Labor & Delivery with C

My first pregnancy. What an adventure. Everything was new and a little scary.

Andy and I were so excited to finally be pregnant. We had not been using any birth control, but our one year wedding anniversary had come and gone with no pregnancy. Shortly before we got pregnant, Andy shared his concern that something might be wrong with him. I remember him asking me, "Do I need to go get checked out? I mean, you've gone to the doctor. Everything seems okay with you, but is there something wrong with me?" I told him he was being silly. God was just blessing us with special time together, alone. Kids would come in His time. Little did I know, His time was just around the corner. A month later we were pregnant!

Thankfully my pregnancy was uneventful. No morning sickness, no complications. It was hard to believe I was really pregnant. It didn't really hit me until my first ultrasound. As I watched this little creature turn back and forth on the screen, I realized those little fuzzy bubbles I had been feeling were my baby!

Things progressed well until my due date, when we still had no baby. We waited and waited, and finally made plans to induce. The night before the scheduled induction, we went out to eat at my favorite restaurant - El Fenix. During dinner I began to feel some contractions, but they felt different from the others I had been feeling for a couple weeks. I stayed up all night with contractions. They weren't terribly painful, and we didn't think they were regular enough to go to the hospital. We decided to wait and go in for our scheduled time at 7:30 AM.

At the hospital the next morning, we got settled into our room, and my midwife checked me before we started the "drip" (pitocin). I was already 7 cm! We wouldn't need to induce! By 8:30 AM, I was 8 cm! But then my body stopped. I stayed at 8 cm, with not much pain until 1 PM. (Quick explanation: No part of labor is easy. There is pain in progressing from 3 to 4 cm. But, nothing compares to the "transition phase" of labor when the body moves from 8 to 10 cm. This phase is considered the most painful.) When the pain came, oh boy! It was the most intense pain I had ever experienced. I stayed in this pain, with little to no progress until 6 PM. (Research shows that for most women, the transition phase of labor lasts anywhere from 15 minutes to 1 hour - NOT 5 hours!) I was beyond exhausted, and feeling somewhat discouraged. I was SO ready for it all to be over.

So when my midwife asked if I felt like pushing, I said, "Yes! I would love for this baby to be out of me!" At the time I didn't understand the urge to push. My body wasn't ready to push, but seeing my exhaustion, my midwife thought we'd give it a try. After pushing through a couple contractions, she said an episiotomy might speed things up. She asked what I thought. I looked at Andy, and with tears in my eyes said, "Cut away." This was SO not going according to my plans.

But it did speed things up. At 6:29 PM, we had our first baby! C weighed 8 lb 4 oz. Our precious little girl that everyone said would be a boy because of the way I carried her, was finally here.

As C was coming out, she had a bowel movement. Alarms went off, and a rush of nurses filled the room. She was taken to the other side of the room and a flood of hands wiped her down. (Could it be the El Fenix? Sorry.) Then I was told that C was flaring her nostrils, which can be a sign of lack of oxygen. She was taken to the neo-natal unit for observation. I was so exhausted and hungry, it didn't faze me. I remember telling the nurse, "Oh that's fine. Yes, please take her. Do what you need to do. Thank you. Can I get something to eat?"

I ate and rested while Andy stayed with C. She came back to the room about an hour later, and I was finally able to hold my first baby. Andy and I held her and cried out eyes out. A new baby is somewhat overwhelming. We were super excited and super terrified.

Once things calmed down and we were alone in our room, I looked at Andy in my overly hormonal state and said, "Well, that wasn't too bad, was it?" Andy replied, "What?! Today was the worst day of my life!" He was right. It had been a very long, hard, painful day.