Losing Has Never Been So Much Fun!

Well, I was racing with the baby to see if I could get her quilt done before she made her big arrival into the world.

I lost.

I woke up Sunday morning around five with very intense back pain.  I laid in bed reading my kindle and realized my back pain wasn't constant.  It would come and go.  I convinced myself that since there wasn't a pattern to my pain (the coming and going would be five minutes apart, then nine, then three, then five) it could not possibly be labor.

I was in denial just a little bit.

At seven I broke down and called The Greatest (who was just getting off work from a 13 hour night shift) and told him I thought I was in labor.

He raced home to find me drifting around the house.  I needed to pack a hospital bag for me.  I needed to pack a hospital bag for the baby.  I needed to choose what the baby was going to wear home from the hospital.  I needed to get dressed but maybe I needed a shower.  I NEEDED to make the bed (don't ask me to explain that one, I can't).  But I couldn't focus on one task long enough to complete it.  The bed was half made.  The bags were half packed.  I was still in my bathrobe trying to find something clean to wear.

The Greatest is such a good husband.  Between contractions he gently guided me through my crazy, making sure the bags were packed,  outfits chosen, I was dressed, and even the bed got made.

Off to the hospital we went.  (37 weeks, 2 days pregnant, in labor ready to go to the hospital)

Hospitals are, well, they're hospitals.  So check in took entirely too long.  Waiting to move from intake to labor and delivery took entirely too long.  Getting my epidural took ENTIRELY too long.  Did they not realize I was in labor?

Contractions people!  I was having contractions!

Of course things didn't really get fun until after I got my epidural.

I'm not new to this baby delivering gig.  I've had four babies.  With each child I got my epidural and then my labor stopped progressing.  They would give me pitocin, and in an hour I'd have a baby.  It is a system that works.  It is a calm, easy pain free delivery.  I'm all about supporting people who want to have a natural child birth, or a water birth or a home birth.  If that is the birthing experience you need then by all means you should go for it.  I just happen to want a hospital birth with an epidural.

We talked about this with the nurse, and the on call OB and it was decided to just go ahead and give me pitocin in tandem with my epidural, no need to wait to make sure the epidural actually slowed down my labor.  After all, there was no reason to think my body would react any differently than it had in the past.  The ob suggested I even get pitocin while waiting for the epidural.  The nurse and I decided that was going just a bit too far.  Pitocin can make contractions even harder and more painful that they are (which is pretty darn painful).  No need to do that until I was numb and pain free.

Finally in went the epidural.  I had a  blissful twenty minutes of pain free labor.  Then I started feeling that pesky back pain.  And then there was some lower abdominal cramping.  And then OH MY GOODNESS WHAT IS GOING ON IT HURTS SO BAD!

My epidural failed.  But the pitocin didn't.  My contractions were coming hard, one on top of the next.  I was at a ten and needed to push.

What happened next happened fast, and it was not my finest hour.  I remember begging them to help me, to take the pain away.  I remember someone telling me to breath and wanting to punch them.  I was breathing.  It wasn't helping.  I think they grabbed a random OB out of the hallway to catch the baby.  I don't even know where The Greatest was during all this.  He was there, but I don't remember seeing him.  I know when the baby crowned I lost my mind and there was screaming involved.  So much screaming.  Screaming at the top of my lungs.

I was that woman in the delivery ward.

Like I said, not my finest hour.

Had this happened with my first child I would not have had any other children.

But my sweet baby is here safe and sound.  That is all that matters.

Is she not the cutest thing you've ever seen having her hearing tested?

We are all head over heels in love with her.

As we should be.

Welcome to the world my little baby!