Birth Story: Angelica Lorelei

June 20, 2015 16:12

I'm a 40 year old first time Mom and my midwife is taking extra care prenatally. I'm scheduled for an ultrasound "BPP" test, basically just a technical term to check that my pregnancy is progressing appropriately. It's my appointment time so I head off to meet my husband at the clinic and get the test. My midwife asks me to walk the test across the hall to the clinic she works out of. The clinic is closed so per our agreement I page her and we review the results together. She gives us two choices: 1. We can get the same test the next day or, 2: we can go to the hospital and have me hooked up to the monitor for 20 mins. We decide since we've had similar results in the past to head off to the hospital to see what's up. This is all because the baby won't give full body movements as required by the test.

We head off to Etobicoke General Hospital in Toronto and arrange to be hooked onto the monitor for about 20 minutes or so to see how baby is doing from a different perspective. My midwife consults with the OB on call just to make sure we haven't missed anything. The OB is great and not all about interventions. She said that if we wanted to, there was no reason why we couldn't have the baby this weekend! Her weight was good, her brain was fully functioning and active and if we wanted to it would be perfectly fine to induce this weekend instead of next! So everyone left is for a few minutes while my husband and I deliberated. I should explain, my husband is military and is due to be posted away for at least 3 months in about 3 weeks.

So this is how we got here... It's 8:30 the next morning and I'm definitely having contractions now. My sweet husband is on his feet and worried every time they get stronger. I keep assuring him that things are progressing normally, but he just doesn't like seeing me like this. I'll admit it, in very short time I was hooked up to an epidural and I would have never made it without it. It was my first experience and I have to admit being able to feel pretty much everything but the pain is a pretty groovy effect. Labour progressed further with the help of Pitocin and eventually we got to the pushing phase. My midwife kept telling me to have a nap but I've never found it easy to sleep in a hospital so I compromised and rested and relaxed rather than sleep.

So now we are pushing and as I've always been hyper aware of my body I was kind of a natural and was encouraged by the feedback my midwife was giving me. Now its normal for the baby's heart rate to drop during a contraction but it should recover very quickly. In Angelicas case it wasn't and as I was pushing for all I was worth mine was beginning to elevate. So about 30 minutes in with alarms going off for Angelica and her dropping heart rate and me for my elevated heart rate I decided that contraction or not I'm pushing through, this baby needs to come... NOW. I felt the head emerge, followed by a shoulder and then she popped out slick as a little seal, it happened so fast that she surprised the midwife! As a result, I'm badly torn and required numerous stitches. I'm looking forward to a somewhat extended recovery but she was worth every moment. In fact I'm already thinking of doing it all over again.