Sorry to leave you on another cliff hanger!
To say that I was a little disappointed to be only 6 cm dilated would be an understatement. The doctors (2 of them) started throwing around some scary words. "Failure to progress", "c-section prep", "pit drip".
With me over hearing their conversation I grew increasingly more and more worried about the outcome of this labor. I began to regret my decision to have an epidural as I had watched and read all the stories that say it leads to higher complications including c-section.
Finally, the doctors decided it was the best bet to go ahead and break my water and see if that helped things progress. They looked and thought maybe it was already partially broken but I had to question that, as I had never had any signs of leaking. So they went ahead and "broke the rest of my water".
I also stood up and spent the next few hours walking around the room and bouncing on the exercise ball. I have no idea if that was doing anything but I wanted to try everything to have a vaginal birth.
I felt like I was doing it and contractions were SO close together. Right on top of eachother and according to the monitor, very strong. I was excited to see how far along I was at 11:57 PM when the nurse came in to do a check. With her elbow fingers inside, her eyes got huge and she looked at me and said..."I don't think your water is broken. It's RIGHT there and bulging but you are still only 6 cm dilated."
EXCUSE ME?
So apparently when the doctor "broke my water", it didn't break at all. Which thinking back on now, doesn't surprise me because as I was doing my bouncing and walking, I never had any leakage. The nurse paged the doctors and they immediately came in. At first they denied but after checking, a fully intact water! They broke it (again) and immediately the water was EVERYWHERE. It was shortly after midnight at this point and Ryan and I looked at each other as we knew our baby was going to be born (one way or another) on February 11.
Everyone left us to rest for a couple more hours before the next check. Except at 12:45 am I decided to call the nurse in because for about 15 minutes I started to experience very painful contractions every minute apart. I tried to use the button that would administer more medicine but it didn't help at all.
The nurse came in and seemed confused. She manually administered more medicine and still no relief. She checked me and to our surprise I was 10 cm and that is why I was feeling pain. The nurse said that she wanted to wait a while before I started pushing so that my body would move the baby down and into a good position all on it's own. I had told her about the long pushing process with Sam and she said it wouldn't be like that if we waited.
The nurse stayed with me the whole time while we waited. The epidural started working again and I only had slight period like pains but lots of pressure. At 1:40 AM the nurse asked me to do a couple practice pushes but then during the first one asked me to stop. She frantically started to get the room ready and called the doctor saying it was time.
Two doctors came in but one left as another delivery was happening at the exact same time. The baby's heart rate started to drop similar to Sam's at this point in the birth canal. They put me on my side to push. I pushed with all of my might. The epidural was still doing it's job. I could still feel the pressure "down there" and the tightness so I knew when to push. I even could feel the baby as it came out but again, no pain. It was amazing!
The last 10 minutes happened so fast. Between the doctors coming in, everyone getting ready and then me pushing. I began to push and at one point didn't really know what baby body part had exited but yelled to Ryan, "WHAT IS IT?" He said, "Lindsay, it's a head. You have to keep pushing".
From start to finish, I pushed 6 times! So much easier then last time. It felt like time had frozen as the doctors and nurses waited for Ryan to declare the gender. I kept saying, "What is it? What is it?" before they could even put her on my chest. As they lifted the baby to my chest, Ryan had trouble getting out the words. And I was still anxiously waiting. Finally he gathered himself enough to say, "Babe, it's a girl!" It was 1:51 AM.
I couldn't believe it and the nurse standing at the other side of my head put her hand in mine as we had discussed the loss of our baby girl almost a year ago. Without even realizing at first, they had brought our sweet girl up to my chest to hold. I instantly felt like I had known her all my life.
Our girl stayed on my chest for over an hour. We stared at her, she started to nurse and it was the most blissful hour of my life. I had very minimal tearing and they only took 5 minutes to get me fixed up.
We were allowed to stay in the birthing room for 2 hours so I knew I eventually had to hand over our girl be weighed and measured.
Born: Sunday, February 11, 2018 at 1:51 AM
Weighing in at 8 pounds 4 ounces and 19 3/4" long with a head circumference of 35 cm.
We were too exhausted to start discussing her name. We had two favorites to choose from but wanted to spend more time with her and get some rest before deciding. We lucked out with a private room! Of course Ryan and baby girl dozed off to sleep and I just laid there in adrenaline fueled bliss. It was all over. The grieving, stress, anxiety, many appointments, sadness, happy moments and wondering what little person would be joining us! SHE was here, healthy and ours. In the silence of our hospital room, I quickly said a prayer of thanks. God knew exactly what we needed to heal from this last year, our Lainey.
xo
