An incredibly long Birth Story--NOT for the squeamish!

Well, I hadn't planned to put this down right away--mostly because I didn't want to "copy" my best friend, Ruth (view her birth story at www.stilltheflowersgrow.blogspot.com) but I've decided that's silly and that I want to get it down before I forget, and I want to share the experience--mostly because I feel that I wasn't adequately warned or prepared (although Ruth gave me the best, most honest preparation).
Giving birth was a far more painful, far less dignified process than I had imagined.
Let's start before I gave birth, when I was happily going about preparing for the big day. When I was about 36 weeks pregant I started packing our bags (mine and the baby's). The bags that I packed were AMAZING. I put an adorable outfit and blankets and diapers and the like in Sophia's diaper bag. In my bag I had a nightgown, a couple of post-baby outfits, lots of hair-care and cosmetic items, massage tools, an album of baby pictures that I cut out of magazines (to use as a focus point during labor), lots of cue cards with relaxation techniques and imagery for Travis to read to me, and a folder full of labor advice and tools, as well as the birth plan and an inventory of everything that I packed into our bags. This is on top of a book on the "Bradley method" that Travis and I had studied and a "prepared childbirth" course that we took together throughout the month of June at the hospital. I was VERY prepared!
No, I wasn't.
It all started on July 4th, when my water broke. Except I didn't know that my water had broken.
When I got out of bed in the morning I felt a "little gush." Of course I wondered if my water had broken, so I ran to the bathroom and put some tissue between my legs and coughed and then examined the tissue for wetness--a trick that I had learned in the prepared childbirth course. Much to my disappointment the tissue was dry, so I chalked the gush up to a little bladder-control trouble.
Travis and I drove about 45 min. that day to Detroit Lake, where we spent the day relaxing on the beach, swimming, and playing some frisbee in the lake. DL was full of revelers, and it was a lot of fun to join some of the 4th fun (although we skipped the fireworks...too many mosquitoes!). The next day it was 93 degrees and windy (the wind was gusting up to 40 mph!) and Travis decided it was a lovely day for golf. I walked 9 holes (close to 2 hours) with him, and had a fine time...although, it was incredibly hot and I had to keep running to the porta-potties to deal with that annoying "bladder control" issue!
On Monday Travis worked late, and I decided that, after almost 4 days of weird gushing, I should call the hospital to see what they recommended I do. The hospital advised me to come in to get checked out, although the assurred me that it was "probably nothing."
I called Travis at 5:30pm and asked him to come home soon.
We arrived at the hospital at about 7pm. We brought the mommy and baby bags that I had packed, but I felt that I was being silly and paranoid, so we left them in the car and went up to the labor ward.
All of the examining rooms were occupied, so I was led into a labor room, and the nurse asked me to put on a gown. The nurse examined me and sent a sample of the leaking fluid to the lab and within a very short time it was confirmed that my water had broken! The nurse broke the news to me by saying "well, you're not leaving here without a baby."
I couldn't believe it! Travis and I were left alone for a few minutes and we were both in some shock. Travis was incredibly excited, but I had this feeling like I wish I could just take it all back and not be pregnant--once faced with the birth of the baby I didn't want to do it anymore! I kept saying "I just don't feel like I'm ready to have this baby." What about the dramatic breaking of the water and the pre-labor at home and the thrilling car ride to the hospital and the excitement? This wasn't what they showed in the movies!
The nurse told me that I was having contractions about 2 minutes apart and that I was 2 cm dilated. I could NOT feel the contractions AT ALL. The nurse said that they would give me about an hour (until 10pm) to go into active labor, and then I would have to be induced. Since my water was broken there was a risk that an infection could pass into the womb and affect the baby.
I tried so hard to get my labor going! I literally spent the next hour hopping on one leg in circles around the nurse's station. Travis walked next to me and it became sort of a game, with him instructing me to "bunny hop" or "hop on the left" or "hop on the right" or "skip." It was a work out! At around 10 a new nurse--who would be with me for the rest of the night--examined me and informed me that I had dilated to 3cm and that my contractions were good and steady. She offered to let me keep trying to jump start labor for another hour or so. I was thrilled!
Again, Travis and I began our routine. This time a nurse told me to stop hopping...she was afraid I was fall down and hurt myself. Travis and I were so mad! We started a new routine of power walking past the nurse's station and hopping on the backstretch. We realized later that there was a big camera pointed right at us on the backstretch and that the nurses were watching our bad behavior! Oops!
Anyway, it didn't work. Our nurse--who was fantastic and used to be a doula and had birthed her own children naturally--let us go until midnight, and then examined me again. Even though I could finally feel the contractions, they just weren't strong enough, and I wasn't dilating anymore.
This whole time that I had been hopping and skipping Travis had been pushing my IV pole next to me (we even named the IV pole! I can't remember the name anymore, but he was our buddy). I had been recieving IV antibiotics because I was strep B positive (I carry a bacteria that could infect the baby--many women do). At this point the nurses hooked up the drug Pitocin to my IV to induce hard labor.
At first the pitocin didn't do much. They started me off at a low dose, and I went back to power walking around the labor ward. The contractions were becoming a little more powerful, and felt like a cramp in my stomach each time one hit. By this time I was nervous, and not happy about having to have a drug, and I was getting tired. It was close to 1am when the nurse said that she would increase the pitocin a little. I said I wanted to try resting.
Travis curled up on his "man bed" and I laid on my side in the labor bed and tried to rest. Every minute or two I would have a contraction, and they were starting to really hurt! After about 20 minutes I went to pee and finally had a real gush of amniotic fluid, which was very exciting! I went back to the bed and tried to quietly handle the contractions--Travis was snoozing hard! The nurse kept coming in and out to look at my contractions on the monitor. This should have been my first clue that Travis can sleep through anything!
Around 2am the contractions were starting to get intense, and I decided that I wanted to go in the jacuzzi. Travis got up and went with me. And, of course, the IV pole came too. Travis put in one of my relxation CDs, and it was very nice to lay in the warm water and listen to the music. My contractions were starting to feel like a deep ache--not concentrated in my stomach or back, but just located somewhere deep--towards the back, and very low. They didn't feel like a tightening, like I had expected, but just like an intense ache. The ache actually felt closest to my butt--I joke that some people have back labor, and I have butt labor!
After a little while of laboring in the tub I felt like I had to, um, "go to the bathroom" so I banished the nurse and Travis and did my thing and got back in the tub. The next contraction hit a few seconds later and it was INTENSE! I had an overpowering instinct to get away from the pain, and I writhed in the tub, squirming against one side and tightening all my muscles until the contraction passed. No sooner had the contraction passed then another one came, and then another. The whole time Travis was holding my hand and telling me to "breathe"...thank goodness, because I would have held my breath the whole time! It was so painful, it was almost too much trouble to bother with breathing!
The nurse told me that, in the act of "using the facilities", I had "moved things around" and labor would go a lot faster. Also, I probably had needed to use the bathroom because the baby was dropping and putting pressure on all of my organs. I told the nurse to TURN DOWN THE PITOCIN. I actually ended up begging her and she finally did turn it down a little, and I was able to catch a break between contractions.
Things did go by really fast and, even though I was writhing in the tub with horrible contractions for a good couple of hours, the time went by really fast. I really had no concept of time, and it really didn't matter! The nurse suggested that I get out of the jacuzzi a couple of times and try new techniques to relieve the pain (like lean over a ball and have Travis massage me, etc.) and I even tried, but I would stand up and a contraction would hit and I would sink down into the water and writhe some more.
Let's just recap that I didn't use any labor techniques, I didn't use anything that I had packed in my bulging duffel bag except for one CD that Travis put in, and it was not the beautiful, manageable experience I had anticipated. It was very painful and very undignified!
At about 4:30 or so the nurse said that I had to get out so she could check me. She basically forced me out of the tub! I did have one contraction standing up slumped against Travis--not fun. I was 8 cm dilated and she called the midwife!
I went back in the tub for a brief period, and then the nurse had me on the bed just before 6am. I was just a fraction away from 10cm dilated, so the nurse had me contract a couple of times with her finger pressing back my cervix to try to get it to go the rest of the way. The absolute worst part of the whole deal was having the nurse press on my cervix during a contraction. In addition to the intense ache deep inside I had sharp pain coming from my cervix and a horrible pressure from the rest of the nurse's hand. This didn't let up when the midwife arrived because she also insisted on inserting her fingers and physically stretching things out to get it all ready for the baby. Sorry, this is graphic...
This is when I started pushing. I felt no urge to push and would even pretend that I wasn't having a contraction until it was absolutely obvious. At that point I was instructed to pull my knees to my chest and hold my legs while balling up and bearing down. I did push with everything I had, holding my breath and concentrating all my strength. Have you ever held your breath and and "squeezed your face?" that's what it felt like. My face felt like it would pop and my lips would pull back from my teeth and my whole body was so tense and sweaty and it was such hard work! In fact, after the pushing was over I had little red spots all over my face from the effort.
Travis would feed me water between contractions...I was SO thirsty! Just an incredible, insatiable thirst.
As horrible as pushing was, and as much as I hated each contraction, I would not trade it. I would not give away the other feeling...that of my daughter's head down low. Between pushes (I would push 3 or 4 times each contraction) the midwife would tell me to "hold the baby down, don't let it slip back" and I could. It was so, so amazing. Towards the end Travis was looking back and forth between the baby's head and me, and he had tears in his eyes and in his voice. I told him later that this gave me strength because I could tell how amazing our daughter's birth was for him, but he told me no, he was crying because I was trying so hard even when he knew it was terribly painful and I was exhausted. Every time they told me to push a fourth time I would say "I can't" and then I would bear down and do it, and this was very moving for Travis.
At 6:46 the most wonderful part--the part that I would never miss for anything--came. Little Sophia slid right out and it was such a relief, such a wonderful feeling. She came out screaming! Travis said her eyes were open as she came out, too. The midwife slipped the baby up onto my chest.
I expected to cry and feel some intense emotion over finally having the baby, but I didn't. I was so shocked by how floppy she was! She was like a ragdoll with no muscle tone at all...I couldn't even hold her because she was just slipping and flopping around, completely controlled by gravity! The nurses only had her on me for a few seconds and then they took her off to the side to towel her off and everything. Meanwhile the midwife was tugging on the umbilical cord, and I could feel it jerking on the placenta...not a very nice sensation.
I was trying to look at the baby, but I was so distracted by the placenta and everything. It took a long time--at least 10 minutes--before the placenta came out, which meant more contractions (although they were less intense, and it's a lot easier to push out a placenta than a baby!).
This is all a blur in my memory...I know that I had to stagger to the bathroom to clean off and secure an "adult diaper" and I know that they tidied up the bed really quickly and I know that various things were happening to Sophia. I think Travis was with Sophia the whole time (she was still in the room in a little warmer that they wheeled in).
I had had no pain medication and I didn't tear at all.
The next few hours were great...Travis dozed off with little swaddled Sophia while I took a nice jacuzzi bath and brushed my teeth and other luxuries. We had our first visitors--some of Travis' friends--about 3 hours after her birth and the visits never stopped that day (we had my co-workers as well, and Travis' parents and aunt and grandmother!). Everybody held the baby and there was so much joy and pride.
At about 9pm Travis' parents left, and Travis ran home with one of Sophia's blankets for the dogs to cuddle with and get used to. That night was a little rough...Sophia ended up crying inconsolably for hours (Travis slept through it) and finally, at 3am, the nurses took her for an hour so I could have a nap. It was the first sleep I had had since Sunday night, and here it was Wednesday morning!
The next day we packed up, had all the required shots and paperwork done, enjoyed a little visit from Travis' uncle Dan, and were out of the hospital at noon.
And the rest you know!
Labor and birth were exhausting, painful, and intense, but some of those sensations and moments were so incredible...a secret between us women and a connection I share with my child. And I would do it all again in a heart beat...in fact, I hope to do it all again in a couple of years!