March 2009 Weddings
Dear Community,
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.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
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.
Officially scared of giving birth now
Last night in our parenting class we got to watch a video of a woman giving birth. That didn't look like fun, but the scarier thing was when they started talking about the different pain medications that my hospital offers.
One is IV pain meds, that dull the pain but do not take it away. They can't give you too much because they make you and baby sleepy and they obviously want an active baby.
The other option is an intrathecal pain med that is sort of like an epidural but it's just a one time shot unlike an epidural where they leave the thing in you. It can wear off but I can get it again if we're not too far along in delivery.
So basically, I'm scared that all my meds will wear off too soon and I'll be delivering all-natural. 
Re: Officially scared of giving birth now
I ended up only having IV pain meds, and they were next to worthless. My labor progressed faster then anyone thought it would and my doctor, thinking it was too early on, wouldn't let me have an epidural yet so I got IV meds. They helped with the pain for about an hour, and then I was begging for more again. It was too soon for another dose so the nurse decided to check my progress to try to convince the doctor (who wasn't at the hospital) to let me have the epidural. It was then that she discovered I was in so much pain because I was offically in hard labor and too far along for the epidural. By the time I was actually pushing the drugs had completely worn off. Moral of the story....don't bother with IV meds.
In a way I'm glad I was forced to go all-natural. I learned that I'm a lot stronger, physically and mentally, then I ever thought I was which comes in handy for a first-time mom.
Amelia is going to be a big sister!
Only in extreme cases (c-sections basically). The head anesthetist (sp?) is DH's uncle, so I'm hoping we can get some sort of famiily preferential treatment!
The Sand in My Snow Boots
I only had an epi for a very short time, and I am glad that it started to wear off before time to push. I think it would have been much harder if I couldn't feel at all. But I was hoping for an unmedicated delivery.
I only had an epi for a portion of my delivery (say from 7cm to 9cm) because they had me prepped for a csection and had nothing when pushing. Honestly at 7cm the pain was very bad, but you typically would progress rather quickly in that stage of labor. During the pushing portion, I had very little pain (maybe the epi was still wearing off?)
After my delivery, my Dr & I discussed my pain meds and she said I was clearly much less medicated than she was during her L&D (she had a baby in September). I was able to move my legs myself the entire time and was up walking 15 minutes after delivering and I loved that I was able to do that.
Don't get yourself too stressed out. If there was one thing I learned after my L&D is that everything may not go exactly as planned, but in the end you will have a beautiful baby (pain or not).
And this is coming from someone who while getting the drugs almost threw up all over my L&D nurse and thought my labor was never going to end. I would do it over 1,000 times to have my little boy
The intrathecal sounds like it will work great. And if it doesn't, you will survive! It doesn't last forever. It's one day - one very long day, but still, one day. However it happens, I know you'll do great! And, you'll get Emily out! Then, you'll have hours and hours of sweet snuggles and cuddles; you'll get to listen to her cute baby sounds, feel her tiny strong fists grasp your fingers, watch her stare at your face while she drinks her milk, see her smile at you for the first time...
The Sand in My Snow Boots