*LONG*

A little late in sharing, but it’s been emotionally difficult to come to terms with having to have my first baby via c-section, and honestly it all felt slightly traumatic, so I’m just now starting to feel up to talking about it! So here goes my birth story:

On Wednesday, 8/15, at 38w exactly, I accepted my OB’s second offer to strip my membranes. Which really wasn’t much more painful for me than a normal cervix check, but I’d been afraid it would hurt! I didn’t have any bleeding immediately after like I’d expected to, and was starting to feel skeptical about it, but about 12 hours later, I did have my “bloody show”.

Thursday, 8/16, nothing much really happened, and my hubby and I just spent the day in bed binge watching The Office (he’d been rained out of work for the day).

Then, at 4:30am Friday, 8/17, after only 3 hours of restless sleep, I woke up to my water breaking. However, my contractions were still pretty irregular and painless. Basically, I didn’t feel nearly miserable enough yet to head to L&D, so I called my OB’s office about it, and they told me that since my water had broken, to go ahead and go in. So I had breakfast around 5am, finished packing my hospital bag, had some coffee, putzed around a bit, and my mom came to pick up our dog and take her to the boarder’s, at which point my husband and I finally got in the car and set off for the hospital. We got there around 9:30am.

At Triage, I was 3cm dilated and 70% effaced. Baby was head down. They confirmed that I was having contractions, even if I wasn’t feeling them, and they agreed to admit me since my water had already broken, but they also told me that I’d have to immediately start pitocin. I was also informed I wouldn’t be allowed to eat anymore, and in retrospect I should have taken my mother up on her offer to being me a second breakfast before we left, because I was already starving!

My MIL was already at the hospital waiting to see us shortly after we got there. Earlier in my pregnancy, I’d invited her and my own mom to L&D, not knowing at the time how I’d actually end up feeling about it... Suffice to say next time, it’ll just be me and my husband, because I could not relax or get any sleep during my long ass labor—I felt like I had an audience the whole time and, honestly, it seemed pretty miserable for everyone—though no body could’ve guessed it would take so damn long! Mind you, there were few times where I did kick the moms out to try to get some rest, but even that was futile! I couldn’t get more than 15 minutes of shut eye at a time because I was worried they were upset with me for having kicked them out! Smh!

Anyway, back to the actual story. We got a room in L&D faster than I’d expected. They started me on the pitocin pretty much immediately and then left us alone for a few hours to wait for it to work its “magic”. After a while, I did actually start to feel my contractions, they placed an internal contraction monitor to measure the strength of my contractions, and around 5 or 6pm that night, I was finally in enough pain to ask for the epidural. However, the process of getting the epidural actually proved to be the most painful part of the entire L&D experience for me! It was administered by a student (who was of course overseen by an actual anesthesiologist), but the student had to apply more numbing medicine three separate times because I was feeling way too much when they would try to insert the needle... it was excruciating until they finally gave me enough local anesthetic! My husband said to me after the fact that he was ready to fight em! Lol! But! I was so glad I got that epidural because after that, I barely felt any of my contractions at all! And I can’t imagine how much pain I would’ve been in if I’d gone through the next 24 odd hours without it!

All throughout my labor, they tried to do a minimal amount of cervix checks in an effort to prevent infection, since my water had already broken, but around midnight on Saturday 8/18, they finally did another cervix check. I was only about 4cm dilated, still 70% effaced, and the baby was still quite high up (-3 station). It was upon hearing this news that my exhaustion really started to hit me and I became very emotional and discouraged. They told me the pitocin was working, and I was having strong enough contractions that they couldn’t increase the dose further unless my contractions started to die down.

I cried a lot that night. Every once in a while, I’d hear a newborn cry out, and I’d burst into tears too, wondering when I’d meet my baby. (I can’t help but wonder how many other women came and left L&D in the time span that we were there.)

They checked me again around 4:30am, at which point it had been 24 hours since my water broke. No notable progress. I’d always heard that they don’t like to let you labor past 24 hour with your water broken due to increased risk of infection for mama and baby, so I started wondering what was next, and how long they’d let me go. I was getting concerned, but they told me the baby was doing okay, so we kept going. Every once in a while, they’d increase the pitocin a little bit.

It wasn’t until about 2pm Saturday when a doctor showed up who finally took charge of the situation—which was exactly what I needed. (Mind you, we went through 3 doctors in the time we were in L&D...) The doctor did another cervix check. 4.5cm, 80% dilated, -2 station. She insisted I would deliver on her shift. She said she would give me till 5pm to get to 7cm, and that if I didn’t, we’d have to go ahead with a c-section.

The thought of having my first baby via c-section was a hard pill to swallow. I’d had my membranes stripped in hopes of avoiding pitocin, and had the pitocin in hopes of avoiding a c-section. The c-section was the biggest thing I really knew I did not want when it came to L&D. But I also knew dilation was happening at such a slow pace that we were running out of time, and the longer I labored with my water broken, the greater the risk to me and my baby, and her heart rate was borderline high those last few hours... So I began to emotionally prepare myself for that (seemingly inevitable) possibility.

4:30pm Saturday came and at my last cervix check, I was 5cm dilated, -1 station, and still 80% effaced. Certainly not the 7cm dilated that the doctor wanted to see. I’d be having my baby by c-section. “Arrest of dilation,” was the official reason for it if I remember correctly. And while I was horribly disappointed this reality, I was also very relieved to finally have the end in sight! They started prepping me for surgery. The moms left for the waiting room and my husband scrubbed up. They wheeled me back to the OR a tiny bit after 5pm.

Now, forgive me, but I’d always assumed having a c-section was “taking the easy way out”! Boy, was I naive (and also wrong!) The c-section was absolutely miserable in its own way and right. While I didn’t have any actual pain during the surgery, the pressure was so uncomfortable that I vomited practically the entire time and couldn’t hold my baby immediately the way I’d planned. I also had a panic attack on the OR table. I was crying and I felt like I couldn’t breathe and that I’d pass out any second (my husband said I was pretty in and out of it). I was shaking uncontrollably and felt colder than I’ve ever felt in my life. My doctor, who’d originally intended to stitch me up, gave me staples instead because it was faster and I was “so miserable”. She also mentioned during the surgery that the baby had flipped slightly transverse at some point, which she thinks is the reason I wasn’t dilating despite what should have been effective contractions. Our poor baby’s head was all swollen on one side when she was born due to all the pressure from the contractions!

The surgery seemed to take forever. I was still shaking when I finally got to the recovery room, but my husband said that once they put the baby in my arms that I immediately stopped, like magic!

Isla Fae was born at 5:42pm, Saturday, August 18th, 2018. She weighed 7 lbs 12 oz, and was 19 inches long! She’s a little bundle of love!

Although my labor was hellishly long, my delivery didn’t go how I’d hoped, she had an infection scare shortly after she was born, and my own recovery has been a bitch, at the end of the day, she’s here, she’s healthy, and she was worth all of it! I am so in awe right now—of pregnancy, of life, of her! I can’t believe I made her! She’s my whole world 🌎 and she has my whole heart! ❤️