because things were moving along. By the time he was out of the shower, I was breathing pretty heavily through the contractions. Every time I had one, I would go into the bathroom and hang on to the towel rack for some weird reason. All of the sudden, it was like we weren't prepared at all. Chase was saying, "Do we have everything?" And then I told him to make sure he had snacks for himself, and to grab my bathroom stuff (At the hospital, we realized we had both forgotten our deodorant. Not a good thing to forget in this situation). As we headed out to the car, Chase realized he forgot my water bottle so he ran back in. Instead of waiting for him in the car, I started pacing around the neighborhood, until I realized more water was gushing down my legs. I started to feel a little panicky and was happy when we were finally on our way.
As we got to the hospital, the nerves and excitement started to set in and I think slowed things a bit. Chase asked me, "Are you sure you labored at home enough, like you said you wanted to?" At that point, I about said no, let's turn around. But then, I remembered that our doctor told us to come to the hospital immediately if your water breaks because your risk of infection is a lot higher. We sat in the car at the hospital and got out the video camera in between contractions and told what was going on. The contractions were getting harder so I said, "let's just go in."
With a bathroom towel between my legs, I waddled into the hospital, Chase hauling all our crap. As we checked in, the nurse was so calm and I was sweating, feeling the pain increasing. We got checked in, and our nurse was so nice! I told her that we were planning for a natural birth. I had been worried about the nurses/doctors not being super supportive of our birth plan, so I made sure they knew what we wanted right from the beginning. I know to some people our birth plan might seem crazy, but with all the reading I had been doing up until this point, we really wanted it as natural as possible. I told her that I didn't want to be offered any pain meds, unless I asked for them and to help us do any kind of non medicated pain relief options. She was totally fine with that idea! At this point she checked me and I was dilated to a 4 and 80% effaced. She monitored the baby's heart rate for a bit, and then she told us to go walking around the halls and try to keep things moving along.
For the next two hours that's what we did. Every time I felt one coming on, I would get on all fours and Chase would push my hips in. This seemed to help with some of the discomfort, since I felt all the pain in my lower back. They checked me every half hour or so, and by 9 A.M., I was dilated to a 6! I was so excited that things were moving along so quickly. I was dealing pretty well with the pain. In fact, I was talking my mom in between some of the contractions. I would just say, "Mom, hold on, hold on, hold on," hand the phone to Chase, breath through it, and then get back on the phone. I told my mom, " I still really want to do this naturally but I'm feeling a little nervous about it." She said, "Janessa, if you have made it this far and are dealing this well with the pain, you can totally do it! My guess is you will have this baby by 11 A.M." This was just the positive reinforcement that I needed. (By the way, I probably really would have had the baby by 11 if things hadn't turned wrong at this point).
They continued to check me every 45 minutes or so, and suddenly things started to stall. At this point, they realized that Nixon was turned sideways, putting tons of pressure in my lower back. I felt validated when they told me this because that is where I had been telling them all my pain was. At 11 A.M., the doctor came in and said that if things didn't get moving along in the next half hour, they needed to give me pitocin. I felt sick. I felt like if they gave me this drug, there was no way I could do it naturally. For that half hour, I was walking as fast as I could, doing squats, doing anything I could think of to help get the little guy turned, and moving down. They checked me again at 11:30, and still nothing. The nurse was so nice that she actually gave us one more half hour without the doctor knowing before she said she would administer the pitocin to me. Again, they checked me and I was still a 6, almost a 7,but not enough to not give me the pitocin. I was so discouraged. At this point we had gotten a new nurse named Kelli, and she was there for the rest of the delivery. She was absolutely amazing! She had had her kids naturally, and she was very supportive. She said, "Janessa, I still think you can do it without an epidural, even with the pitocin." I said, "Okay, I'll try." She told me that they would start with the smallest amount that they could administer, which was a 1. Unknown to me, they had upped the dosage to a 5 (the highest amount ), but Chase knew. They didn't tell me because I guess they thought that whatever I didn't know, wouldn't hurt me. For the next three hours, I labored with that crap in my body and I have never felt such immense pain in my lower back. It felt like someone was shoving knives into my back, deeper and deeper, and almost in slow motion.
After 6 hours of laboring dilated at a 6, 11 hours without any pain meds, I was getting very tired and had the shakes pretty bad. The doctor came in the room during this point as they were monitoring my contractions and asked, "Did you even feel that one?" I was breathing through it, but thought, "Shut up lady! Of course I can feel it, so don't talk to me right now!" The doc said, "Wow she doesn't seem to be in pain. I guess she is the silent sufferer type." I knew she was surprised we had even made it this far without an epidural, with the pitocin, because she seemed a little doubtful when I told her I wanted to do it naturally in the first place.
At 3 P.M., I decided I couldn't go any further without the epidural. Nixon was STILL turned wrong, and the nurse said that the epidural might help me relax and get the baby to turn. When I asked for the epidural, the nurse said the anesthesiologist would be down in about five minutes. I couldn't wait five minutes! By then I would have had at least two more HORRIBLE contractions! All modesty was out the door at this point, and I could have cared less who was seeing what. When the anesthesiologist was setting his stuff up, I felt a contraction coming on, so I gripped the handrails on the bed, bent over at the hips, with my bare bum in the air, and moaned through it. I am totally embarrassed I did this now, but at the moment, I seriously could have cared less. When they put the epidural in, I didn't think I could hold still. I had a contraction during this as well, and I remember Chase and the nurse holding me down, and me gripping both of them and glaring into their eyes, sweat dripping down my face. Once the epidural was in, it started to numb a little bit. After five minutes, things were better (I wasn't moaning and groaning through the contractions), but I was still feeling quite a bit of pain and was still having to breathe through them. The nurses told me to "try to take a nap". Yeah right. I was shaking so bad, Chase wondered if I was having a seizure. I heard Chase snoring in the corner after he got some food, and I just laid there trying to ignore my shaking body. I called my mom at this point and she sounded terrified! She hadn't heard from us in 6 hours, and the last she had heard from us, she thought we were going to have the baby in 2 hours. She had been thinking the worst, that I had ended up getting a C-section, and all kinds of other crazy thoughts that go through your mind in these types of situations. I told her we were doing fine, but that I was so frustrated that the little bugger had been turned wrong, and all the other details. I told her how frustrated I was with myself that I had ended up getting an epidural. She said, "Janessa, that is what they are there for! What if your labor had continued to go on for hours and hours?" This made me feel a little better.
After about an hour with the epidural, they checked me and he had FINALLY turned, and I went from a 6 to a 9 1/2 in that amount of time! Fifteen minutes later, I started feeling that immense pain returning during the contractions. This time it wasn't all in my lower back, but I was moaning and groaning again. The nurse was surprised and said, "You shouldn't be feeling any pain, just pressure. Let me give you another does of the epidural." Absolutely nothing, so then she called the anesthesiologist back in and he gave me a shot of something else. Still nothing. Come to find out, the epidural had been placed in the wrong part of my back and the epidural wasn't numbing anything! I was so frustrated! So you are telling me that you messed up our birth plan by giving me the pitocin to speed things up and get the baby turned, which didn't work, which made me get the epidural, that isn't working now""AHH!! I could have screamed at them. I told them that it was time for me to push. "Okay honey, let me just check you to see. I will be surprised if you are a 10 and fully effaced. Oh yep! You sure ARE ready to push!" No crap I was. I could feel everything. There was no need to tell ME when to push, I could feel exactly when each contraction was coming on. They would tell me to wait to push because the monitor would read my contractions a hair later than I was actually having them. That was a bit annoying.
I pushed for 20 minutes, and then they asked if I wanted to see the baby's head. I agreed and they brought out the mirror. I thought I would be seeing three quarters of the baby's head. I could see about a penny sized amount of the baby's head. That was depressing. They left the mirror there, which I would NOT recommend if you can feel it, (Although seeing the baby's head emerge at the end was very neat). I would watch periodically, and it did help me stay motivated. At one point, I gave a huge push, and happened to be watching the mirror. We all heard a "pop", and I saw my skin pop away from my body. I thought, "What the crap was that?", as the nurses looked at each other with nervous faces. The doctor said, " I think that was your tailbone, but Janessa, you are going to have to keep pushing, we are almost there."I wanted to die. I kept pushing, and finally his sweet little head emerged, half way through, which I had to hold until the next contraction. That felt like a ring of fire! I wanted him out SOOO bad! I gave a final push, and his head and his little body emerged. It was incredible! His umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck twice, but they got it off so quickly there was no time to be worried before he started crying. Chase cut the cord, and they handed him to me immediately. It really was surreal. I was looking into this sweet face that had been inside of me for the last 9 months, and now we finally got to meet. Chase and I both had tears streaming down our faces and I have never felt so happy in my entire life. We have a family now. A sweet little boy that our Father in Heaven has entrusted in our care to teach, love, and provide for. At that point, I could have cared less that my tailbone was broken, and that things hadn't gone as planned. All I cared about was that this perfect, healthy little boy was ours.
When we got up to our room, Chase and I did not want to go to sleep, even though we were both exhausted. We sat on the hospital bed and just admired him, kissed him, loved him, and passed him back and forth for about three hours. We laughed and cried. It was one of the sweetest times I have ever had with Chase. When we finally decided we should get some sleep, we put Nixon in his bassinet, and I couldn't stop looking at him. I must have finally fallen asleep at some point, but I remember having tons of thoughts running through my mind as I stared at this amazing miracle. I had never felt so much love for something so small.
It was very frustrating needing help to get out of bed, even after we got home for the first week. I would walk around like an old woman, knees bent, bum sticking out, because my tailbone hurt so bad. I couldn't even lift Nixon out of his bassinet at night, even though he was right next to me. I had to have Chase come lift him out because it put too much pressure on my tailbone. I never thought I would need help doing these things. You think about taking care of your baby, and how you will jump out of bed when you hear them cry. For the first week, I couldn't get up without help. The second week I could get up, but it would take me about two minutes to roll over on my side, and use the nightstand to help pull me up. It made me cry when I could hear Nixon crying and I couldn't get to him sooner. My body is feeling much better, but it is hard knowing that this will not be a short recovery. The doctor said it will be at least 6 months before it is healed. I had numerous nurses tell me that if you break your tailbone having a baby, your chances of doing it again are pretty high. Especially since Nixon wasn't that big, it is probably due to the way my body is built. They said they would plan for a C-section next time if they were me, but I really can't think about "next time" right now.
I wish we all lived closer so you could all enjoy him with us! He is such a sweetie, and is starting to show more of his personality. I absolutely love it. And I love being a mom. He makes me smile every time I look at him!