|
|
|
|
Hello moms and moms to be, since first becoming pregnant I have been an avid watcher of this forum, but have only posted a couple of times...I had my little girl on Dec. 3rd, so I thought I'd share the story of my labour...I loved to read birth stories during my pregnancy and hopefully mine will help someone...After a late night on Friday evening (went to bed at 1:00am) my water broke on Saturday morning at 4:30am, and along with it was my mucous plug. It wasn't like a gush but definitely noticeable enough to wake me up. I was pretty excited (and nervous and a little scared) so I spent the rest of the morning packing the hospital bag and had a shower. I called my midwife at around 8:30am and went into her office at 9:30am so she could check to make sure my water had actually broke. It had. After a non-stress test, my husband and I went home for the afternoon. My midwife dropped by around 5:00pm to see how things were going...I was around 3 cm dialated by then. So I hung around the house with my mom and husband, watching some TV and breathing through the contractions until about 8:30pm when I decided it was time to go to the hospital (it was really cold out -30C and I wanted to get into the tub, but didn't want to have to go to the hospital wet!). We only live about 5 minutes from the hospital, so by the time we packed everything into the car (my bag, blankets and pillows) and got to the hospital it was around 9:00pm. The pain was intensifying now, but wasn't too bad, so I hung out in the room for a few hours, took a walk around, and tried to drink and eat to keep my energy up. I wasn't really that hungry though. By around midnight, I was lying on the bed in pretty bad pain, so my midwife suggested that I take a tub bath. It was great, I stayed in there for about 3 hours while my husband poured warm water over me. There was a jacuzzi tub available also, but it was pretty far down the hallway! I got out of the tub hoping I was almost fully dialated...but threw up a few times so I suspected that I was in transition...which was correct when the midwife checked me I was 7 to 8 centimetres. By now it was about 4:00am on Sunday morning and I was very tired and losing confidence fast...so I tried the gas (Nitrous Oxide or laughing gas) and I must say it was fabulous!!! Between contractions I even got a few winks of sleep. Also my mom, husband and the midwife massaged my lower back, which was fabulous also! Now the rest of the night is kinda a blur because of the gas and labour land...I know I tried to push around 5:30am on the birthing stool, but I wasn't fully dialated yet (I had a cervical lip...which is soooo not fun). The midwife tried to stretch out the lip a couple of times, but the pain was just too much, I think a few profanities came out of my mouth then! :) So I went back on the gas for a bit then tried to push on my side with my leg up at about 6:30am to no avail again (I think I was just too anxious to get this over with). So I must admit I was pretty discouraged, so I took a few more hoots of the gas and went to the bathroom....very slowly.....and then finally got the urge to push. So I crawled back to the birthing stool, it must have taken me ten minutes to get from the bathroom to the stool. The nurses came in to help the midwife with catching the baby, and I remember my midwife telling them to go and come back in 10 or 15 minutes and I said "No way this baby is coming out now!" and after a few good (but intense) pushes she was out! Finally! Shaelynn Cassie was born at 7:21am. The midwife put her right into my arms. There was a lot of seperation bleeding which was a bit scary, but I got a shot to make my uterus contract faster so it wasn't too bad. I moved over to the bed and held my little girl while my husband cut the cord. The nurses did not take her away, we had skin to skin contact for about an hour while my midwife sewed me up (just a few st_tches) and it wasn't really as bad as I had expected. The nurses took her and weighed her (7 pounds 1 ounce). They did not do an APGAR test, so I could not tell you what that was. The cord was around her neck twice, but she did have quite a set of lungs on the way out! We elected not to have the eye drops or vitamin K injection...instead we did the vitamin K orally. So a couple of things I would like to pass on to future mom's from my experience - 1) Labour is painful and may seem like forever but once you are doing it you can work with the pain, 2) There is absolutely no room for inhibitions or modesty during childbirth, and you really don't care anyway, 3) Tearing and st_tches sound awful, but they really aren't as bad as you think, 4) Peeing and pooing afterwards doesn't hurt that much, although it definitely helps to have a squirt bottle, 5) Nitrous Oxide is great, 6) Try your hardest to get rest at the beginning of your labour, 7) Even though it was 28 hours from when my water broke to having my little girl it really didn't seem that long, 8) Keep hydrated and nourished as well as you can, and least but not least...9) Midwives are the best, I would highly recommend them to new moms - mine was with me all night during the birth and visited my house for the first 5 days after the birth, and she was open to any medical intervention that I wanted, including epidurals. I wouldn't have wanted to do it any other way! On the "books" Shaelynn was 2 days early (calculated from an earlier ultrasound), but the nurses thought she was actually late. I apologize for this being so long, but I really wanted to share my story on this forum since it has been so helpful in the past to me, and to answer any questions that expectant moms out there have!
|
