Labor Day

As promised -- the details of Olivia's birthday...

On Tuesday at 1 am, I passed the one week anniversary of my due date. I started feeling a few promising cramps, but by that point, I regarded every minor discomfort below my ribs as the onset of labor. Not wanting to cry wolf, I didn't milk these early contractions for backrubs from Spencer.

My doctor called around noon to request that I come in for another non-stress test (NST). As previously reported, we had two earlier tests, one of which was slightly abnormal (depending on your risk tolerance as a physician.)

Alas, the baby decided to take her naptime during the 30 minute testing window. And my water broke while I was there. Which led the doctor on call (as well as my doctor) to 'highly highly recommend' that we check ourselves into the hospital Tuesday night to have my labor progress 'monitored,' and induce the following morning if nothing happened.

The thought of getting induced was a little freaky to me. And I thought I might be better off spending the evening in the comfort of my own bed rather than at the hospital. However, the redundant use of the word 'highly' caused Spencer to encourage me to check in that night.

It turns out that the doctor and I had two different notions of the word 'monitoring'. My idea of being 'monitored' meant that nurses would drop in every couple of hours to see how I was doing. What it actually meant was being hooked up to the NST monitor and an IV for the entire evening.

The Contraction Contraption

The tubes and wires rendered the time we spent in the 'Coping with labor pain' as useless (I'm glad we didn't spend $145 for the full length class). Forget walking, bouncing on the labor ball, changing positions, and taking a shower. I was pretty much limited to supportive words from my partner and massage.

I spent most of Tuesday night fussing with cables every time I needed to use the bathroom, trying not to go to the bathroom, nursing contractions (which were gradually getting more painful), and listening to multiple women screaming in agony down the hallways.

They started me on Pitocin (the labor inducing drug) at 7 am. The contractions weren't too bad until around noon, when I had to ask Spencer to get up and massage my back after each contraction. Given how hard Spencer had been working this month, this didn't seem like a feasible plan for 7 hours or even 20 minutes. (It's never a good sign when your birthing partner is more tired than you are.) I decided to order the epidural on the early side, rather than waiting for 8 cm.

I was not a happy camper getting drugs staple gunned to my back. (I remember saying, 'This hurts more than labor.') I wasn't a happy camper during the first half hour after drugs either. But it seemed to do the trick, as I reached 8 cm about 40 minutes after the epidural was installed and 10 cm by 6:30 without feeling a thing. In retrospect, I wasn't thrilled with the numbness from the epidural and might have gone with the fentanyl if I had to do it again.

The baby (a girl!) was born at 9:40 pm. That was when the room really started to buzz. There must have been 10 people in the room. The 2 labor and delivery nurses, the obstetrician, a team of people to clean the baby up, a pediatrician, the anasthesiologist, a guy taking away the medical waste, and who knows who else. And a bloody mess everywhere. Not at all like birthing is depicted in the movies.

At some point, a nurse asked me to breastfeed the baby. I think I replied 'What? Haven't I been through enough today?' But the baby was all cleaned up by then, and pretty darn cute. Spencer was there too. Somehow I made it work, and one week later, here we are with a healthy little girl at home.