Well, the birth was not exactly the pain-free peaceful and quick birth that I had hoped to achieve through my Hypnobabies home study course, but I was able to go completely natural and survived, so I guess you could call it a success!!
I had my 40 weeks checkup on December 20, during which I had my first internal exam and was announced to be 1cm dilated and 30% effaced. I ended up losing the mucous plug the next day. Braxton Hicks contractions were picking up but didn't come with any sort of pain until I woke up at 8:30am on the 23rd. Though, these were minimal. That afternoon, the intensity picked up and I began having to breathe through them. I was convinced we'd be at the hospital delivering that night, so I went ahead and baked my brownies for the nurse and we made sure to have everything packed and ready to go! By night time, they were 1 minute long and 5 minutes apart and painful enough that I couldn't sleep. Actually, laying down made them even worse. Around midnight Ryoji checked on me during a bathroom break and I told him I thought it was time to call the midwives. I called their answering service and got a return call from Susannah Donahue-Negbauer, who basically told me it was still early, I should keep eating and drinking, and call back when I've been at 2-3 minutes apart for several hours. Well, I just knew that would be only a few hours away. But... no... not even close.
By morning on the 24th the contractions had spread out to about 8 minutes apart, but were getting more and more painful. Ryoji took the day off, and we took several walks to try to get my labor to progress. Mom and Dad arrived on their flight from Charlotte around 10am. During the contractions, I had to just kind of shut everything out and breathe (using hypnobabies techniques, which helped alot), and then I was completely fine and functional until the next one. This continued the WHOLE day... by late evening they were getting to the unbearable stage, and closer together. I let Ryoji sleep until I reached the point where I couldn't bear it any longer. I really felt like, we have to go to the hospital, I can't do this anymore!! He timed a couple of my contractions at that point and they were about 1-3 minutes apart, so we called the midwives. Waited 30 minutes and got no response. In the mean time I had a short bout of puking from the pain. We called again and told the answering service to let the midwife on call know that we're just going to go ahead to the hospital, which we did.
The taxi ride was not as bad as I thought. At 3 AM, the roads were empty and it was only about 30 minutes. The BQE was smooth, but once we hit Manhattan and the endless stop lights, woah, that was misery! And I tried to keep quiet cuz I didn't wanna freak out the taxi driver! When we finally got to the hospital, I had a contraction at the moment I was getting out. Ryoji was handling the suitcase and baby carrier on the opposite side of the car and couldn't help me. I just kind of froze half standing with the door open for the duration of the contraction. The cab driver didn't say a word, thank goodness there were no cars honking behind us!
We went to labor and delivery triage where we signed in, they took some blood and urine, and strapped me up to the fetal heart and contraction monitor for 20 minutes. Midwife Sandy Woods was there with a couple other women in labor on the regular L&D floor, and she really gave me hell about why she hadn't heard from me until now. I tried to explain that Susannah had told me to call back at 2-3 minutes apart for several hours, and I'm sorry but it took me 24 hours to reach that. Sandy didn't seem to comprehend, and seemed to think I probably wasn't ready to be checked in. Thank goodness the monitor and internal exam proved otherwise - I was 5cm dilated, 100% effaced, and contracting about every 2 minutes. Baby's heart beat was doing great, so I was given the green light for the birth center, as soon as the next midwife on call could make it to the hospital, since Sandy had her hands full on the regular L&D floor. This was music to my ears, since I had previously decided I didn't like Sandy. Anyway, Melissa Bair arrived in about 30 minutes, after a 2nd round of puking from the pain, and off we went to catch the elevator up to the birthing center. She stayed with me for the remainder of the labor/birth - 10+ hours, which is one of the main reasons I wanted to go with a midwife as opposed to an OBGYN who basically just comes when you're at the end of your pushing to catch the baby.
We were the only ones there, it only has 3 rooms anyway, which was great news for me. Basically meant I had a private nurse and midwife! First things first, we got the jacuzzi filled up. I had sooooooooooo been looking forward to that, as had Ryoji! But as soon as I jumped in and had my first contraction, I was like "Get me the hell out of here!!!" I felt so out of control bobbing around - it was no good!! I felt bad for Ryoji, though, cuz he couldn't exactly get in and lounge around if I wasn't in there! I quickly discovered the rocking chair was my labor position of choice. I had my hypnobabies tracks playing for a while, but it was getting progressively hard to just sit calmly through the contractions. I would instinctively fight them, even though I knew it hurt worse. It was a real struggle for me to relax through the pain, which I could only manage to do about 50% of the time. At one point I tried laboring up on the bed, which brought on an especially intense contraction leading to another bout of puking. I was never nauseas during labor, but it was strange, certain positions triggered especially strong contractions and thus a bout of puking that came on so fast I literally had only about 5 seconds to grab a bin, had about 10 hurls, and was back to normal after that.
The nurse or midwife would come in occasionally to check out the baby's heart beat with the doppler, and check my pulse / heart beat / temperature. Every time they seemed amazed at how strong the baby was, and this made me really relieved! I got an internal exam after 2 hours and was at 7cm - good news - 1cm per hour is great! At the next check I was at 9cm, where I would remain for the next 5 hours apparently. Aghhhhhh. Finally we all agreed to go ahead and break my water, to let the baby come down and put more pressure on my cervix and hopefully get the show on the road. The feeling of the super warm liquid gushing out was the weirdest sensation, SO weird!! Was again relieved to hear the fluid was beautiful and clear, no meconium, which can signal fetal distress.
Here is where the midwife and nurse got EVIL. They started having me doing certain positions and exercises to get the baby to come down lower in the pelvis. They said "You'll hate us now,for this, but love us later!!" I don't know about the 2nd part, but YES to the first part!! One of these evil positions was on a super low birth ball, leaning forward onto pillows on the bed for support, and wiggling my pelvis around. The other evil thing was having me do this weird "Hey Hey We're the Monkeys" walk down the hall, and at every contraction I had to grab the hand rail with my feet shoulder width apart and close to the wall, squat down ALL THE WAY just barely not touching the floor, and sway my hips back and forth. This was by far the most painful thing I have every experienced. OMG it was excruciating. But, it was only THAT bad during the peak of each contraction, which was about 30 seconds. And you know what? You really can take 30 seconds of anything. Really. We went up and down the hallway once doing that, and then back to the birth ball until I started feeling pushy.
Got another internal exam and she said there's just a teeny "lip" of the cervix and asked if she could just leave her hand up there and feel what's happening during my contractions. Oh, yes, be my guest. That was NOT fun, but somehow she was able to push that lip aside and bish bash bosh Heather is ready to push!! It was an overwhelming feeling. I had been dealing with just getting through contractions for days, and now a new challenge and I had no idea what to expect!! Scary!!!!!!!
I had heard about "purple pushing" when you hold your breath and turn purple trying to push out the baby. Hypnobabies and also our lamaze teacher told us it's not necessary and you should "breath out" your baby. Well, I tried this my first few pushes and got yelled at by the nurse and midwife, saying it's not productive and they don't want to hear me during the pushes! Ugh... So I tried it their way. But apparently I was wasting good pushes too soon into the contractions, so the nurse made it her duty to not let me push til we were well into the contraction. Nice - more torture! Then I would begin to push, like you're pushing out the world's biggest poop, and then all of a sudden my body would take over and bring it to the next level and I would hear cheering from the nurse and midwife "YES!!! That's IT!!! Keep going, don't let go!!!" Well hey, I finally figured it out!! This went on for about an hour... The little baby was prairie dogging its way out, 2 steps forward 1 step back. I knew to expect this, but boy oh boy is it frustrating!! Finally the head was peaking out and Ryoji had a look and they asked if I wanted to feel it. No thanks, I'm good! The "ring of fire" my sister warned me about was not nearly as bad as I anticipated, and before I knew it the head was out. They would instruct me when to stop pushing and when to give baby pushes. I'm not sure how I was able to obey, but I guess I did. The shoulders were not nearly as bad as the head to pass, and the with a big gush the rest of the body popped out and the ooey gooey baby was plopped on my stomach at 1:19 PM on Christmas Day (a whopping 8 pounds 1 ounce, 20 inches long).
This was absolutely unreal. I mean, the whole experience was as I was in a fog from 2 nights lack of sleep and extreme pain. But having this baby on me, wow! I don't know what I said or did, but I was clinging to it for dear life. My hand felt something that I thought was testicles, which led me to prompt Ryoji to do his job and announce the sex. IT'S A BOY!! HOORAY!!! OK, so I was cupping some balls after all, haha!! We immediately started calling him Kenzo.
The midwife let the cord finish pulsating before clipping it and having Ryoji cut the cord. I was glad to do this so Kenzo would have all of his blood back in him. Then, she began massaging my belly and finally I expeled the placenta, which wasn't so bad. This is where the rest of the torture begin. Apparently, part of the membranes were missing, i.e. still inside me. So the midwife had to go hunting, with her hands. This took quite a while but finally it seemed she located and pulled them out. But my uterus wasn't contracting as it should be, and I was bleeding too much. They gave me a shot of pitocin. Didn't help. They decided my bladder was full and causing the problem as it was competing with the uterus for space in my belly. They tried to get me to pee in a bedpan, but all my muscles had had it and I was a shaky mess and not able to do the deed. So, catheter it would be! I was freaked out by this announcement, but that pain was NOTHING compared to what I'd just gone through, it was like a walk in the park! They emptied my bladder and showed me the massive amount of pee that came out. Funny, I hadn't felt any urge to pee!
They took out the catheter and the stitching of my 2nd degree tears began. At this point they handed Kenzo off to Ryoji for some skin to skin time. Good thing too because this was some god awful pain. She gave me many shots to numb me up, which in itself hurt, but she sadly let me know that some areas do not respond well to the medication, so be prepared for some discomfort. This took maybe 30 minutes? I really have no comprehension of time at that point! Finally she finished up, they gave me a sponge bath, and me Ryoji and Kenzo could relax in our queen sized bed and have some bonding time!
The nurse came in later and helped me initiate breast feeding, then we were alone again. Ryoji took off to get us some food from a nearby restaurant (who is open on Christmas??) as the birth center doesn't provide food. At some point I decided to sit up, and was met with a HUUUUUUUUUUUGE gush of warmness in my nether regions. I immediately felt cold clammy and faint, and hit the nurse call button. She ran in immediately and I said I think there is a problem. She looked down and quickly agreed. I was hooked up to an entire bag of pitocin at this point, to help my uterus contract and stop bleeding, and they took some more blood to monitor something, I'm not sure what.
Mom and dad stopped by, and I was in such a haze from the labor, birth, and blood loss. But it was nice to see them and show our little Kenzo off to them! After they left, we had a good 5 hour or so nap, after which the nurse came in and yelled at me for not having fed Kenzo! Woooops!! The next day, Kenzo got checked out by the pediatrician, got his hearing checked, and got his PKU and bilirubin checked. After the all clear, we were discharged around 4PM, just 28 hours after the birth. It was sooooooooooo nice to go home, and let the fun begin!!
I had my 40 weeks checkup on December 20, during which I had my first internal exam and was announced to be 1cm dilated and 30% effaced. I ended up losing the mucous plug the next day. Braxton Hicks contractions were picking up but didn't come with any sort of pain until I woke up at 8:30am on the 23rd. Though, these were minimal. That afternoon, the intensity picked up and I began having to breathe through them. I was convinced we'd be at the hospital delivering that night, so I went ahead and baked my brownies for the nurse and we made sure to have everything packed and ready to go! By night time, they were 1 minute long and 5 minutes apart and painful enough that I couldn't sleep. Actually, laying down made them even worse. Around midnight Ryoji checked on me during a bathroom break and I told him I thought it was time to call the midwives. I called their answering service and got a return call from Susannah Donahue-Negbauer, who basically told me it was still early, I should keep eating and drinking, and call back when I've been at 2-3 minutes apart for several hours. Well, I just knew that would be only a few hours away. But... no... not even close.
By morning on the 24th the contractions had spread out to about 8 minutes apart, but were getting more and more painful. Ryoji took the day off, and we took several walks to try to get my labor to progress. Mom and Dad arrived on their flight from Charlotte around 10am. During the contractions, I had to just kind of shut everything out and breathe (using hypnobabies techniques, which helped alot), and then I was completely fine and functional until the next one. This continued the WHOLE day... by late evening they were getting to the unbearable stage, and closer together. I let Ryoji sleep until I reached the point where I couldn't bear it any longer. I really felt like, we have to go to the hospital, I can't do this anymore!! He timed a couple of my contractions at that point and they were about 1-3 minutes apart, so we called the midwives. Waited 30 minutes and got no response. In the mean time I had a short bout of puking from the pain. We called again and told the answering service to let the midwife on call know that we're just going to go ahead to the hospital, which we did.
The taxi ride was not as bad as I thought. At 3 AM, the roads were empty and it was only about 30 minutes. The BQE was smooth, but once we hit Manhattan and the endless stop lights, woah, that was misery! And I tried to keep quiet cuz I didn't wanna freak out the taxi driver! When we finally got to the hospital, I had a contraction at the moment I was getting out. Ryoji was handling the suitcase and baby carrier on the opposite side of the car and couldn't help me. I just kind of froze half standing with the door open for the duration of the contraction. The cab driver didn't say a word, thank goodness there were no cars honking behind us!
We went to labor and delivery triage where we signed in, they took some blood and urine, and strapped me up to the fetal heart and contraction monitor for 20 minutes. Midwife Sandy Woods was there with a couple other women in labor on the regular L&D floor, and she really gave me hell about why she hadn't heard from me until now. I tried to explain that Susannah had told me to call back at 2-3 minutes apart for several hours, and I'm sorry but it took me 24 hours to reach that. Sandy didn't seem to comprehend, and seemed to think I probably wasn't ready to be checked in. Thank goodness the monitor and internal exam proved otherwise - I was 5cm dilated, 100% effaced, and contracting about every 2 minutes. Baby's heart beat was doing great, so I was given the green light for the birth center, as soon as the next midwife on call could make it to the hospital, since Sandy had her hands full on the regular L&D floor. This was music to my ears, since I had previously decided I didn't like Sandy. Anyway, Melissa Bair arrived in about 30 minutes, after a 2nd round of puking from the pain, and off we went to catch the elevator up to the birthing center. She stayed with me for the remainder of the labor/birth - 10+ hours, which is one of the main reasons I wanted to go with a midwife as opposed to an OBGYN who basically just comes when you're at the end of your pushing to catch the baby.
We were the only ones there, it only has 3 rooms anyway, which was great news for me. Basically meant I had a private nurse and midwife! First things first, we got the jacuzzi filled up. I had sooooooooooo been looking forward to that, as had Ryoji! But as soon as I jumped in and had my first contraction, I was like "Get me the hell out of here!!!" I felt so out of control bobbing around - it was no good!! I felt bad for Ryoji, though, cuz he couldn't exactly get in and lounge around if I wasn't in there! I quickly discovered the rocking chair was my labor position of choice. I had my hypnobabies tracks playing for a while, but it was getting progressively hard to just sit calmly through the contractions. I would instinctively fight them, even though I knew it hurt worse. It was a real struggle for me to relax through the pain, which I could only manage to do about 50% of the time. At one point I tried laboring up on the bed, which brought on an especially intense contraction leading to another bout of puking. I was never nauseas during labor, but it was strange, certain positions triggered especially strong contractions and thus a bout of puking that came on so fast I literally had only about 5 seconds to grab a bin, had about 10 hurls, and was back to normal after that.
The nurse or midwife would come in occasionally to check out the baby's heart beat with the doppler, and check my pulse / heart beat / temperature. Every time they seemed amazed at how strong the baby was, and this made me really relieved! I got an internal exam after 2 hours and was at 7cm - good news - 1cm per hour is great! At the next check I was at 9cm, where I would remain for the next 5 hours apparently. Aghhhhhh. Finally we all agreed to go ahead and break my water, to let the baby come down and put more pressure on my cervix and hopefully get the show on the road. The feeling of the super warm liquid gushing out was the weirdest sensation, SO weird!! Was again relieved to hear the fluid was beautiful and clear, no meconium, which can signal fetal distress.
Here is where the midwife and nurse got EVIL. They started having me doing certain positions and exercises to get the baby to come down lower in the pelvis. They said "You'll hate us now,for this, but love us later!!" I don't know about the 2nd part, but YES to the first part!! One of these evil positions was on a super low birth ball, leaning forward onto pillows on the bed for support, and wiggling my pelvis around. The other evil thing was having me do this weird "Hey Hey We're the Monkeys" walk down the hall, and at every contraction I had to grab the hand rail with my feet shoulder width apart and close to the wall, squat down ALL THE WAY just barely not touching the floor, and sway my hips back and forth. This was by far the most painful thing I have every experienced. OMG it was excruciating. But, it was only THAT bad during the peak of each contraction, which was about 30 seconds. And you know what? You really can take 30 seconds of anything. Really. We went up and down the hallway once doing that, and then back to the birth ball until I started feeling pushy.
Got another internal exam and she said there's just a teeny "lip" of the cervix and asked if she could just leave her hand up there and feel what's happening during my contractions. Oh, yes, be my guest. That was NOT fun, but somehow she was able to push that lip aside and bish bash bosh Heather is ready to push!! It was an overwhelming feeling. I had been dealing with just getting through contractions for days, and now a new challenge and I had no idea what to expect!! Scary!!!!!!!
I had heard about "purple pushing" when you hold your breath and turn purple trying to push out the baby. Hypnobabies and also our lamaze teacher told us it's not necessary and you should "breath out" your baby. Well, I tried this my first few pushes and got yelled at by the nurse and midwife, saying it's not productive and they don't want to hear me during the pushes! Ugh... So I tried it their way. But apparently I was wasting good pushes too soon into the contractions, so the nurse made it her duty to not let me push til we were well into the contraction. Nice - more torture! Then I would begin to push, like you're pushing out the world's biggest poop, and then all of a sudden my body would take over and bring it to the next level and I would hear cheering from the nurse and midwife "YES!!! That's IT!!! Keep going, don't let go!!!" Well hey, I finally figured it out!! This went on for about an hour... The little baby was prairie dogging its way out, 2 steps forward 1 step back. I knew to expect this, but boy oh boy is it frustrating!! Finally the head was peaking out and Ryoji had a look and they asked if I wanted to feel it. No thanks, I'm good! The "ring of fire" my sister warned me about was not nearly as bad as I anticipated, and before I knew it the head was out. They would instruct me when to stop pushing and when to give baby pushes. I'm not sure how I was able to obey, but I guess I did. The shoulders were not nearly as bad as the head to pass, and the with a big gush the rest of the body popped out and the ooey gooey baby was plopped on my stomach at 1:19 PM on Christmas Day (a whopping 8 pounds 1 ounce, 20 inches long).
This was absolutely unreal. I mean, the whole experience was as I was in a fog from 2 nights lack of sleep and extreme pain. But having this baby on me, wow! I don't know what I said or did, but I was clinging to it for dear life. My hand felt something that I thought was testicles, which led me to prompt Ryoji to do his job and announce the sex. IT'S A BOY!! HOORAY!!! OK, so I was cupping some balls after all, haha!! We immediately started calling him Kenzo.
The midwife let the cord finish pulsating before clipping it and having Ryoji cut the cord. I was glad to do this so Kenzo would have all of his blood back in him. Then, she began massaging my belly and finally I expeled the placenta, which wasn't so bad. This is where the rest of the torture begin. Apparently, part of the membranes were missing, i.e. still inside me. So the midwife had to go hunting, with her hands. This took quite a while but finally it seemed she located and pulled them out. But my uterus wasn't contracting as it should be, and I was bleeding too much. They gave me a shot of pitocin. Didn't help. They decided my bladder was full and causing the problem as it was competing with the uterus for space in my belly. They tried to get me to pee in a bedpan, but all my muscles had had it and I was a shaky mess and not able to do the deed. So, catheter it would be! I was freaked out by this announcement, but that pain was NOTHING compared to what I'd just gone through, it was like a walk in the park! They emptied my bladder and showed me the massive amount of pee that came out. Funny, I hadn't felt any urge to pee!
They took out the catheter and the stitching of my 2nd degree tears began. At this point they handed Kenzo off to Ryoji for some skin to skin time. Good thing too because this was some god awful pain. She gave me many shots to numb me up, which in itself hurt, but she sadly let me know that some areas do not respond well to the medication, so be prepared for some discomfort. This took maybe 30 minutes? I really have no comprehension of time at that point! Finally she finished up, they gave me a sponge bath, and me Ryoji and Kenzo could relax in our queen sized bed and have some bonding time!
The nurse came in later and helped me initiate breast feeding, then we were alone again. Ryoji took off to get us some food from a nearby restaurant (who is open on Christmas??) as the birth center doesn't provide food. At some point I decided to sit up, and was met with a HUUUUUUUUUUUGE gush of warmness in my nether regions. I immediately felt cold clammy and faint, and hit the nurse call button. She ran in immediately and I said I think there is a problem. She looked down and quickly agreed. I was hooked up to an entire bag of pitocin at this point, to help my uterus contract and stop bleeding, and they took some more blood to monitor something, I'm not sure what.
Mom and dad stopped by, and I was in such a haze from the labor, birth, and blood loss. But it was nice to see them and show our little Kenzo off to them! After they left, we had a good 5 hour or so nap, after which the nurse came in and yelled at me for not having fed Kenzo! Woooops!! The next day, Kenzo got checked out by the pediatrician, got his hearing checked, and got his PKU and bilirubin checked. After the all clear, we were discharged around 4PM, just 28 hours after the birth. It was sooooooooooo nice to go home, and let the fun begin!!
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