I went to the hospital as a precaution, or so I thought.
I’d labored easily the night before but the contractions weren’t strong enough to help me push my baby out.
We tried for hours before I finally fell asleep in bed at midnight–disheartened, worried, and broken.
I didn’t sleep well and my contractions ebbed to nothing.
I knew we’d be going to the hospital in the morning and I was okay with it, knew it was the safest decision at that point.
Unfortunately for me, I was tired.
And ironically for me, upon waking, I immediately went into labor.
But the decision had been made and we, including the midwives, were afraid that labor would stall again and if it stalled post-birth, I could hemmorage.
My uterus had been acting funky, seemingly unreliable, the risk too big, and it’d already been so long since my bag ruptured.
We had to go.
My midwives encouraged me to head to Grant, where they take patients who need assistance and who are a bit more flexible perspective-wise than some of the others.
I was reluctant to go there.
St. Ann’s is a blink from my house and near my kids.
But in the end, I deferred to their opinion.
I stepped into the shower around 8:30 with uncomfortable contractions and left my house around 10:00, unable to talk, consumed by the ever-mounting pain of them.
We checked into the garage at Grant at 10:35 and by this point I was unable to walk on my own–a policeman brought about a wheelchair and I was taken to triage.
I had the unfortunate pleasure of meeting the Labor and Delivery Nazi who was in charge of my care and who nearly derailed everything by being a complete and total @$$hole.
Jill and Charlie were speaking for me but were being over-ridden at every step.
There were “no rooms available” so I was stuck in triage but as soon as baby’s heartrate dipped during a contraction, everything spun horribly out of control.
And by some miracle, they found a delivery room.
They strapped an oxygen mask on me, inserted an i.v for pitocin and antibiotics, bound me with all sorts of monitors externally and then went at my baby internally.
I was in another planet.
The pain from my contractions was beyond overwhelming but when they checked me, I was only at 6cm.
“She goes quick at the end,” Jill told L&D Nazi.
She was ignored.
They left me alone with Jill and Charlie who both stood by my side as I tried to stay on top of my pain unsuccessfully.
I was so worn out from the night before–I was unprepared physically and emotionally by then.
I’d been consumed with this birth since my water broke on July 3rd, when I fully expected to see my baby then.
Here it was 48 hours later and I was clinging to the side of a hospital bed, begging for help, and needing so very, very badly to push.
Since I’d just been checked a few minutes before, no one was looking to see what was going on with baby but after two really strong contractions, my body involuntarily starting pushing.
“You have to make her stop bearing down!” L&D nurse charged back into the room, yelling at Jill.
“She’s not, she’s really trying to breathe through them,” Jill reponded.
In truth, I sort of was pushing but I was also trying not to.
I didn’t know they’d be able to tell on a monitor what I was doing–I was just responding to my body.
“If you don’t stop, you’re going to change the course of this game!” she yelled at me.
She knew I’d just been checked and was only at a 6 just a about 10-20 minutes beforehand.
She thought that I was pushing against a cervix that still was closed and if it was, it would swell, causing the chance of a c-section to be a reality.
“Will you check me again?” I managed to gasp out.
I knew my baby was there.
I KNEW it.
And worse, I knew I couldn’t get through another contraction fighting that urge.
“No, I am not going to do that,” she snapped condescendingly.
She turned to leave as the doctor walked in.
The doctor walked up to check me, glanced down, said, “Station 3″, L&D Nazi nearly fell over, Jill smiled at me and gave the thumbs up, and the other 15 people in the room dropped everything, papers and all, to pull the table into delivery mode.
(”Station 4″ is crowning. So Luxe was truly just sitting against me, waiting and probably willing me to get her out.)
Immediately I felt another contraction.
“You want to push? PUSH,” the doctor said to me.
I pushed with everything I had and it felt incredible.
I felt my baby’s head come through and I sat up a bit, made eye contact for the first time with the woman who was now in charge of the room.
“PUSH!” she yelled at me again and during that same contraction I pushed again, pushed way past the point that I thought I could, and felt so much burning but also, I could feel a tiny body leaving mine.
The rest is sort of a haze for me as I fell back and started weeping immediately.
I heard Charlie say, “It’s a girl!” and I could hear others saying, “Look at your baby, look at your baby” but for one second I just needed to absorb the enormity of what I went through–what we all went through–together.
She was being rubbed with blankets on the small bit of table below me and I reached down for her.
So tiny and perfect and worth all of that agony.
And it WAS agony.
Everything I’ve just described hospital-wise happened in less than an hour.
Our garage ticket stamp reads 10:35, her birth certificate reads 11:47.
I probably didn’t even get to triage until close to 11:00 after finding a parking space and negotiating the halls of the hospital.
To her credit, L&D Nazi came back and apologized to me.
She said she’d just never seen anyone move like that labor-wise before.
I didn’t care, really.
I appreciated her apology but by then, I had my baby and I was no longer in pain.
Maybe she learned something and that’d be enough for me.
When a laboring mama asks to be checked, YOU CHECK HER.
I don’t know what would have happened if the doctor had not walked in right when she did.
While she wasn’t nice either, it was a divine intervention, if you ask me.
Because NOT pushing wouldn’t have been an option for much longer and there would have been no one there to catch my baby and not allowing me to push was the worst sort of crime inflicted upon my body.
She was ordering me to go against my own natural reponses and it was making my labor UNBEARABLE.
(Jill did lean over to me at one point when I was going on and on frantically about needing to push and she said she had sterile gloves in her pocket and would help me if need be.)
There’s more, there’s always more, but that’s the short of it.
I ended up leaving the hospital against medical advice but was determined to salvage as much as I could from my homebirthing experience.
I never even saw my room–I delivered her before noon and we were home by 5:00pm.
I knew they’d want to and was okay with the nursery staff evaluating her and I knew I’d have my midwives at home evaluating me (they’re coming this afternoon).
Once I was able to speak for myself, I took charge and focused my attention on Luxe’s care.
I refused the bath for her, wanting to take her home and to do the family one that we planned to do.
I refused the eye ointment, the Hep B shot (both to prevent sexually transmitted diseases from passing from mom to baby), and the Vitamin K injection.
Did we run into issues with this stuff?
Yes.
Interestingly, all wanted access to me–I bore the brunt of the disapproval and I was the one having to sign Luxe’s discharge papers (”against medical advice”), even when I pointed out that Charlie was available to sign paperwork (because I wanted to go get dressed).
The first I expected, I guess, because I sort of stepped up and started in with my “We’d like to do this and we’d like not to do that” stuff.
But I found it odd that I was still this portal to baby even when another parent was around.
She’s lying here beside me, sleeping peacefully.
We had a good first night together and I can’t tell you how happy I am to be home.
It was the right decision for us.
Charlie’s playing doctor currently, taking our pulses and temps and charting everything (this from our home birth kit).
I feel…amazing.
No pain, not really even uncomfortable.
And she’s…delicious.
Precious.
I’ll be putting her full birth story on Expectant in chunks as I’m able but wanted to add something here too.
And I want to thank all of our friends and family for going on this adventure with us.
I have so enjoyed not only sharing my life with everyone online but also my pregnancy journey and I have felt so loved and supported along the way.
Your comments and emails touch my heart and remind me how lucky I am, how lucky my family is, to be surrounded by so much love.
So…thank you.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I don’t have much to share birth photo wise–you certainly won’t see any smiling faces grouped around pre-birth.
But what you will see below is one mother’s first tear-filled moments with her new daughter, a new little life emerging to change the face of a family, and happy “new” parents once again.
