Here's the is the extended version of the story. It's taken me forever to type it up. I know some of you non-mommies may not like this level of detail so feel free to just skip to the next post below and admire my beautiful child.
So. There's a good possibility that you already know how impatient I was getting to meet this little child of ours. I had gone eleven days past my due date - that's like fourteen years in non-pregnant, rational human time. My midwives scheduled me for an induction on Tuesday, but when I called in to labor and delivery, they were swamped and I was bumped for the night. I called back in on Wednesday morning and they said to come back in between 1:00 and 2:00 pm, so we packed up, kissed Fiona, and left her with Grandpa (they had big plans for popcorn and a movie).
When we arrived at labor and delivery, they took us right to a room and got me gowned and hooked up to all kinds of monitors and a hep lock. It was a little intimidating to think that there wasn't really much chance we were going home without a baby at this point. The midwife on duty that day, Mary, explained that they normally start cervidil (to ready the cervix for dilation) in the late evening as it should stay in for twelve hours before starting pitocin (to start contractions). Twelve hours of cervidil would put us at a 2:00 am start time for pitocin, which would mean I'd be laboring in the middle of the night without a lot of rest. We decided to just go ahead and start the cervidli right away and leave it in longer than normal, then start the pitocin when we woke up in the morning. Good plan, good plan.
An hour later, my water broke and when I stood up to get cleaned up, out came the cervidil. Mary reinserted it and we settled in to wait. Andre and I settled in and watched a couple episodes of Freaks and Geeks. We ate dinner and watched some dumb TV shows and I started to have some painful contractions here and there. By about 7:00, the cervidil had come back out again. Mary let us know that the cervidil was kind of pointless if it was just going to get washed out repeatedly so we decided to just go ahead and start the pitocin at that point. The flurry and scurry started and all kinds of IV bags were hung and pitocin put into the IV pump. I was a little freaked out because of all the stories I'd heard about pitocin, but tried to just mellow out a little and go with it. The pitocin was started at about 7:45 pm along with some antibiotics. Within an hour, I was in some serious pain and had gone from contractions every 10 minutes or so to contractions every 2 or 3 minutes. I was pretty mean to Andre at this stage of the process and kept yelling, "Hand!" if he had gotten distracted between contractions and wasn't ready to hold my hand. I'm pretty sure I crushed several small bones in his hands, but he was very good and didn't complain at all. At that point, I asked Mary to check me to see how dilated I was and said that if I was at a good point, I'd like to have some pain medication (I don't even know what I meant by that - I think I pretty much meant whatever I was dilated I wanted the meds and now!). Mary said I was at five centimeters and called the anesthesiologist to start an epidural.
By the time we got all set up and ready for the epidural, I was contracting every minute or two and it was extremely hard to sit still while my new best friend the anesthesiologist did his thing. It seemed like it took hours for him to get it done, but I'm sure it was only about 15 minutes. Unfortunately, at first it was only working on one side, so one side of me felt totally numb and the other side felt like the contractions had just concentrated on one point. Andre kept trying to comfort me by stroking my numb leg which felt totally bizarre and I kept yelling at him, "Don't touch the leg!" I think he was trying to stay away from my hands and the grip of death. My new best friend adjusted the epidural and gave me a whole bunch of lidocain and after a few more contractions I felt SO much better. I wasn't feeling the contractions at all except for one spot just below my diaphragm where I could feel a little pressure. It was quite amazing to look down at the monitor and see the contraction spikes and think to myself, "Huh! There's another one. I think I'll take a little nap."
Right after the epidural was put in, but before it had actually started working, Mary checked me and I was at 9.5 centimeters. My new best friend laughed because he didn't think all of his epidural work was going to go to much use. I probably could have started pushing as soon as he was done with the epidural. However, I'm Group B Strep positive, which means that there was a slight chance that I could pass GBS to the baby, hence the antibiotic drip. If the antibiotics haven't had at least 4 hours to work, the hospital wants the baby to stay at least 48 hours after birth to make sure she hasn't been infected. I HATE staying in the hospital (birthing in the hospital is great, staying there afterward not so much). Once the epidural kicked in, and I wasn't feeling the contractions or the urge to push, we decided that I would try to hold off on pushing until the four hour mark had passed at about 11:45 pm. I was able to close my eyes and rest a bit and it felt so good to know that it wasn't going to be much longer.
The four hour mark finally rolled around and Mary had me try a practice push. Pushing with an epidural was a lot different than pushing with no meds. I couldn't position myself very well - heck, I couldn't even tell when I was actually lifting my butt off the bed let alone sit up and use a squat bar. I wasn't too nervous about it though - been there done that, I guess. Two hours of pushing with Fiona gave me plenty of practice. On my practice push, Mary said, "OK, this isn't going to take long at all, her head is right there. So they quickly unwrapped all the various instruments, brought over a mirror, and had me go for it. It was really neat to be able to watch the birth in the mirror - with Fiona I was way too inside my own little zone of pain management to even open my eyes. Andre and I actually talked between pushes instead of me yelling at everyone to shut up like with Fiona. Within just a few pushes I saw Amelia's head appear and within twenty minutes of pushing, her head was out. Mary suctioned her because she had spilled meconium in utero (pooped) and then I was able to push her totally out. The pediatricians were standing by and tried to whisk her away to get checked because of the meconium, but Mary shooed them away and said that the suctioning had been enough. She placed Amelia on my chest immediately and, wow, there was our daughter. Twelve days past her due date, 12:19 am on 06/09/05, 9 lbs 1/2 oz, 19.5 inches long.
Andre got to cut the cord and then the nurses took the baby to get a little extra oxygen and to get weighed, measured, and cleaned up. Mary showed me the placenta and how old it had started to look - it had calcifications all over it. Interestingly though, Amelia was still covered with vernix, that's unusual in a baby that far past her due date.
Everything was so much easier and shorter this time around than with Fiona. I certainly didn't enjoy the 2 hour period of going from 2 cm to 9.5 cm, but it certainly didn't tire me out as much as Fiona's 16 hour labor. I'm much less sore this time around too, two hours of pushing is apparently a lot harder on the body than 20 minutes. And now that I know all about this epidural thing, I'm ready to push out 7 or 8 more kids. Guess we're going to have to buy a bigger house.
