Theo's Birth Story

magz88 · #1 August 19th, 2012, 05:04 PM

I woke up around 11 on Thursday and I was feeling nauseated and cramping just as I had been on Wednesday. Overnight I had been steadily leaking what I figured must be amniotic fluid.

Around one I started to have contractions. They were regular but widely spaced. I spent the afternoon in bed with Mad Men playing in the background to watch between contractions.

They steadily intensified over the afternoon. I knew Rich was planning on coming home early from work at 6 since we had decided to go into the hospital because of the leaking and the possible risk of infection.

At around 4:45 I decided to time the contractions. They were very painful but I was able to breathe through them. They were roughly 5.1.1 after an hour had passed. Rich had got home at 5:30 and jumped into the shower. I had to rush him out because the contractions were getting too much for me.

We drove to the hospital and Rich took me up to the birthing unit in a wheelchair since I was not able to walk between the contractions.

They checked me in triage and I was 5 cm dilated and mostly effaced. They moved me to a birthing room.

I knew I would have trouble coping with worsening contractions and we went over the pain management options. Narcotics via IV, gas, or epidural. I decided to go with an epidural. The anesthesiologist on call was helping another patient in a different part of the hospital and there was also another woman labouring who would get her epidural before me.

Our nurse was named Sharon and she was amazing. She was very calm and tried her best to help me breathe through contractions. Unfortunately, I was not coping well with them at all and there was a lot of screaming and swearing and a bit of beating on Richard. She checked me and I was at 7 cm.

Not to dwell on the pain, but I really will never, ever give birth another child, I thought I was going to go insane. I tried the gas and it just made me want to vomit.

At 9:30 the doctor came in and set up the epidural. Once it was in, Sharon checked me again and I was at 9 cm. The relief from the epidural was so amazing - it still hurt but in a manageable way. The on-call OB stopped in and said he would be back in an hour or so when I would be able to start pushing.

At 11:10 I was ready to start pushing. At this point it was just Rich, Sharon and I in the room. We joked that we wanted Theo to have his own birthday so I had to get him out before midnight. I was basically pushing in sets of 3s and treating it as if I was at the gym. It helped me stay focused. A part of the sac was traveling up the canal in front of Theo's head. Sharon tried to pop it a few times but it wasn't going anywhere.

Finally he was ready to come out and the pain came back in full force. The doctor had come in, along with another doctor, and a few nurses. Way too many people. The pain was so bad, I stopped pushing and freaked out. I was screaming bloody murder.

The female doctor started pushing on my labia, the male doctor popped the sac and finally Theo popped out. He was born at 12:01 am. He shares his birthday with his cousin and his uncle.

The placenta followed a couple of minutes later.

It turned out they had done an episiotomy at the end. The cut was skin only and I had 5 stitches. They did some major uterus massaging and got a lot of blood out of there. I also had syntocin through the IV to reduce my uterus size. My lochia flow is almost nothing as of today.