Katherine Brooke's Birthday Story

bethysfirst1 · #1 April 3rd, 2012, 07:00 PM

Well, Katherine really did test our patience! She made us wait and wait and wait!

It started on March 31st. I was laying on the couch watching tv and waiting for my husband to come home from chaperoning the school play. At around 8 PM, I felt a little gush. I didn't want to ruin my couch, so I started to walk to the bathroom and then splash my water broke all over the kitchen floor. At first, I thought I peed myself! There was a lot of fluid, but it was clear and definitely didn't smell like pee. I got so excited. I called my husband. I thought labor would start shortly. The midwife said to stay home until I felt the contractions every 5 minutes.

DH rushed home and we waited. Nothing happened. At around 11, I decided to just go to bed. If labor did start, I'd want at least a few hours of sleep. After a night of very restless sleep, I woke up the next morning at 7AM, there was still no contractions! I started to second guess myself again, maybe it was pee! How embarassing! When DH woke up at 8:30, I called the midwife again. She said to come in and get checked to see if it was amniotic fluid. So at 10AM we arrived at the hospital.

As soon as the nurse checked me, I flooded the bed again with fluid. They did a test, but it came back negative, so the nurse wanted to take another. I flooded the bed again! The nurse couldn't believe it. She said she's never seen so much fluid in one person before. Finally I was admitted.

They brought me to a huge room to wait for labor to begin. Still no contractions. It was now about noon. The midwife checked me in the room and noticed there was still a water bag, and she broke it. MORE FLOODING! geez! I still didn't have contractions, so they gave me cytotec. I began having small contractions at 2PM

After a nap and dinner, they decided to start pitocin. They gave me the first dose at 8:30PM. By 10:30 the contractions were getting really bad. I wanted to wait as long as possible for any interventions. So I labored on the ball and other positions for a while. At 2AM I was just exhausted. I hadn't really had good sleep since March 30th, I needed rest. I asked for an epideral (this was very scary for me. It didn't hurt, but the noises and the feeling on my back... I was very nervous). When I finally got it at 3:30am I felt instant relief. I napped.

At 4:30AM 5 nurses and my midwife raced into the room. My blood pressure dropped from 110 over 70 to 70 over 40. They gave me a drug to help raise my blood pressure... I didn't even know what was going on. I was so tired. I know my mom and DH were very scared. The drug worked. I was fine after that. I continued napping.

At 9AM it was time to push. Pushing felt great! There was so much pressure. It really did feel like a giant crap! The midwife did such a good job massaging the area. I changed sides and positions to help Katherine find her way out. At 10:23AM on April 2nd, Katherine Brooke was taken out and placed on my bare stomach. It was the most beautiful and strange experience of my life. She was so soft and warm and jellyish. She screamed her head off. The most wonderful noise ever. It was so surreal. First time moms, I can't even describe it. I was in a state of wanting to cry my eyes out and also thinking, is this really my baby? Did I really just give birth? I'm a mommy? Whoa! She stayed on me for an hour before I let the nurses take her to weigh and measure.

Katherine was 9lbs1oz, 21inches long. Even though she is huge, I barely tore. Just 2 little stitches. I was fixed up in no time. I'm sore, but not bad. All in all, I'm glad I didn't let myself stress out about giving birth. It was a beautiful experience. Maybe I have an extremely high pain tolerance, but it wasn't this excruciating pain. I was most scared about the "ring of fire" but I didn't feel anything. It felt so good to push, all I felt was pressure.

Here's some pics of my baby girl!

Here she is with her cousin Brooke.