As previously stated when I typed up Elise’s birth story, feel free to skip this if reading birth stories is not something you enjoy. But also as previously stated in Elise’s narrative, I want to have written it all down for my own memory-keeping, since it’s amazing how fast the details start slipping away, even a couple of weeks after the fact. So here we go!

My due date was New Year’s Eve, and since Elise was a few days early, I expected that I was going to go into labor even earlier the second time. Basically, once I hit 37 weeks, I woke up every day wondering why I was still pregnant. On the other hand, I was MUCH more comfortable at the end of pregnancy this time compared to last time, so the wait wasn’t terrible. I was shooting to give him a birthday any time between 12/10 and 12/22 at the latest, since I really wanted to avoid either giving birth or being in the hospital on Christmas. December 10th came and went, as did the rest of the week, then the week before Christmas, and then Christmas week was upon us and I started praying that I would NOT go into labor until after Christmas was over.

I guess God heard my prayers and answered them with interest, because while everyone was telling me that I would be so relaxed after Christmas happened that I would automatically start the process on December 26th, nothing happened at all. I had some sporadic contractions that didn’t really hurt here and there, but nothing that had me ready to call up the hospital. I took a picture at 12:59 pm on December 28 to mark the fact that I was officially more pregnant than I ever had been before (by one minute, at that point) and hoped that I’d have a baby that night.

I did not.

On December 30th, I walked into my 40 week appointment (which was actually at 39 weeks + 6 days), a little shocked that I had actually made it, and saw my favorite midwife. She told me I was at a 3 and tried to help me get things started with a sweep, commenting that she was going to be the one at the hospital that night and hoped to see me there. I was similarly hopeful, but NO DICE. That evening we went over to the shopping plaza near our office to walk around and look at lights, and we stopped at Elise’s favorite shop: the Amazon bookstore. We had done the same thing the day I went into labor with Elise, and I thought it would be a fun bit of parallelism if I had a baby that night. I had some light contractions that were 8 to 10 minutes apart that evening, but they were only 45 seconds long and fizzled out when I went to bed.

I should add a comment here that with Elise, the day before I went into labor I felt like I had the stomach flu, so I was expecting/dreading that to happen again before going into labor a second time. My labors would probably be very, very similar, right? Famous last…thoughts.

Yet again, the next morning (my due date!) I woke up and thought, “WHY AM I STILL PREGNANT?!?” Chaz went to work, we carried on with a normal day, and once again I had a few random contractions, but nothing consistent. The same thing happened the next day, so I decided this baby was never coming out and I might as well just “enjoy” being pregnant forever. That evening we ate a PF Chang’s frozen meal for dinner and I hoped that I wouldn’t see it later. We all went to bed.

I woke up at 2:30 with a contraction. It felt like the light 8-to-10-minutes-apart ones from the previous days, but it HAD woken me up, so I just made a mental note that it had happened and tried to go back to sleep. Just a few minutes later, I had another one, but I told myself it was probably nothing and tried to go back to sleep again. When the third one came, I decided that maybe I should start timing them, just to see if they were still 8 to 10 minutes apart, or if they were longer than 45 seconds. To my surprise, they were 6 to 7 minutes apart and lasting a full minute and a half, which is (unfortunately) normal for me during active labor. Still, I wasn’t convinced, so I got up to use the bathroom and figured they’d stop once I did that. As soon as I got up, they sped up to 4 minutes apart. Since I could still manage them easily, I continued to believe they would probably die down, but Chaz woke up when I came back to bed and I told him he might want to think about moving his meeting scheduled at work later that morning.

Unlike me, he decided things were actually happening (which was wise) and got up to take a shower and pack a bag. I called my parents at 3:18 am to come watch Elise (THANKS, mom and dad!) and then called the birth center at the hospital at 3:27. I said something to the effect of, “Well, I think I’m in labor, but I can still talk through contractions so it seems like it’s pretty early…”

They told me to come in anyway, so I got ready to go and hoped that they wouldn’t end up sending me home in an hour. Just like with Elise’s labor, I made sure I put in earrings, for some unknown reason. Every time a contraction hit I’d squat all the way to the floor and breathe. By 4:20 my parents had arrived and we got in the car, with me turning around in the front seat to continue my squatting and breathing routine. Things slowed down a little bit when we left the house, so I was somehow STILL convinced that this wasn’t real and they were going to send me home.

That changed when my water broke as we were driving down the highway. Since my water hadn’t broken with Elise until they broke it for me in the hospital, I was completely unprepared for that possibility and therefore only had a feather down blanket in the back seat to keep amniotic fluid from getting all over my car. Fun times! It worked well enough, and I realized we for sure wouldn’t be leaving the hospital without a baby.

We arrived at the hospital just a few minutes later, and I had two or three more contractions as we walked in through the emergency entrance - the regular entrance was locked during the night hours. We actually tried the ambulance door first, and some security guard gave us a funny look before we realized it was the wrong spot.

The nurses were waiting for me when we got up to L&D. They opened the door for me without us having to press the buzzer, and whether it was because I told them my water had broken or just because it wasn’t my first baby, they skipped bringing me through triage and brought me straight back to a delivery room. They asked me if I needed a towel to clean up the car and I said something like, “Oh no, I had a blanket, and I guess these are very absorbent leggings!” They humored me by laughing at that…but in reality my water just hadn’t broken all the way because the rest of it broke all over the floor of the delivery room just before I changed into my hospital gown.

Things picked up rapidly from there. I’d checked in at 5 or 6 centimeters, and contractions were coming fast and furious, so as soon as I was in my hospital gown I told them that an epidural sounded REALLY GREAT. They acted a little surprised and told me I was “doing really well, so was I sure?” I figured they must say that to everyone, so I said, “No, really…it sounds like THE BEST THING IN THE WORLD.” They put in an order for one and got me hooked up to an IV bag of fluids. Apart from surviving through contractions, the only thing I could think about was the fact that I was extremely thirsty and I think I chugged two full giant cups of water during the whole labor process.

I need to give a quick shout out to the phlebotomist who did my blood draw right before the IV went in. I despise blood draws more than any other standard doctor procedure, and I literally didn’t even feel it. I don’t know what his name was, but he deserves some kind of medal.

The nurses left the room for the most part while the bag of fluid drained, checking in every so often. I knew I just had to stick it out until all the fluid was gone and the anesthesiologist arrived, so I kinda used my fists to simultaneously lie on my back and give myself some counter pressure, which was the only thing that was giving me any comfort. “Comfort” is a complete lie, as it was extremely UNcomfortable and at one point, I looked over at Chaz and said, “I JUST DON’T WANT TO DO THIS ANYMORE!” and swore to myself that I was never having any more children. The only thing getting me through was a) picturing climbing a mountain when each contraction came and b) knowing that there were drugs on the way.

Actually, there was quite a lot of swearing to myself. If anyone had been inside my head, they might have concluded that I had been a very salty sailor in a previous life.

Around 6:15, the anesthesiologist waltzed in and said, “I’m Dr. Parker and I’m here to administer your epidural,” and then went through the litany of risks involved. I was well aware of those and just agreed to everything, while keeping my eyes closed and trying not to die, and also (so sorry, tmi warning here) feeling like I needed to use the bathroom rather desperately.

The nurse and anesthesiologist told me to swing my legs over the side of the bed, and that I’d need to sit still through the contractions while they placed the epidural. I remember saying, “Are you sure you can’t do it like this?!?” while I sat with one leg off the side of the bed and the other under me as I curled my back over like a cat. They said no.

At that point my body literally took over and the urge to “use the bathroom” won the day, except I didn’t actually need to use the bathroom. My eyes were shut this whole time, so I heard the anesthesiologist say, “When was the last time she was checked…?” I think I was sob-grunt-yelling as the nurse said, “It was about an hour ago…” and I just said, “I THINK I’M PUSHING.” The midwife was suddenly there and she told me to get on my side, which I thought was impossible but somehow happened anyway, and I opened my eyes just a crack to find that the room was filled with people before I shut them again.

I can’t tell you where Chaz was standing, I can’t tell you what happened to the anesthesiologist (was he there? did he leave the room? had we called him out of his warm bed at 5:00 in the morning only to send him back home? did he get shoved into the bathroom since there were so many people in the room? WHO KNOWS), and I can’t tell you what it looked like when my baby was born, but all of a sudden the midwife was saying, “Look what you did! You’re amazing! You did so, so well!” (still not sure they don’t say that to everyone) and there was a baby on my chest. So I guess I also flipped back onto my back?

Anyway…it was 6:21 am and he was here! (Side note: I myself was also born at 6:21, though it was in the evening. Crazy!) Start to finish, the entire labor was 3 hours and 51 minutes. They waited bit and then asked Chaz if he wanted to cut the cord (he did not), but I asked if I could and they let me! The midwife mentioned she’d never had a mom cut the cord before, which I thought was pretty cool. They cleaned me and everything else up, and then they let us just cuddle him for a couple of hours. Also, I got to order breakfast, which was the second best thing after having a fresh baby to snuggle.

Recovery this time was dramatically easier than recovery after my first birth, so if we ever have another baby, I think I might plan on a natural birth instead of wanting an epidural and then not making it. Considering I’d always wanted to have an unmedicated delivery but had also been dreading labor enough to want the relief of an epidural, this was probably the best possible outcome.

Now he’s a month an a half old, and he’s about as snuggly and wonderful as you might expect a baby to be, and we love him to bits.

Happy birthday, little buddy! We’re so very happy you’re here!

Woodstock Writings