Before too much time passes (and my memory starts to fade or change), I wanted to share my labor/delivery story. It isn’t the experience I necessarily would have chosen for myself, but at least the outcome was good!

Last Friday at least began in a fairly pleasant fashion. As previously discussed, we had scheduled an induction – so Q and I came to the hospital a little after 8 AM. (The picture below was taken just before we left the house.) Most of the morning was spent getting things in order – signing paperwork, getting blood work done, talking with various doctors and nurses, etc. – and Q and I spent the time in between chatting, blogging and watching golf. (I will never again watch the US Open without thinking of giving birth!) I was in fairly good spirits – a little nervous, but also excited – and I was feeling ready to get started. (And apparently, so was my body. I had been having fairly regular contractions all morning, and an exam showed that I was already 4 cm dilated. Q and I are convinced that the 19th would have been the delivery day even if I hadn’t been induced.)

Once things were finally set, around 2 PM, my nurse started the first, very low dose of Pitocin to further things along. The first hour was okay – some of the contractions were a bit uncomfortable, but nothing I couldn’t handle – but things started to shift around 3 PM. I became increasingly uncomfortable and was itching to get the epidural I so craved, but one of the nurses commented that I wasn’t yet in active labor. She was implying that it might be too early to ask for the epidural, so I decided to wait. Which proved to be a very bad call.

It was around 3:30, I think, that we actually paged the anesthesiologist – and from there things happened very quickly. I started having major contractions and, just as the doctor was finishing the epidural-placement process, my water broke and I could feel the baby, well, slide. From that moment on, it was like a movie: oodles of doctors and nurses rushed in the room to take their places, and the midwife in charge told me, “Michelle, the baby is coming NOW. We need you to push.” The whole thing was so surreal, and I kept thinking that I couldn’t believe this was really happening. Of course, I expected to deliver a baby that day – but not like this! One issue was that I had always planned for an epidural but now realized that it might not kick in in time. (I had never even entertained the thought of having a baby without pain management, and here I was being told that I would have to do this naturally.) And the other thing was that it all just happened so fast – it felt like one moment I was lying there, fairly comfortable and relaxed, and the next I was in severe pain and being told the baby’s arrival was imminent. The timing and intensity of things took me off-guard for sure.

We started the pushing process (which also went very quick) and the epidural actually did kick in – but only for the last 10 minutes. Once I was a bit more comfortable and could actually think straight, I apologized to Q and the team of doctors and nurses around me for freaking out – and I commented, “I don’t know how women do this without an epidural.” The midwife in charge looked at me and said, “Um, Michelle, you just did.”

Avery made her debut at 5:12 PM, just three hours after the induction began and only two hours after the first set of painful contractions. My initial focus was on her arrival, of course, but when I had a chance later to digest what had happened during labor, I definitely felt a sense of sadness/unhappiness. I had figured that because this was a scheduled labor, things would be quite smooth (or, at least, similar to last time) – but the experience was actually pretty scary. I was emotionally unprepared, I guess, for both the pain and intensity of a very fast, “natural” childbirth. And I felt a bit cheated out of the pleasant (or relatively pleasant) delivery I was planning/hoping for – especially considering this is likely our last child and my last labor experience.

One week later, now that some time has passed, I have a bit of a different perspective on the event. I’m still not happy that it happened the way it did – but the important thing is that I got through it and brought home a healthy baby. Plus, it makes a pretty good story!

-M

This entry was posted on Friday, June 26th, 2009 at 6:46 pm and is filed under 35.The Poppy Years. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.