Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Birth Story (Warning: Excessively Long)
Ok, here goes. I wrote this out for a friend who wanted EVERY detail, so this is insanely long. Skim as you wish. And another warning: My birth story is not charming or sweet. It's
sweaty, dirty, bloody and tear-filled, but it of course has a very happy
ending.
Most of you know I posted a "Does this sound like labor" post on
the day I went into labor. You guys were right, of course. Definitely
was labor. 
The cramping started at 7am when I was eating
breakfast. I told Craig the cramping pain was definitely something new,
but I went to work anyway. By noon, I was having "cramps" about 15 -
20 minutes apart, but they were strong enough to make me think I should
probably go home. Craig picked me up from work around noon, and we came
home and lazed around. I napped and snacked and napped some more, but
realized I was definitely having contractions and was in it for the long
haul.
By 5:30 pm, the contractions were really starting to hurt. They were about 10 minutes apart. By 8:30, I had to get on hands and knees on the floor or kneel over an ottoman to handle them. Despite this, Craig picked up some Chinese food for us and I ate some, having to pause in the middle to breathe through a contraction. We tried to go to bed around 10:30 but every 6 - 8 minutes or so I'd have a contraction that brought me to my knees or made me clutch my pillow in agony. Craig started timing them with an app on his iPhone, and I didn't even have to tell him when one started: he knew by my breathing and moaning. By midnight, I was ready to die. I called my midwife and she told me to wait til my contractions were about 4 minutes apart before I came to the hospital. Mine were still averaging 6, but I was in serious pain. I sucked it up for 2 more hours, then called her again. She told me to draw a hot bath and try relaxing in that. I did as told, and it helped a little bit, but as soon as I got out of the tub, I was knocked over with pain again. I only held out about another hour, when I had Craig call her AGAIN because I couldn't talk through the contractions. They still were no more than 5 minutes apart, but she told me to go ahead and come in to the hospital.
We met her in the parking lot at 5am and she wheelchaired me on into the L&D suite. I was 5 cm dilated and all she had to do was gently break some scar tissue (from a LEEP I'd had in the past) and I was instantly 7cm. She helped me into the jacuzzi and I labored in that for a while. It was pretty glorious. The warm water and bubble jets made the contractions SO much easier to deal with. I thought the rest of labor would be a breeze at that rate.
After about two hours of jacuzzi time, she checked me again and I was only an 8, so we agreed she could break my water (even though in my original birth plan I said I wanted it to break on its own.) She broke it and I felt disgusted by how much warm water gushed out with the following three contractions! I thought I'd be fine after that, but HOLY SH!T, once my water was broken, the contractions bowled me over like nothing else. They were 100 times worse than the ones I'd had just 10 minutes earlier. I had to moan loudly through each one of them and hardly got any reprieve as they were less than a minute apart at that point. I thought I was being so loud that people outside the room could hear me, but Craig said he thought I was handling it pretty well. In my head I was screaming.
At 9 cm
I started begging my midwife for something for the pain and she kept
telling me it was too late and Craig reminded me that a natural birth
was what I wanted. At that point though I didn't care. I remember
thinking "I don't care if I have a C-section, I just need the pain to
stop now." I started doubting myself and was getting a little delirious.
My midwife checked me again and I was at 10 cm, so she asked me to start
pushing. When you go drug-free, you typically feel the urge to push on
your own, but I never felt that for some reason. She gave me the go
ahead to just start pushing through each contraction. Pushing made the
contractions hurt less, but pushing itself was hard and I didn't
understand how to do it at first, until she told me to pretend I was
taking a huge poo. She had me push all over the room in every
position, and I was naked except for a sports bra. Really glamorous. I
squatted on the floor (and pooped twice in the process), squatted on the
edge of the bed, sat on the toilet (and pooped again), and pushed on my
hands and knees (and peed everywhere.)
The worst pain was when my midwife was wrist deep in my bits, pushing my cervix up over the baby's head while I was squatting on the bed in the middle of a contraction. There is nothing I can even compare that pain to. It was unimaginable. I think I yelled at her to stop multiple times. (I love my midwife, don't get me wrong. I was just getting angry and exhausted.)
I ended up doing the last 20 minutes of pushing on
my back in the typical pushing position. When Kyler started crowning, I
started yelling and losing control. The nurse and my midwife kept
telling me to push and I yelled "NOO! I can't!" The nurse basically
told me to get a grip and calm down. I realized there was nothing I
could do at that point, I had to suck it up and push through the searing
pain of a baby's head tearing through my poor vag. (I ended up with
a 2nd degree tear, but my midwife is great at sutures, thank God.)
My midwife asked if I wanted to reach down and touch his head (which was
part of my birth plan), but I promptly said no. She asked if I wanted a
mirror and again I refused. I could only focus on one thing and that
was getting that baby out! I took one huge breath, bared down, and felt
his head exiting my body. I glanced down just once and saw the rest of
his 7lb 15 oz body slither out quickly.
Craig announced that it was a boy and little Kyler was laid on my chest. I was in a state of shock and all I could do was stare at him and say "Ohhhh! Ohhhh!" At that point they realized he wasn't pinking up enough and had swallowed a lot of fluid, so they had to take him away while my midwife waited to deliver my placenta. It took forever to come out so I had to be given Pitocin to get it to detach. I lost a lot of blood and my midwife was wrist deep in my vag, scraping tissue from my uterus. Craig sat through all this like a champ!
During all this, I kept asking if Kyler was okay and they assured me he'd be fine, but he had swallowed a ton of fluid. He was given back to me briefly but they ended up taking him away again to evaluate him in the nursery. He ended up in the NICU for 10 days to receive IV antibiotics because of a potential infection they never clearly could diagnose. I think the doctors were all worried he had contracted Group B Strep from me, even though I'd received the penicillin IV well before he was delivered. I spent every day in the NICU with Kyler and Craig came at night after work. Longest 10 days ever. On the bright side, the nurses in the NICU taught me a lot of things about babies I wouldn't have known had we brought him home right away.
To
sum things up, the whole birthing experience was like I was drunk: a
lot of details of the birth are really fuzzy because I was so blinded by
the pain. It's almost as if I had received drugs even though I went
natural! The whole "Bradley Method" we'd learned in our classes went
out the window -- I just did
whatever I could to get through the pain. Relaxing was impossible. I
told Craig later that I
thought if I'd had an epidural, the whole experience would've been
clearer and calmer in my mind, and that I'd definitely get one with our
next baby. After a few days though, I thought, "Maybe the second one
won't be as hard since I know what to expect now." I don't want to
scare anyone away from a natural birth either -- I wouldn't change a
thing, it was just really hard.
Re: Birth Story (Warning: Excessively Long)
Stand up for something you believe in.
Excellent story, Tara! Very beautiful...even with all the blood, guts, and gore.
He's absolutely precious and you and Craig are so blessed. Congratulations, again!
Damn girl, you are one strong woman! Good for you, and thanks for sharing. Not gonna lie, I got a little light-headed reading some of that (I'm screwed when the day comes....)
Enjoy every moment with that precious baby of yours!
Dx: Hashimoto's Hypothyroidism After 2 years TTC & failed IUs,we have our IVF baby born 9/24/11
LO#2 aka 'Miracle Baby' Orig. EDD= 9/28 EDD moved to 10/3/13
"Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all." -- Dale Carnegie
"Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time." --Thomas A. Edison
What a beautiful touching birth story. Thank you for being so open and honest. I was disappointed I ended up with epidural (due to high BP) but after reading your story (no offense) maybe it was a good thing
You are amazing; great job delivering without meds you are incredible!!
Wow, thanks for sharing! I'm heavily leaning towards having a natural birth whenever the time comes and really appreciate all the details. I was wondering about the pooping part since I didn't recall anyone mentioning that in their birth stories although I've heard it's very common.
I'm glad that everyone was healthy in the end!
Thanks for sharing! I was anxiously awaiting your story since I know you wanted to go natural (as do I). I'm glad you made it through and that Kyler is ok!
Congrats again! He's a cutie!
<a href="http://s65.photobucket.com/albums/h205/adia83/?action=view