Haley Elizabeth: a birth story.

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After a disappointing doctor’s visit Thursday afternoon where my doctor scheduled my induction and informed me that she would likely be out of town until next Wednesday, I was prepared to be in for the long haul.  As I went to bed that night, I slept about as usual except that I got up for a drink and a bit of a walk around one in the morning.  The baby wasn’t awake, but I was feeling a bit restless and Tom had only gone to bed around midnight so I figured it was his getting to sleep that was keeping me awake.  I lay back down and attempted sleep and was just about successful when my water broke, gushing water all over the bed.  Tom was kind enough to get me some towels and suggested that we rest as much as possible as I hadn’t been having any contractions.  My body wasn’t having any of that; the astonishment was too great.  It wasn’t fifteen minutes later that the contractions started and I told Tom that I thought we might want to get ready to go to the hospital.  Little did I know how quickly labor would progress.

Tom gathered the rest of our necessary supplies, put the car seat in the car and gathered a sleepy Sophie to drop her off at our daycare friend’s house.  She was a saint to have agreed earlier that we could drop Sophie off with her in the event of delivery and was very excited to see us and wished us well.  Sophie was in a sleepy stupor, but wished us luck and blew us kisses as we left.  The contractions were coming every six minutes.

When we arrived at the hospital, I made the mistake of telling Tom to skip the emergency entrance and head to the valet parking that we had used before.  We saw the sign that the valet parking didn’t open until 6, but I didn’t realize that the doors there were also locked until after Tom had driven away.  I walked around the building to the emergency entrance to be greeted by a surprised security guard who escorted me to triage.  I asked them to keep a watch for my husband, as I had no idea how Tom would find me.  Luckily, Tom came wandering back not too long after I had been placed in a triage room.  It seems the birthing suites were all full, and so I would spend the next two hours in the triage room as my labor progressed and the desperate nurse tried to get my information into the almost unusable touch screen computer software, failing to start my antibiotics IV until the last possible minute despite my urging otherwise.

The resident on call checked my cervix, admitted me into the hospital and a room opened up – hooray!  I was wheeled into the labor room, plopped on a birthing ball, flopped my chest onto the bed and felt much relieved except for the multitude of paperwork to sign, which let me tell you, is the last thing you want to be doing when your contractions are coming less than five minutes apart.  Paperwork completed, the nurses started to relax until I told them that I was feeling the urge to push.  They quickly called my doctor and the resident once again checked me and found that I was, indeed, fully dialated.  They took me off the ball and onto the bed onto my back for the exam and, too tired and focused to protest, that’s where I stayed to deliver.  Sadly, that meant that my urge to push completely disappeared.  The nursing staff, doctor and Tom were quite confused as my (apparently) laser-like focus seemed to disappear.  First came the comment “You don’t need to wait for your doctor, go ahead and push” but I was breathing through the contractions instead of pushing.  I got one or two pushes down with some coaching, but then, again, completely lost the sense of pushing after the baby’s head came out to her ears.  I was a bit baffled by this and couldn’t imagine that the baby’s head was actually out.  All I could feel was a slight gurgling of fluids, so I tried to find the will to push again and with the feel of the start of another contraction and some coaching again, I curled up and gave another push.  It was completely odd to me.  Sophie had come out forcefully in one big “emergency” push/pull once she had crowned because of her dropping heart rate.  The gravity from the squat bar had given me some direction, although even then, I wasn’t very coordinated with my contractions.  This baby’s head came out right away, and I thought I was done, but her shoulders were slow to come out and stretched me in the typical “ring of fire” controlled by my reluctant and confused pushing directed by the staff and my newly arrived doctor.  I was so relieved to get her shoulders born that, again, I completely relaxed, thinking I was done, much to the surprise of everyone on the other end.   The baby stayed inside, this time out to her belly, until I was able to regain enough composure to birth her the rest of the way.

I was conscious for Tom’s cutting of the cord this time, although I was a bit too conscious for the sewing up of the slight abrasion/tear and the uterine compression.  I was simply amazed at our serene daughter who was making little gurgling noises and had a small round head instead of Sophie’s huge elongated one.  The only cries of outrage came when they put her on the cold scale and much later when they gave her the eye drops.