(Written April 2011)
(warning: if you don't like the details... don't read)
I had
plans to birth Lena naturally. ;) I took
a birthing class and felt pretty prepared, I had written a birth plan for my
doctor and nurses so that they would know my wants of doing natural and being
able to walk around between contractions, etc… to help.
The night before Lena arrived we went to
Chipotle with Randy’s family who were visiting for Andy’s 4th
birthday, I thought for sure I had at least another week before Lena would
decide to come. Well, the thing I least
expected happened and my water broke (I had heard that less than 5% of women
have their water break before labor) at about 2:00am (June 23, 2010), I was
sleeping and felt a couple of mild contractions, but at the time, I didn’t know
they were contractions, I figured I was just having gas pains… then I thought I
felt wet around my legs, then I thought “you’re kidding yourself Olga, it can’t
be happening now…” and I fell back a
sleep for another hour or so… then I got up to use the bathroom and realized
that it was really happening, my water had broken! I called out to Randy several times until he
woke up, “Um, I think my water broke”
and he said “Are you sure?” he didn’t want to make a trip to the
hospital for nothing at 3:00am and I said, “… pretty sure…” so he got up to see and
agreed with me. I got some new clothes
on and a towel to sit on in the car (our bags and carseat were already packed
and ready to go). I called the hospital
as we left the house letting them know that my water broke and that we were
headed in… We made it there about half an hour later and the whole time I was
sitting in the car just trying to comprehend that the day was finally here,
this was really going to happen… it boggled my mind. J
When we
got to the hospital the nurse did a test to make sure that my water had
actually broken, the first test came out negative so she asked to “take a look”
saying that it’s possible that I might have just “peed my pants” and I thought,
“I’m pretty sure that’s not what it is”
anyway, after taking a look she
said, “oh yeah, it definitely looks like your water broke” and she took a
“better” sample to test. They asked if I
had had any contractions and I mentioned that I felt a couple when I was
sleeping, but haven’t had one since (it had been about 2 hours). The nurse called my doctor and said that
since I wasn’t contracting on my own they were going to induce labor. Now that I look back, I’ve heard that you can
wait 24 hours to see if you start going into labor on your own before they need
to induce labor, but the doctor immediately had them strapped me to the bed,
hook me up to monitors and IV and told me I couldn’t eat anything (going
against all of my requests in my birth plan).
They then put me on petossin to induce me. I haven’t experienced any different, but from
what I hear, Petossin makes contractions worse than “normal”
contractions. At first they didn’t seem
too bad, Randy would look at the monitor screen and notice that I was having
one and say “it doesn’t even look like you’re in pain” and I said “these aren’t
too bad, I can handle this”. About an
hour later I wasn’t progressing how they wanted me to so they upped my
petossin… this is when the contractions started getting really bad. It was really hard, but I listened to some
relaxing music I had prepared and tried to breath and relax through each
contraction. At this point I was sitting
on a birthing ball and leaning back on Randy… with each contraction he would
talk me through it, but it was really hard… I thought I had high pain
tolerance, but this was worse than I had expected for sure. After about one or two hours of this, the
nurse came in and mentioned that I still wasn’t progressing enough, so they
upped the petossin again. I thought the
contractions were really bad before… well now they were almost unbearable. I would get scared every time I started to
feel another one coming it was so bad. I
kept asking Randy, “remind me why I am not getting drugs?” and he just kept encouraging and saying that
I could do it and that I was doing great.
Well, they came in to check to see how dilated I was (they can’t check
as often when your water has already broken from risk of infection). Well, after all of that really hard labor and
contractions, I thought that I would be more than half way there, but I was
only dilated to a 5 (this was at about 2:00pm I think). I went on about another hour with the hard
contractions… I was almost in tears from the pain and from knowing I still had
so much further to go so I finally broke down and received an Epidural. The Epidural takes longer than one or two minutes
to put in and you have to be completely still… meaning I would have to be
completely still through one of my contractions. They had me sit on the edge of the bed and
hold on to/hug Randy. They started
putting it in and one of my contractions hit, I knew that if I moved that it
could mess it up and cause problems… that was part of the reason I wanted to go
natural… so I willed myself to hold completely still and was successful. Oh the relief! It was so wonderful! For the next hour and a half I SLEPT through
my contractions! The nurse checked me
soon after I received my Epidural and I was at a 7, wow, I was so glad I got it
I don’t think I could hold out that much longer to get to a 10 (That was about
4:00 or 5:00pm). Well, after my nap I
noticed that I could start feeling my contractions again, I did not want that… I thought if I got the epidural, might as well make sure it was working... I had been pushing the button (that delivers the meds), but my feeling was still
coming back. I called the nurse and she
came in to check everything… I guess that the epidural had run out or that it
wasn’t even delivering it to my body when I pressed the button. The anesthesiologist came in and told me that
he nurse didn’t know what she was talking about, and gave me an extra dose
through my IV… I still don’t know what the true story was, I just knew that it
was starting to hurt again. At around
6:30pm my mother-in-law and sister-in-law decided that they wanted to just come
to the hospital to ask the people at the desk how I was doing (out of
curiousity) but the people at the desk were not allowed to share any
information and sent them to our room.
We knew that we didn’t want anyone but us (Randy and I) and the doctor
and nurse in the room during labor and delivery so before the nurse let them in
she asked them who they were and came to tell us. Well, me being in pain and not in the best
mood didn’t want them to come in so Randy went out to let them know how things
were going. During that time the nurse
checked me again and guess what! It was
it, I was at the 10! The nurse went out
to tell Randy and Jessie (his sister) knew how important that was and told him
to get in there and her and her mom left to wait for the call. The nurse called the doctor and we worked on
some “practice pushes”. I only had to
push for about 15 minutes before Lena arrived.
In fact, they told me to stop pushing so as to not chance having the
baby before the doctor arrived. A while
ago Randy mentioned that he didn’t really want the watch when the baby came out
but as I was pushing he got so excited and couldn’t resist looking. He told me, “I see her head, I see her head”
when she crowned and a couple of pushes later
Lena arrived at 8:12pm on Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010. I could not believe it. She was here! They placed her on my chest skin-to-skin
while I delivered the after birth and Randy cut the cord. I then worked on getting her to nurse for the
first time which went pretty well. They
then proceeded to weigh and measure her and do all of the other tests that they
do. It’s so crazy to think about how new
I was at it and how much has happened since then. Life is amazing and I am
so grateful to be able to take part in its creation. I’m so grateful to be the mother of Lena
Elizabeth Williams and am excited for the years ahead of us.
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