A Baby Story

All right, I'm finally sitting down and writing about this baby thing. I've got a box of Jelly Bellys (Bellies? Whatever.) next to me, and I think they'll see me through this post.

I was having a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean) and my doctor didn't want me to go past my due date for various good reasons, so we were scheduled to be induced the evening of Monday the 9th if I didn't have the baby before then. Interestingly enough, I had another two and a half hours of false labor (contractions every 2-5 minutes lasting for over a minute). Everyone there thought I was probably in labor, but I showed them!

Um, sorry, it's late, and sleep has been a commodity lately. I'll get myself back on track.

Okay, Jesse's mom came out and watched Ian for us while I was in the hospital (which, can I say, was so great to not have to worry about. Thanks so much, Karen!) When I got to the hospital I checked in and they got me settled in a birthing room. They hooked me up to the belly moniters that measure your contractions and the baby's heartbeat, and did all the usual things they do--you know, ask you a million questions, take blood samples, etc.--and then they left me alone. Sort of. I didn't get a lot of sleep what with the beeping machines and bustling nurses and all.

They started pitocin at midnight and my doctor (who delivered 5 babies between the time I showed up and the time I had Kellan) would come in every once in a while to bump the dose up. I was fine until 7 a.m., when I all of a sudden got a huge contraction. I was standing up but had to drop to the floor. After that, the contractions were really hard and painful. They would last between a minute to a minute and a half and were every two to three minutes. In a normal labor, contractions like this would mean that you were in transition--the hardest part of labor--and that soon you could start pushing. This was discouraging, though, because I knew I was nowhere near being able to push. When I checked in I was at two centimeters, and I knew I wasn't farther than 5 centimeters.

The contractions were coming pretty consistently back to back, with no break between two contractions. So because I was laying in bed crying like a child, I got an epidural. They turned the pitocin off before they gave me the epidural and then turned it back on once the epidural had taken effect, but I started feeling the contractions through the epidural and they started going all crazy on me (the contractions, that is, not the nursing staff, although this one nurse was more than a little crazy, and another looked like a man and I suspect was actually crazy. Why else would you voluntarily walk around looking like a male weightlifter?). They said I was really sensitive to the pitocin, which I guess was true because even on the lowest dose possible things were not fun.

So, after the epidural my doctor examined me and told me I was at five centimeters. This was at 9 o'clock a.m. He broke my water and hooked us up to internal moniters. After that, we all hung out and relaxed, because hey, I had an epidural. At 11 o'clock I was dilated to nine centimeters and my doctor told me to call him when I felt the urge to push. About ten minutes later I thought I could push, but didn't feel like I had to push. I was pretty numb to all sensations, due in part to the pitocin making me feel like my insides were being eaten by piranhas, and also due to the fact that I had a button I could push to get more epidural juice. An hour later, I still felt the same tiny urge to push, so my doctor had me sit up and start softly pushing to work the baby down. He went and did a c-section, and then came back and had me start pushing hard. It took maybe 35 minutes of for-real pushing and Kellan was born. My doctor did a very good job of helping to delivery him slowly, so my recovery was very fast.

So, that's the delivery. At the hospital, whenever a nurse would hear I was doing a VBAC, they would say something along the lines of "Oh, we never have VBACs. Everyone wants a c-section." Crazies.

I wish I could have gone into labor without the pitocin because of the way my body reacted to it. I also wasn't crazy about all the belly moniters or the internal moniters, but I chose my doctor because he was careful, and I can't be annoyed at the induction or monitering because his caution was why I chose to go to him in the first place.

I do wish I hadn't had the epidural. It was kind of anticlimactic. I couldn't push effectively because I couldn't feel anything. I didn't even break a sweat when I was pushing, and when the baby was born I didn't feel any sense of accomplishment. It wasn't hard to push, and I wasn't in pain because of my epidural, so I didn't feel like I had worked for it. I do know that I needed the epidural, though. There was no way I could have had any shred of humanity left if I had to deal with those crazy contractions for the four hours it took to get to 10 centimeters.

So, there you have it. I'm really grateful to my doctor, and I'm glad I didn't have to have another c-section. VBACs are great.

Here are some pictures: