So she is finally here! Thursday morning I woke up just crampy and really uncomfortable. I kept having to get out of bed and work through these contractions. In all honesty, I wasn't sure if they were contractions, but they were pretty close to how people describe contractions. I desperately did not want to be one of those women who showed up at the hospital sure she was in labor to find out that nothing is going on. I decided to stay home, I was able to sleep between episodes, and I just felt too crappy to try to make it through the day. I weathered the contractions all morning, but they were about 20 minutes apart and never came to more. Finally around 11ish they went away. S called to see the progress and I told him they were ended. I still felt so tired and crappy, so after I got off the phone with S, I went upstairs and took a nap.
I woke up maybe 2 and 1/2 hours later feeling really, really awake- which was an odd way for me to come out of nap. I got up and instantly felt like I had peed my pants. I looked down and found myself covered in slime and blood. I stared at this mess for a brief second trying to process before I scooted over to the bathtub- did not make a mess at all! I called S and told him I thought my water broke. I was really happy, because my water breaking meant 2 things- 1. we would not have to be induced, and 2. that we would definitely have a baby in 24 hours. There was no turning back now. S, on the other hand was frantic. I could just feel him getting more and more riled as he tried to process and figure out what we were going to do. It was super funny. I was so calm and he was so not. I told him to head home and I was going to take a shower- he really didn't think that was a good idea, but I knew we had time.
The drive over to the hospital was kind of bizarre. In movies there is always crazy traffic, screaming, and chaos. Our experience was the exact opposite. We had time to feed the cat, lock up the house, make sure we had everything and head out. The weather was mild, it was mid-day so there was no traffic and we got there easily. We checked in, verified that my water had broken and headed up to the birthing suite.
My labor had started up again, but it was pretty mild. The pain was bearable and we just kind of watched movies and chatted about. I made my wishes- to not have meds- known and we settled in for the ride. The only drama on the horizon was that we were only at about 3 cm at this point, and our doctor had made the decision that we needed to be at 7 cm by 6 otherwise we would need to begin a pitocin drip. I really wanted to avoid that, but I could only follow my body's lead. Thankfully everything picked up. The pain was really quite bad at this point and I have to say I couldn't believe how bad it was. The most pain of the whole experience was trying to get from 7 to 10 cm dilated. There were at least two hours of excruciating pain that resulted in very little change. I could not believe I was in that much agony for next to no progress, but was resolute to not have any pain meds. Poor S was really in a bad spot, and I would not want to ever witness what he did. I can't imagine how awful it would be to just watch the person you love get tortured and be unable to do anything about it. As it was, I was in so much pain that it was all I could do to focus on what I needed to do. It was this roller coaster of pain where I would wait out the period of insane pain and then wait for the small window of relief that came after. I totally understood how the body's ability to give you a little bit of release after the pain made it possible to keep going in the face of such misery. It was those little windows that kept me going- and if I had had to be on pitocin drip- and not recieve those- I doubt I would have been able to make it without drugs.
Finally we reached the worst part. I was 9 1/2 cm dilated, and my body was really wanting me to push. The problem was that since there was still a little bit of my cervix left to retract, the pressure of my pushing on it was making it harder to get to 10. So my body both wanted me to push, but needed me to not. It was insane and possibly the worst pain I have ever known. It was early morning at this point and I was begining to loose energy. (I was so glad I had rested in the morning) Finally we got to a place where I could begin pushing. One of the nurses helped to manually push my cervix back and we got to work. I don't know what is wrong with me. I guess I had been so focused on getting to 10 that I had not spent a lot of time thinking about what happened after that. In the movies, pushing was always a short little ordeal, and I guess I figured that mine would be similar. However, it was not. I pushed for an 1 and 1/2. Now for me, pushing was less pain than the earlier contractions, but it was far more exhausting as they wanted you to hold your breathe and push for a series of 3 ten second pushes. At this point I was sooooo tired that I was in the bed, and in the worst position possible for delivering a baby, but I was just to exhausted to try any other way. I pushed and pushed and pushed. The people in the room went from 2, to 3 to 5 helpful faces all staring at my blood-red face and watching me try to push this baby out.
I honestly didn't think I was going to make it at that point. The head was taking forever getting out from under my pelvic bone and I had this horrible thought that I would do all this work and then at the last minute have to get a c-section. However, the baby finally came out at 4:24 am and this mound of baby was plunked on my stomach. I could not believe how big she was. I did not actually get to see or hear the baby for a while. She had been breathing since she came out, but I did not know that. The baby was taken to the side and examined while I finished passing the placenta. It took maybe a minute or two before I heard her yelling and was able to see her.
All at once things were coming to me. S saying how awesome she looked, the nurse reading the scale at 8 pounds 9 ounces, the doctor showing me the placenta. It was all so sureal. I could not believe that I was done, that I was a mother, that there was another life on the planet that we had created. I was exhausted, happy, and in a daze. Finally things started to slow down, people left us alone, and I could stare at my baby.
Anya is simply lovely, but even now, I find myself just looking at her. She is such a mix of the two of us, that we find it hard to say who she looks like. She has a mass of black hair, dark blue/brown eyes, and a fairly dark skin color. It seems like every day her face and head change a little and I am always eager to see what she will look like today. There is so much more to process about the hospital stay, breast feeding and family, but for now we are so happy and content with the new member of our family.
On a different note, I must say that I am extremely proud of the work that I did to get Anya into the world, but I am also extremely grateful that we were able to have the birth that we wanted. Many people don't, and we were prepared to do what we needed to to have a healthy baby, but we got do exactly what we planned, and that was such a blessing.
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