emily's birth story

aligator423uf · July 2011

Hi ladies! Thanks for all the well wishes on FB. Emily and I are doing great. We're still in the hospital. I'm a little sore and she's still trying to figure out feeding/daytime/sleeping ect but we're doing pretty good.

So the IL's took me to the fair Fri night, and we ended up parking in like row 23 and having to walk all the way into the fair, plus around and then back to the car. I went to bed that night feeling no different than before.

I woke up around 3:45 to go to the bathroom, and my water broke literally when I sat down on the toilet. I wasn't 100% sure tho, so i waited for it to stop and then went back to bed. Well immediately it started again, so I jumped up and yelled to DH that my water broke then ran into the shower. I wasn't really sure what to do so I just stood there for a few minutes while he got our stuff together and got my clothes.

We got to the hospital around 4:30 and I was only having mild contractions at about 4cm. So we waited a few hours until I was 5cm and my contractions were a lot stronger. I got IV Fentanyl at that point which helped quite a bit but certainly didn't take the pain away! At 10:30 I was already at 8cm, so I got my intrathecal pain meds about an hour later. That was wonderful, but apparently it slowed my labor way down. Everyone thought I'd have Emily in the next hour or so.

I was allowed to start pushing around 12:30, but my contractions weren't strong enough anymore to really make any progress so they started me on Pitocin to help things out. That wasn't so bad since I still had the pain meds. Or it wouldn't have been bad, except that I ended up pushing for close to 3 hours. Somewhere along there my meds wore off so I basically had a med-free delivery. Not something I wish to experience again! DH was a great coach and so supportive. I seriously wanted to give up several times and almost begged for a c-section. Our nurses have been wonderful too.

Emily ended up having a little cone head due to being in the birth canal so long, and she has a little scab on her head from rubbing against one of my bones. Her ped said "well she just came with dings already, so you don't have to worry about dinging her up!" I ended up having 2 larger tears and one small one, but so far recovery is not so bad. Just tender! All of the nurses are amazed by me, and we're the only ones in the unit so we're getting quite the special treatment. It's kind of nice Big Smile