So...as I mentioned before, my due date was January 8th. Or 9th. Whatever. I went in for my (nearly) 41 week appointment on January 13th and in addition to the normal exam, they did a non-stress test to make sure the baby was still doing well. Things initially looked good, and then they started to look maybe not so good and when an ultrasound showed low fluid levels my doctor was like, "do you just want to have this baby?" and I was all, "I JUST WANT TO HAVE THIS BABY!" Game on.
We ran home and grabbed a few things and then headed back to the hospital for what we expected to be a long night of preparing my body for labor ("cervical ripening" is the technical term but I would never say "cervical ripening" on my blog) before they administered Pitocin in the morning. Once I was checked in, the nurse hooked me up to the monitors again to get a baseline for contractions before they started the medicine. After a couple of hours she came in and told me that I was contracting too frequently for them to induce me. Essentially, in the 3 hours between when we left my doctor's office and arrived at the hospital I had gone into labor all on my own which is just the kind of sassy thing my uterus would do.
We stayed in the antepartum wing for about 7 hours as my contractions got more intense and closer together. Around 2 AM, I was dilated to a 3 and my nurse told me they could send me to labor and delivery. Hallelujah! I kind of hated my time in antepartum and more importantly, I knew what was waiting for me on the other side. My contractions were now coming every couple of minutes and were so so painful. Basically, I was totally unequipped to handle them. I requested an epidural right away and 30 minutes later things were looking up!
Adam and I were able to relax, although I had a lot of trouble sleeping that night. Nerves? I don't know but whatever it was was not afflicting Adam in the same way. He probably had the best nights sleep of his life. I roused him a few times when things were getting exciting (every time I got checked) but other than that I'm pretty sure he got about 10 hours of sleep which is also (spoiler alert!) how much total sleep we've had since that night.
Around 6 AM I had progressed to 6 centimeters and by 10 I was at an 8. Do you follow? Around 11 my doctor told me that she didn't like how the baby's heart was reacting to some contractions I was having (the same concerning thing we saw during the NST) and that if this kept up there was a chance we would have to move to a c-section. I was pretty discouraged by this thought but knew that ultimately we would do whatever my doctor said was best for the baby.
Flipping me on my other side seemed to help a lot and by 1:00 I was completely dilated. I started feeling like I needed to push around 2:00. Pushing was so much more exhausting than I had anticipated. I don't know if it was because I had an epidural but it didn't feel really relieving to be pushing, something I had read in a lot of other birth stories. I was so parched and Adam fed me ice chips between contractions until I threw up (my first time all pregnancy!) and they cut me off.
Adam had initially hoped to be more involved in the delivery but a combination of a nuchal cord and meconium in the fluid meant he spent his time coaching me on the sidelines which turned out to be perfect. After about an hour the baby started crowning and Adam made an 11th hour switch in his gender prediction. "That looks like girl hair!" Ha! At this point the gender was actually the least of my concerns. My doctor told me, "ok, we're going to have a baby with the next contraction". I gave it everything I had and sure enough a perfect blue slimy little baby came out looking straight up at the ceiling! Adam announced, "it's a boy!" and our baby let out a wail that to me said, "peds team? who needs em?". To be on the safe side my doctor handed him over to the pediatricians who cleaned him up and looked him over and within a couple of minutes Adam brought him to me for some skin to skin time. He just calmly stared up at us a we marveled over his perfect little face. To me, he looked, and still looks, exactly like his Dad. It was the best moment of my life.
tears of joy from both of us
you say you want a revolution
those purple hands and feet that kept him from the perfect 10
on the APGAR that Adam was hoping for. #tigerdad
Well, that didn't turn out to be very abbreviated after all. I want to write more about our first month with him. Magic. We love him so much. I think we'll do this again.