Of course, what tough pregnancy would be complete without a tough delivery? Here's my birth story:
Friday, July 16th was my due date and nothing was happening so my OB swept my membranes to try to stir things up. She then sent me to L&D for a non-stress test because my blood pressure was up. I was contracting every 10 minutes in the hospital, but they weren't productive so they sent me home. The next day (Sat.) my doc's office called and asked me to come in since I wasn't in labor yet. So I went in and the midwife (a friend of mine) swept my membranes again, this time very vigorously and announced that she'd see me tonight because I had major bloody show and contracted on the table. Sure enough, I started to contract regularly that afternoon, every 10 minutes and getting uncomfortable. At 9:00 that night I was lying on my side and felt a pop. I got up and went to the bathroom to check if my water broke, but nothing came out. So I went back to bed and 15 minutes later felt a GUSH. Luckily I was able to get out of bed before ruining the mattress! Then, when I was cleaning up I saw that the fluid was not clear as I had expected, but greenish. Knew this meant meconium, so I called my midwife and was told to go straight to the hospital. We packed up Miya, dropped her off at a friend's, and got to the hospital about an hour later. By then I was contracting every 10 minutes, but they were painful.
In the hospital, I kept going every 10 minutes, with no change, so they told me to prepare for a long night and recommended I try Morphine to get some sleep and calm the uterus. They called it a Morphine Induction. Then the on call OB walked in and tried to talk me out of a VBAC and onto his OR table! I was so crushed, because my OB was not there to support me and being afraid of the unknown, I was having second thoughts. But then my midwife came in and reminded me why I wanted to VBAC and told me there was no reason I couldn't still go for it and that renewed our faith. Then she went and fought with the OB and basically took responsibility for me herself and kicked him off my case! That woman has balls!!!
So I woke up from my morphine stupor having not slept much, feeling every contraction. But they were still 10 minutes apart, and we were getting discouraged because we were on the clock from my ruptured membranes. I told the nurses I was sick of being in bed and stuck on monitors and that I needed to walk to get things going. They agreed to put me on wireless monitors and let me walk the halls. Within 5 minutes, I was contracting every 2 minutes and they were very painful!!! That marked the start of hard labor, which got worse and worse, until I was having two contractions on top of each other and very little break between. I made it four hours before I started talking about the epidural. My midwife checked me and I was only at 4cm, so agreed to go another two hours to try to get to 6cm. Well, after an hour I was a crazy woman and both Siena and I were both tachycardic, so they agreed to do the epidural. She then check me and I'd gone from 4cm to 6-7cm in that hour! One hour after the epidural I was fully dilated and ready to push. For some reason the epidural blocked much of the pain, but none of the pressure, so I was able to feel my contractions and know when to push and she crowned in less than an hour! Then it got suddenly painful and I guess she was stuck at the crowning phase. I had to balance pushing gently, but effectively enough to get her out - it was so intense and much more painful than I expected given the epidural. But finally, she came out, with her hand up by her face and the cord wrapped around her neck three times and once around her body! Because of her hand position, I tore in two places and bruised my tailbone. She came out blue and quiet, but within a few seconds on her way to the warming table, we heard that first cry. They had the NICU and a pediatrician and all these support people in there - as well as the grumpy anti-VBAC doc, who was told to sit in a chair for the birth (haha). It was quite a crowd! It took forever to get me stitched, and I didn't have the distraction of a baby on my belly because they were checking her out to make sure she had no meconium in her lungs, so I just chatted with my midwife friend while she stitched me back together.
It was such a scary and intense experience, but I'm so glad we did it. The whole time I was in recovery, people kept stopping in and saying "So YOU'RE the successful VBAC...great job!". I felt like super woman!
Recovery has been slow, but much better than the c-section. Hoping to feel like "me" again by that six week mark!
And here she is!!! Welcome Siena Michaela!
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