The Birth Post

WARNING: This post may contain graphic content that is not suitable for all readers, like anyone who might ever be contemplating childbirth. Just say no. :)

Alright, here goes. I'm finally ready to post McKinley's birth story. This is mostly for my own recollection so feel free to close your browser right now if you don't want the details! And just so we know where I'm coming from, I have to quickly recap Madison's birth, which was basically entirely uneventful. I mean, of course all the stuff leading up to it was insane and the 43 days after it were insane, but the actual birth part was pretty easy. So much so that I hadn't really given much thought to the labor process this time around. I had contractions for three straight nights with Madison and finally convinced a nurse to check me around 7 a.m. Sunday morning (CLICK HERE if that doesn't make sense and you want a better explanation). Sure enough, I was dilated to a 4 and it was baby time. I got my epidural about a half hour later and hung out watching basketball games and pressing my little epidural booster button until 12:30 p.m. when I was fully dilated. Because I couldn't feel ANYTHING below my waist, the nurse explained to me how to push, and three pushes later, Madison was here. Easy peasy.

Okay, fast forward to McKinley. I had a doctor's appointment on Wednesday (May 23) when I was 36 weeks and four days. He said I was already dilated to a 2 and 50% effaced. He said some women walk around like that for two or three weeks but he was predicting I wouldn't be one of them and would have her sooner rather than later. Hooray. Thursday morning, I noticed a little bit of leaking that continued periodically throughout the day, nothing crazy, just some occasional moisture. Definitely nothing like what I experienced when my water broke with Madison. I knew McKinley was extremely low and pushing on my bladder so I figured it was just incontinence and went about my day.

Friday was the much-anticipated pool opening at our apartment complex so we spent a glorious two hours swimming in the morning, something I had been looking forward to for months!! We got back home around noon, put Madison down for her nap and jumped in the shower to rinse off. As I stepped out around 12:30, I had my first contraction. I knew right away what it was. I told Jordan about it and was mostly just curious to see what was going to happen, if this was really going to lead to something or not. We started timing and discovered that I was having regular contractions about 12-13 minutes apart. But they were totally manageable and weren't getting any closer together throughout the afternoon. My plan all along was to labor as much as possible at home (the hospital is only about 5 minutes from our house) and only leave when my contractions were five minutes apart. Since these weren't even getting close to that, I wasn't particularly convinced anything was really going to happen. I called my doctor's office and was told that he wasn't in that day and wasn't on call that weekend so it was totally up to me if I wanted to go to the hospital or not. Thanks for the help. I stayed pretty relaxed for most of the afternoon and just hung out with Jordan and kept an eye on the clock.

Finally around 5 p.m., the contractions picked up to about 7 minutes apart and I decided we should just go to the hospital and see if anything was happening. I already had a plan in place for Madison that involved her staying with friends during the day with kids her age to play with and then having our very good friends who live across the street from us stay at our apartment overnight with her so she could still sleep in her own bed, etc. if we ended up delivering at night. Dealing with Madison was actually my biggest concern about the delivery since we don't have family around so I had tried to be as prepared as possible so I wouldn't have to stress about her well-being. I knew my friend (whose name is also Jen) was just getting off work so I called her to make sure she and her husband could just come over when she got home. This is where we hit our first snag. Since it was Memorial Day weekend, our friends had decided to take a spur-of-the-moment trip to visit family in another state. She had even gotten off work early so they could hit the road and were at least an hour out when we called (they still won't tell me how far away they actually were). I of course told them it was okay and we'd just make other plans, but as soon as I hung up the phone, I burst into tears. Madison had never been apart from me overnight and had never spent a night in any other home except ours and grandparents'. I had no idea what we were going to do with her for the night and whether or not she was going to be okay. I knew we had lots of friends who would take her overnight but I was extremely worried about how she would react. As Jordan and I started going through names of people who could take her, I was getting more and more stressed. Then our friends called back and said that they were on their way back. I couldn't believe it! I couldn't believe they would do that for us!! I can't say enough about how awesome they are! I felt incredibly selfish and guilty that they were missing out on their weekend but they insisted and I am SOOOOOOO grateful! We dropped Madison off at another friend's house for a couple hours until Jen and her husband got back in town and headed to the hospital. I was relieved that I thought my biggest problem was solved!!

We arrived at the hospital around 6 p.m. and were taken to the labor and delivery triage unit so they could check me and decide if I was going to be admitted. By this time, my contractions were coming every five minutes so I was pretty sure this was for real but I was still a little anxious they would send me home and all our craziness with Madison would be wasted. The verdict? I was dilated to five centimeters. And my water was broken.

Um, what?? Yeah. Turns out my water broke Thursday morning and I didn't know it. What. An. Idiot. It wasn't anything like the first time, no gushing, no constant flow. How was I supposed to know?! Thankfully, my experience with Madison taught me a lot about this particular subject, namely that a "dry birth" is actually a total myth since the body continually produces amniotic fluid and the only real risk comes from the baby being exposed to germs and bacteria, which could lead to infection. Like the type of germs and bacteria one might pick up while spending two hours in a public pool. Oops. So not only did I have to explain to this nurse (and then the doctor) that my water had probably been broken for about 36 hours but that I had unknowingly exposed my unborn child to who knows what in the pool. We're off to a great start.

I quickly got settled in my delivery room and met my nurse, Amy, and the man who would be delivering McKinley in lieu of my doctor, who had the weekend off. In order to protect the guilty, we'll call him Dr. W. He wasted no time in making me feel like the scum of the earth. "Don't you know you're supposed to come to the hospital when your water breaks?" Yes, thank you. Amy got me started on an IV with a saline solution, which I had to have before I could get my epidural, and a broad spectrum of antibiotics to counteract my pool escapade. I was still having contractions, which were getting stronger and closer together, and was just praying for that saline bag to drain so I could get some relief. Then Dr. W. delivered the first bomb of the night. "How would you like an enema?" Some words of advice for all you future child-bearers: If your OB ever asks you about having an enema, don't just assume he's joking. Protest. LOUDLY. Turns out Dr. W. had decided he needed to place a catheter in my uterus (not my bladder, folks, my uterus) to deliver fluids that would flush out whatever nasty germs may have gotten in as a result of my broken sac. Since McKinley was already on her way in the birth canal, this meant he was going to have to slide his fist up past her head into my uterus. A few days after the fact, Jordan showed me how much of Dr. W.'s arm disappeared. All I could say was that I was VERY aware. Seriously, the most painful thing I had ever experienced up to that point in my life. And of course, it didn't stay in the first time so he had to do it twice. During a contraction. OWWWWWWWWWWW. Let's not talk about that anymore.

Shortly after this (and yes, I'm still waiting for my epidural), Dr. W. comments on my somewhat elevated blood pressure. Why yes, Dr. W., my blood pressure is kinda high. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the excruciating ridiculousness you just put me through and the fact that I've been having regular contractions for the past nine hours. Can I please just have my epidural now?!?!? Then Dr. W. grabbed my right leg, tapped my knee and pounded on my heel. This is when all hell broke lose. The good doctor immediately proclaimed that I had toxemia and that my life could be in danger. What?? I've never even heard of toxemia (turns out it's a form of eclampsia). But evidently I had it (Dr. W. thinks I had it as early as Wednesday at my OB appointment and faulted my doctor for not catching it. He also said that there probably would've been serious complications if I had've gone full-term with it undiagnosed. Jordan still thinks I never had it and he's just a quack!) Things went very fast from there. Amy got me hooked up on magnesium sulfate to control my blood pressure and counteract the toxemia and warned me it would make me feel awful. It didn't disappoint - it made me feel extremely nauseous and hot, like I was burning up on the inside. Dr. W. also ordered a fetal ultrasound to see if McKinley had been affected at all. All I remember from that was that I threw up on the ultrasound tech. Not my finest moment.

Finally, around 10 p.m., things were finally settling down. I had made it through my saline, my antibiotics and the first round of the mag, and the ultrasound showed nothing wrong. I had only one thing on my mind - my epidural!!!!!! Gimme, gimme, gimme. My contractions were coming long and strong through all the above drama and I just wanted relief. Amy finally came in to tell me that the anesthesiologist was here. Hooray! She just wanted to check me real quick first ... and I was an 8. She then gave me a choice - get the drugs or just go for it. I didn't hesitate - shoot me up. In no world had I or would I ever choose to go natural. She, being awesome, just said "I'm with you. Let's just get it done fast before it's too late. And we're not going to tell Dr. W. because he'll say no." Sweetness. Five minutes later, I was feeling good. And, what do you know, my blood pressure returned to normal too.

At this point, it's a few minutes after 10 and I'm dilated to an 8. Jordan and I are both expecting things to go quickly. He even posted on Facebook that it would be anytime. I thought it was ironic that I was 36 weeks and 6 days, and assuming I didn't make it to midnight, McKinley would technically be premature. I have impatient girls - I have no idea where they get it :) And so we sat and waited. And waited. And waited some more. No progress. Hmm, not what I was hoping for. But oh well. Then, shortly after midnight, a funny thing happened. I felt a contraction. That's not supposed to happen. Then I felt another one. And another one. What the heck?!?! Where's my booster button?!?! I got Amy in there fast and asked for another dose of epidural stuff. She smiled sadly, patted my shoulder and said no. Turns out that because of the magnesium sulfate, I could only have a limited amount of the epidural medicine. And I had already gone through it. She decided to check me in the hopes that I was fully dilated and could push before it completely wore off, but found that I had only progressed to a nine in the previous two hours. She explained that this also was a result of the mag, which could slow dilation (but not contractions of course).

So what you're telling me is that I'm stuck at a nine with no more epidural. Great. Fantastic. And just who, may I ask, is going to push this baby out because it certainly isn't going to be me! I tried to take the news in stride since there was nothing anyone could do about it, but I was beginning to have serious doubts about whether or not I could actually go through with this. I was becoming more and more panicked that I wasn't going to be able to push her out with all the pain and was starting to have serious thoughts about a C-section. I was almost yelling through each contraction and kept pleading with Jordan to just help me. Poor guy. I know what we go through as women is crazy, but it must also be hard on our husbands to see us in so much pain and know there's nothing they can do about it.

This was my life for the next 90 minutes. Who has ever heard of being stuck at a nine for 90 minutes?! The pain was predictably ridiculous. At one point, I was sure that I HAD to push, but Amy checked me and insisted I was still only a nine. Ugh. Then, finally, around 1:30 a.m., I informed her that I didn't care what she said, I was pushing. She checked me again and mercifully announced me complete. Then she promptly told me I couldn't push yet because they had to go get the doctor. Um, yeah right. How do I not push?!?! I have to push or I'm literally going to explode. The pressure combined with the pain was unlike anything I have ever experienced or ever want to experience again. It's hard to describe, but I could feel every nerve ending I have in that region to the point where I had a perfect mental picture of exactly what was happening at every moment.

Once Dr. W. returned, I seriously got to work. He made me hold my own legs and lie flat on my back, both of which really annoyed me and I felt hindered the effectiveness of my pushes, but whatever. I pushed as hard as I could while Amy counted to 10 and was getting good results, but the pain was so insane!! I started to yell while I was pushing because it helped me deal with the pain, but Dr. W. told me I was wasting my energy yelling and needed to focus that into my pushing. ARGH!! It was seriously the hardest thing I've ever done. I can't even describe it. The morning after she was born, I had several dark splotches on my face and neck; when I asked my doctor about them, he told me they were broken blood vessels from pushing so hard. Crazy! Thankfully, despite it feeling like hours, I only had to push for 10 minutes. And then she was here, born Saturday May 26 at 1:40 a.m., exactly 37 weeks!

The immediate feeling of relief was incredible. Suddenly all the pressure was just gone! I couldn't believe it. In fact, the first words out of my mouth were "I can't believe I did it." And then of course my thoughts were all about McKinley. She didn't cry at first so I started asking if she was okay while trying in vain to sit up and see her. Fortunately, she was fine and I couldn't see her yet because Jordan was busy cutting the cord! He said no at first but then decided he wanted to do it :) They took her to the warmer right after and started cleaning her up so I still didn't get to hold her right away but I never took my eyes off her, which was still a victory for me. Then Jordan brought her over to me and I got to hold her! No waiting for hours this time!!!! She was so incredible, and I fell in love with her immediately!

The four weeks since then have gone WAY too fast! She has already changed so much, which is both fun and sad. But I love her more and more each day. Before she was born, Madison was my world and I didn't know how I could love another baby as much as I love my cute girl. Now, I could never live without her! I'm so blessed to have two beautiful girls, and I love being a Mom :)

First Photo

Hello sweet girl!! We did it!!!

The morning after. If you look closely, you can see some of the splotches on my neck and face

Here she is!