This is my epic birth story.
I say epic because the complications that happened just happened to be rare, like 2% rare, and I had to face my greatest birthing fear. A Cesarean birth. I suppose this is what I get for having one very awesome pregnancy, what's life with out a trial to make you stronger.
It all started Tuesday morning. I was up an about (actually I hadn't even gone to bed yet) deciding that now would probably be a good time to get to sleep. To the wash room I waddled my very preggy self to brush my teeth at 4:00 am. As I was looking at myself with toothbrush stuffed into my mouth brushing away, something became not so right. A gush of wetness between my legs and a mighty one at that I rushed my bottom on to the toilet and waited for it to stop. There was no doubt about it, my water had just broken.
I wasn't quiet sure what to do at that moment as I waited for a second phase of gushing to pass as I tossed my soiled clothing into the bathtub. ' Do I go to the hospital now? Should I just wait? I didn't get my birth plan written... I should probably contact my Doula, wake up Mike wait this is really happening. Stay clam, darn Mindy for posting on my Facebook about today being the day he came.' Those where among many of my thoughts. So after deciding I probably shouldn't just stay seated on the toilet looking like a deer caught in headlights, with legs tight together I shuffled over and woke Mike and contacted my Doula.
We chose to head to the Hospital. We where admitted and they checked me out. Sure enough they confirmed what I already knew, my water broke. My contractions where all over the place, and honestly I had the naive moment of "Oh, if they don't get much worse then this I can totally do this. Easy as pie." I'm a silly person, what can I say. After being in triage for 3 hours, most of it was spent waiting since 3 other women came in at the exact same time and the resident on hand was dealing with some 80 year old man that was dying, they let Mike and I go home at 8:00 am.
Krystal (my Doula) showed up and while Mike tried to go back to bed, we chatted and watched Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog. (insert geek points here) 11:00 am was when things really started to not be so relaxed.
Remember how in my pregnancy blogs I commented on taking the pain out of childbirth by not even using the word pain? And that Birthing embraces is what my prenatal course wanted me to use and I decided on birthing pressures. Well, Embraces is defiantly not the word I would use. It's not a big hug and if some one is giving you a hug like that then some one doesn't know their own strength. The word pressure was defiantly closer and I was starting to have pressure on my lower back. Much like when your back is out of place. Only in spasm format. I started on my hands and knee's rocking during a contraction. I started my breathing focusing internally. This is where my brain loses track of the time line, but either way it was back to the hospital with us. I think this was at like 1 pm.
We waited in the triage while a labor room freed up, and I really didn't enjoy having some external monitors strapped to my belly. So once they got the information they needed they where awesome enough to let me use the shower in the triage to help manage my contractions which had increased with intensity. The fun part was that the water would cool and warm randomly. It made things interesting, nothing like a hospital shower to make you appreciate the wonders of apartment showers. Once I got into that shower that's where I stayed until the room was ready. The water was wonderful on my back, with the knees and hands I got a pretty awesome system set up. I was going to do this.
Now, back labor that should have been a clue to me right then that not everything was going to go smoothly. I thought Bubbles was facing the right way, back to the world, head in my pelvic area. Well, I guess he wanted to see on the way out so he turned so his back was against mine. So Occipito-posterior position for Bubbles, lots of discomfort for me and we where in it for the long haul if he didn't spin around. Looked up the stats for this one, happens in about 10% of labors. Most of those manage to spin around before birth, those that don't fall into the 2%.
We headed to the labor room once it was ready. It was nice to be in a big room, even better it had a shower. I even started using the water droplets as a focal point to keep my rhythmic rocks, Mike stayed in bathroom with me being my cheer team I stayed there as long as I could before they started doing some checks, once I got in the bed though I ended up not leaving it. I got on my knees again and let me tell you it was far harder to use a plain white wall as focal point, there is not much to focus on.
Then things got annoying. I'm pretty sure it was close the 3 or 4 pm and I still hadn't really progressed a bunch. Bubbles was still facing the wrong way and the back labor was the joys that it was since I've read it's the most painful way to labor, I also had not dilated an awful lot. Turns out at the foothills IFM (Internal Fetal Monitoring) is standard procedure after a certain point/time. I didn't want that, it really ment that hey, your not going to move around. It also didn't help that when they where telling me this I was in a contraction and after the 7ish hours of back labor I finally caved and tried the gas which.. made me loopy. I couldn't think right, but with a fair bit of annoyance I let them stick the monitor on Bubbles head. And after an hour I gave up on the gas, I didn't like being loopy and it didn't help.
Now that they could tell what was going on, Bubbles heart rate was kind of all over the place. This is when they first started talking about doing a C section on me. As I tried to do a little bit of rocking all I could think was, not a fat chance. It worried me a little but I had to keep my focus on breathing so that I could get through the contractions. So they had me lay on my side, apparently only one side kept the heart rate pretty stable. Picky picky baby. At this point too, Mike gave me a priesthood blessing to help. I'm so thankful for the priesthood because after that, things really got going again.
Bubbles still hadn't turned but my body was on the move again, going about a cm per hour. This scrapped the C section they where thinking about ( YAY!), but then something else nasty happened (BOO!). My body started trying to push at what I think was 7 cm. Either way, his head was being forced into my cervix which wasn't giving way for his head to come down more. This was not pleasant, nor helpful by any means. The result, my cervix was swollen and I could not get past 9 cm.
My body continued to want to push, and I had to stop it if I wanted any chance at all of my cervix to become unswollen. They started me on fentanyl, which seemed to really help take the edge off and helped me to stop pushing. Each time my body wanted to go into a pushing phase it stole my breath a way. I would just stop then start back up again once everyone snapped me out of it. Mike and I connected during this phase, well at least it felt like it on my end. The rhythmic slooow we breathed together helped to comfort me so much. I'm so thankful he's my eternal companion. I'm so thankful for my doula as well. She was able to give Mike a break and it was so wonderful to not ever have to be alone during all of this. As this went on, I remained at 9 cm for 4 hours. Eventually I got a new dose of fentanyl every 10 minutes and I had to shout to stop my self from pushing. The result got me a frog voice after everything was done.
They had talked to me about turning Bubbles, but that wasn't going to happen if my cervix didn't get out of the way. I agreed to the epidural they wanted me to have, they gave me an hour for my cervix to recover. Once I had the epidural my contractions let up completely, so even if I could have a vaginal birth my body no longer had the push power behind it to get Bubbles out. Drugs, they mess things up. So it was off to the operating room with me to have a C section.
From that moment on I was a trembling wreck. I cried. This was my worse case story, next to a still birth, for a labor experience. I prayed for the comfort and the strength to face my fear. I was worried I would tremble right off the operating table since it was so narrow. I couldn't help but realize that I was on a cross my arms spread as I was mentally battling my fear. Mike came in and I tried even harder to stop myself from shaking. All of my fears melted away the moment Bubbles let out his first cries at 1:30 am July 13th. 21 hours of labor.
I didn't get my gooey baby on my chest, I wasn't able to let the umbilical cord stop beating, I didn't get to hold him right away and I didn't get a lot of the things I wanted out of this birth. When little baby Genesis finally found his way to my chest it was the most amazing feeling. It washed over me like the warm bask of the sun as the tears of joy fell down my cheeks. I waited a long time for this moment. It was like a healing moment and I would do it all over again.
