Megan's birth

On the three month anniversary of Megan's birth, I figured I put the story down in writing.

All through January, I had been pretty impatient to get the baby OUT, so when my OB said I could have membrane stripping after 38 weeks, I jumped at the chance and had this done Friday the 21st. Though I had been warned this could be quite painful, I found it no worse than a getting a Pap smear. By lunch that day I felt a little qeasy, but I hadn't had any contractions. Still, I was so certain I was going to go into labor that weekend, I left sticky notes with directions and information all over my desk and sent e-mails to everyone at work about what needed to be covered "just in case."

To live up to this blog's billing of "better than a Mexican soap opera," (thanks Staci!) I'll also mention that Mac and I employed a recommended (by the OB, no less!) labor inducing technique I like to call "hair of the dog." (wink, wink) I had my first contraction around 10 pm.

We decided it would be a good idea to try and get some sleep, but I found this quite impossible as my contractions came just close enough together to wake me right as I was nodding off. Around 11:00 we decided to watch a movie - Along Came Polly. I had a tough time concentrating even though the movie required very little thought. By 1:30, I was pacing the hall and at 2:00, I made my first call to the hospital. My contractions weren't regular at all - one three minutes apart, the next twelve and they only lasted around 30 seconds. Because I didn't fit into the five-minutes-apart-lasting-60-seconds category, the nurse advised me to take a hot bath and drink lots of water to see if my labor was really progressing.

I filled the bath and layed in it for an hour. At first my contractions died down, but then they were back with a vengeance. I tried re-filling the bath with hot water, but the contractions were still coming strong. I went and laid in bed for a while, but when I thought I couldn't take it any longer, I called the hospital. It took us a long time to get there since I was moving so slowly and we had to be admitted through the ER. I finally made it up to L&D at 5:05 Saturday morning.

On my first check I was five centimeters dilated. I remember thinking this was perfect as I wanted to stay home as long as possible and be able to get an epidural as soon as I arrived, which usually requires 4 cm dilation. Everything was going according to plan!

But the nurses figured I still had a long time to go, so they dallied getting in an IV, running some fluids and calling the anesthesiologist. 40 minutes later the anesthesiology resident was finally explaining the procedure to me, but I was already at 8 cm! He came back a few minutes later to say the staff anesthesiologist was busy - it'd take him 15-20 minutes to get there. I immediately said the resident could do it without the staff present - just get it in fast!

The OB resident came in to check me again as he was setting up for the epidural. "You're fully dilated and you are starting to have a bit more bleeding. I think you should get this baby out now." I calmly explained how I'd be more than happy to comply once the epidural was in. She then explained that it would take 20 minutes to get the epidural in and another 20 minutes for it to take effect. She thought I best start pushing immediately without the epidural. That's when I had a mental lapse:
"I need an epidural! I'm not strong enough to do this! I hate pain!"

That's when Mac and the OB team ganged up on me and told me I needed to suck it up and get the delivery over with (ok not really, everyone was really great, especially Mac, but the consensus was no epidural). But with the next contraction I really felt like I needed to push and so the anesthesilogy resident started packing up the unused supplies. The OB resident tried to be encouraging,"this baby is really low; I think you can get her out with three pushes." She was wrong; I needed four. At 6:16, less than 10 minutes after the start of pushing and only 70 minutes after getting to the hospital, Megan Elizabeth was born.

Surprisingly, the delivery wasn't that bad (or at least my memory of it isn't that bad). Don't get me wrong, I don't plan to go natural again, but I managed. The miserable part was the aftermath. Unfortunately, since Megan came so fast her head didn't really have time to undergo "molding." The upside to that is Megan had a beautiful head; on the downside I needed a lot of stitches. And since I wasn't numb, this meant a lot of lidocaine injections. This was not fun and took at least another 70 minutes for them to finish up, but at least I had a beautiful baby to hold while they were doing it (next time I hope to have a beautiful baby and an epidural!).

We then hung out in the delivery room till 10 o'clock or so before heading up to our room. We originally had to share a room, but by 4:00 we got moved into a private room. We had the option of going home Sunday or Monday but we chose to stay around until Monday - one more day we didn't have to cook for ourselves. We got home Monday morning to start learning how to live as parents - so far we think we are doing ok!