(laboring in water, pain during transition when mom had to get out of water, all natural birth)
On April 5 (Wednesday) I
had a doctor's appointment because I was going
into 41w pregnant. They did a NST and ultrasound and said that everything
was fine.. I was only a fingertip dilated so they told me to go home, come
back next week, and at that point we could have a conversation about what
plan we would have for if I went beyond 42 weeks.
That evening around 9 PM I was getting into the bathtub when my mucous plug
released. It was very very strange - I don't remember it happening at all
in such a way when I was pregnant with Hilary. After that I went to bed
and lay down for a while, and started having light pressure waves about 10
minutes apart. They weren't very strong but they were there. I lay in bed
and read a book and relaxed for a couple of hours. Around 11 PM I went to
bed. Around 3 AM
I woke up and the waves were getting strong enough that I
wanted dh to turn on the hypnosis CDs. He did, and I got up and sat on the
birth ball for about an hour. At that point I was really tired and feeling
pretty OK so I decided to get back into bed and sleep for a while. We got
up a few hours later (waking up frequently for the surges) and decided that
this was probably IT. So we called ed's mom to come get Hilary and started
our day. We had breakfast, watched some TV, played with Hilary until her
grandparents showed up to take her. We called the doula and kept her
updated of the situation. We spent the day trying to relax, taking naps,
watching a movie, and that's about it. Sometime in the early afternoon we
called the doula and had her come to the house to help us out - she knew we
wanted to go to the hospital as late as possible so she did plan to come do
some home support with us. It was a strange afternoon/evening - my surges
never settled into a steady pattern. If I were sitting on the couch they
would slow down or almost stop, but when I stood up or changed positions I
would get two or three in rapid succession. Then I'd sit back down and
they'd stop entirely or slow down to more than 10 or 15 minutes apart.
Finally around 8 PM
my doula told me to go walk up and down the stairs, and
keep moving. At that point I had 4 or 5 strong ones no more than 5
minutes apart, so we packed up and headed for the hospital.
When we got there a half hour later the triage rooms were full so they put
us in a regular room. It took some time, they were busy, but after an hour
the doctor finally came in to check me - I was 6 cm dilated. He said I
could get in the tub whenever I wanted, so that's where we headed next.
The nurse had set the water at 102 and after about a half hour in the tub I
was really hot, so we went back to the room to cool off a little bit.
While laying in the bed during a very strong surge my water broke (quite
spectacularly too..) Unfortunately it had meconium in it so we were not
allowed to birth in the tub. I headed back to the tub for some more of the
labor but when I was 9 cm I had to get out and head back to the room to
deliver.
At this point I was in transition and things got painful .. up until now I
was able to stay in hypnosis and no have pain - just pressure, but once
they made me get out of the tub it was very hard to breathe and relax
during the surges. This is where I screamed, cried, said I couldn't do it
anymore, asked for drugs, prayed to God, and all of the other clichés. It
was very very strange - I wanted to push but when I tried to push I knew
something was wrong. I told the nurse that something was wrong and so the
doctor came in to check me again. He told her I still had a lip and should
wait a bit before I pushed again. So I rolled onto my side for about 3
surges, trying to breathe the baby down, and then I knew that I needed to
push and so I flipped over onto my back and pushed -- and the baby started
to crown. Yes, in one push. My doula ran out into the hall to get a nurse
and the nurse didn't believe her that the baby was crowning. She came in,
saw his head coming out, and then all hell broke loose in the room - people
came running in, telling me NOT to push until the doctor got there - that
was probably the hardest part - they were telling me to blow instead of
push and there was really only one thing I wanted to do and that was to
push. So… about 2 minutes or so later the doctor finally arrived and they
said I could push. Yay! It took about 5 minutes after that to get his
head out, which then they suctioned, and then about another minute to get
his body out. They gave him to me immediately and let me hold him for
about 30 seconds and rub him til he started to cry, but then they had to
take him to suction him again because of all of the meconium that he had
passed. So they cleaned him up a bit while they did my stitches (I tore on
my old episiotomy scar) and then brought him back over to me. His apgars
were 8 and 9!
We tried nursing and he got the hang of it within a few minutes. He was
very alert and active. (yay for no drugs!)
We had a very uneventful hospital stay - he sleeps a lot and nurses a lot..
we came home Sunday (4/9). Hilary is very smitten with him.
Overall I'm pretty happy with the experience - I've said a couple of times
I'm not sure I could have pushed him out if I had had anesthesia because it
was an extreme amount of work to get him out, and doing it with just a
couple of pushes was only possible because I had just gone through such a
terrible experience with transition and I was REALLY motivated to finish it
already. I thought that the hypnosis that I had learned was extremely
effective, I had practiced it seriously for the last 3 months and it was
really excellent - right up until I reached transition. (although, I'm not
sure what, if anything, could have helped transition, it was just too
intense - which again, helped me to push the baby out...)
So Calvin weighed in at 9 lbs, 15.5 ounces, 22" long, 37.5cm head circ!
We've started calling him "moose" :)