To any interested reader in this story, I am going to rewind a bit to what I wrote in the previous post. At week 38, I was already dilated to 3 cm but without active contractions. By the next week's appointment, Dawn, my midwife, found that I was 5-6 cm dilated and again without active contractions. She successfully encouraged my bag of waters to break in the office. We were ordered to head home and take care of a few things, as she would be seeing us again in a few short hours.
Once we ate, showered, packed, and notified the important family and friends of the impending birth of our child, Russ and I decided to try and rest in bed prior to going to the hospital. As I was starting to feel the contractions faintly, I asked him to start timing them. He quickly noted that they were about 5 minutes apart. We started moving once again, but this time out the door. I thought I noticed my husband becoming slightly tearful before we left the apartment, but maybe I was imaging that?
We registered in the lobby then made our way with belongings in tow to the OB floor. As we reached the nurse's station, I was told that I needed to be checked in triage first. Fortunately, Dawn strolled right in and told the nurses that I could skip triage and be admitted as a regular patient. She could certainly validate that my water had broken! I felt as though I were still leaking a lot! She made sure that we had the room at the very end of the hall, which was not only the largest on the floor, but the quietest being on the end. I was grateful for that small gesture of kindness.
Lenore, our doula, had soon arrived and she had thankfully made a sweet treat for the nurses that evening. I was glad she was thoughtful enough to remember them. I was checked in by the nurse just like every other patient. When asked to rate my pain level on that infamous 0-10 scale, I told her that it was currently zero and with contractions it was at a three. The baby's heartbeat was checked, which was within normal limits. Dawn checked my cervix and found that I was 7 cm dilated. I told her that I felt like I just needed to have a bowel movement.
Lenore suggested that I rock on the birthing ball, squat, take walks, and I happily did. Anything to get this baby to join us out here! At one point, my husband, doula, midwife, and I were all just chatting about life. Someone ironically brought up the fact that everyone was sitting, except the laboring mother. With my high pain tolerance, there were jokes about how I should become a surrogate mother.
Once my cervix was dilated at 9-10 cm, Dawn encouraged me to start pushing. The birth scale for the baby and a table loaded with covered sterile instruments was brought in the room. There were three laboring mothers on the floor that evening. Because I was so far along and labor had been so easy, I was the one expected to deliver the baby first. I later found out that I was the last.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, I had been pushing for nearly 3 hours. On April 10th, I began pushing half an hour before midnight and well beyond that. I tried pushing in the hands and knees position to start. That didn't work so well. I tried pushing on my left side, but in doing that caused pain in my right hip and leg. The bed was then positioned in a chair, which was the winning position for the eventual delivery. Towards the end of my lengthy pushing phase, Dawn asked me to reach down and touch my baby's head. So I did, and felt a head full of hair. I touched my daughter's little head! Amazing. I couldn't believe that the moment to meet our little one was almost here.
On Wednesday, April 11, 2012 at 2:06 in the morning, Maria Joy was born weighing 8 pounds 1 ounce and measuring 20 inches long. With a strong cry, she was raised up for me and Russ to see and placed immediately on my chest. As I didn't have my glasses on and her umbilical cord was blocking her pelvic area, I asked, "Is it a girl?" With glasses on this time, I clearly saw that she was indeed a girl. Our dark-haired, dark-eyed little beauty.
For those of you still engaged in this uneventful labor story, perhaps I can steal your attention regarding the placenta? After Maria was born, Pitocin was started because I did lose a decent amount of blood and there was difficulty in the delivery of the placenta. The Pitocin did its job in prodding the contractions to increase in intensity. Ironically, what I assumed to be the easiest part, delivering the placenta was the most painful portion of my labor and delivery. I now understand why women request an epidural. We had toyed with the idea of saving the placenta and taking it in hopes of preventing post-partum depression. When Lenore brought up the subject again, Dawn seemed more than willing to easily hand the placenta over. As it was not a priority this time around, we passed on the chance.
With our little girl delivered in our arms, so began the journey of parenthood.
