Third Time's a Charm

I have an announcement, folks. One that will shock you. It certainly shocked me.

I just experienced natural childbirth.

Yep, that's right. No drugs. No epidural. No pain relief whatsoever. Not by choice. So kudos to all you mommas who have done this. Some of you several times. Many of you by choice. If I have anything to say about it, I will not be joining you in that wonderful "natural childbirth club" again.

So you know the story of my first visit to the hospital. The one where the nurse thought I'd be back, but I'd given up hope. We got home about midnight and I tried to go to bed, but my contractions kept coming, and were intense enough that I couldn't sleep through them. So I decided to take a shower. And eat something. After three hours of regular, increasing contractions, I decided that I was in fact, in labor, and that we would in fact be having a baby some time the next day. But having labored at home for most of the time with Shaelyn, I knew my contractions were not intense enough for me to want to be at the hospital. Not yet. So I tried to rest while I waited for the cue from my body that it was time.

And then I felt the gush. I thought my water had broken. I ran to the bathroom. It was blood. And it kept coming. If there's one thing they tell you to take seriously when you're pregnant, it's "gushing blood." Michael hasn't been feeling well, and wanted to take some medicine to ensure he got a good night's rest so that he would be more helpful to me in the morning when we were both sure I would be delivering a baby. I assured him my "gearing up" would take several hours and gave him the OK to take some NyQuil. Oops! So here we are, 3 1/2 hours after we've come home from the hospital, Michael totally drugged up and groggy, finding ourselves heading right back.

I was sure that once I told them about the blood and the fact that I was having regular contractions, 4-6 minutes apart for 3 hours, that I would be immediately taken back to a labor and delivery room. So imagine my surprise when they direct me back to an exam room for yet another non-stress test. There it is determined that my blood is no big deal and is just bloody show. Really? Gushing blood? So why is it always talked about as one of those "call your doctor immediately" things in pregnancy? Because it could be an indicator that your placenta has pulled away from the uterine wall, the nurse informs me. So why she feels the need to treat me like an idiot for coming back to the hospital for having had this very warning sign is beyond me. They check me, tell me I'm dilated to a 3, and inform that no, I will not in fact be allowed to go back to one of those big, much-desired-on-my-part labor and delivery rooms. However, they keep me on the monitor for another 1 1/2 hours to see if I can get myself to a 4 and get admitted. At this time my contractions are a 5 on the pain scale and having to stay in the hospital bed during them is torturous. I mentally will myself to get to a 4.

When she comes back to check, I am still a 3. It is now almost 8:00 in the morning and I haven't slept at all the whole night. Michael has only slept off about 3 of his 8 hours of NyQuil. "Please don't send me home," I say. She tells me they don't want to admit me, have me continue not to progress, have to give me Pitocin, and then increase my risk for a C-section when that doesn't do the trick either. I agree. She gives me two options: 1) stay in the exam room for another hour or so and labor to see if I can get to a 4; or 2) take an Ambien and go home and sleep through the contractions I'm currently having and come back again when I'm further along. As much as I'm hoping I'm only an hour away from a 4 and an epidural, I chose the Ambien offer, hoping that at least I'll get some sleep while I wait to come back to the hospital. Again. "Sometimes the Ambien helps your body to rest enough that you labor faster. We might see you back here real soon," she says to me as we walk out the door.

We get home at 8:30. Of course my contractions have increased in frequency and intensity on the way home. I'm now pretty sure if I had stayed the extra hour, I would have been admitted. Oh well. I take the Ambien and fall asleep at 9:00. At 10:00 I wake up in intense pain, but not sure of what's going on as I'm totally drugged and, according to Michael, hallucinating about squares. I actually remember my hallucination on the squares. I imagined myself being made out of Legos, and described the whole thing to Michael in vivid detail. It wouldn't make sense to anyone, but at the time it made sense to me. I think if he weren't so freaked out by my incoherent blabbering, he would have been laughing out loud. But I remember being frustrated that I couldn't concentrate on what was going on because I had such a drug fog around my brain. But it didn't take long for me to realize that my contractions weren't stopping, they were right on top of one another to where I couldn't distinguish where one ended and another began. I have always been a pain wuss, and this is by far the worst pain I've ever experienced. By now my doctor's office is open. We make the decision to head there (which is right across the street from the hospital) instead of the hospital I hate so much, knowing we will get seen and assessed much faster.

Michael calls ahead to the doctor on the way to give them the heads up. I am screaming my guts out in the background. I was like those hysterical women in the movies. You know the ones you always watch and think, "Oh please. That is SO not what labor is like." Only this is the only thing my body can do to respond the amount of pain I'm in. I'm also totally non-coherent. They have a wheelchair waiting for me when we pull up. Within 30 seconds I'm up on an exam table being checked by my doctor. He runs out of the room, yelling over his shoulder to Michael to get me to the hospital immediately. He yells to his nurse that he's leaving. I faintly hear the word "8" coming down the hall.

That nurse wasn't kidding about Ambien relaxing your body and getting you to progress, was she? I went from a 3 to an 8 in about 2 hours. It took about a minute or two to get from the doctor's office to the hospital. Luckily my doctor called ahead and there's a wheelchair waiting for me there, too. No stop at the front desk to sign anything. No patronizing comments from nurses that I should come back "when I'm actually in labor." No passing "Go" as we wheel into a labor and delivery room buzzing with 5 nurses prepping everything in sight.

15 minutes later I had a baby.

Not knowing how long it would take me to go from an 8 to a 10, the nurses tried to prep me for an epidural. For all of about 30 seconds. Because that was all it took for my water to break. Well, really explode like a water balloon. That was probably the most memorable part for me, because it was so dramatic. And at that point I started pushing the baby out. 5 pushes later she was born. Poor Michael faded into the background during the whole scene, which was a good place for him to be since it was so chaotic and I was in so much pain. In fact, immediately after Rachelle was born, the nurses left my side to tend to Michael, who was feeling lightheaded. The combination of being drugged and seeing his wife in that much pain had taken its toll. He was quickly instructed to sit down, given some orange juice and a cold compress, and started feeling better. I was only aware of this after the fact when he told me later.

So yes, I survived natural childbirth, though the whole time I was screaming and incoherent and several times thought I was going to pass out from the pain. When the nurse informed me it was too late for the epidural, I started screaming like a crazy person. She said, "you'll be having this baby so soon you won't even need it." "How soon?" I managed to get out. "10 minutes" she said. "LIAR!" I screamed back in her face. I vividly remember that. But other than that, everything is a chaotic blur. Michael told me later that at one point I almost bit his finger off.

When I had Shaelyn, I was so aware and in control and coherent through the whole thing. I was able to process the emotions of becoming a mother and enjoy the experience of birthing my daughter because I was not blinded by pain. My experience with Rachelle was totally different. It wasn't until I was in the recovery room 2 hours later that I was able to even process what had happened. I didn't like that. I didn't like feeling out of control. And scared - so scared. And I didn't like how everything happened so fast that it was such a blur.

But the nurses promised me that a recovery from natural childbirth is much faster than a recovery from birth with an epidural. And so far they are right. Other than being absolutely exhausted afterwards, I have felt great. Rachelle is an excellent nurser, so all the frustrations I had with Shaelyn have been a non-issue. My post-baby experience has been wonderful.

We go home tomorrow. And then I'll be able to upload photos and videos for your viewing pleasure. I can't wait for you to see the girls together. I love seeing Shaelyn as a big sister. And I'll let you get to know Rachelle a little more in a later post. She is definitely a different baby than her sister. I love that she has her own little personality.

I'm hoping that the transition home is less like the road Rachelle took to get here and more like the road we've been on since she arrived. We'll keep you posted.