And.....the birth story.
At 3am on the 28th, I woke up to pee and felt a tiny gush when I stood up. I wasn't contracting, but decided to stay up for a bit (and chat on FB and MDC, lmao).
Around 3:30, I started having a few light contractions every 5-7 minutes or so. They weren't bad, so around 4:30 I went back to bed with a chux pad under me just in case. The contractions continued, but I slept through most of them.
When we got up for the day, the leaking seemed to have stopped. We decided to go for a walk so we headed downtown to our favourite little park. Walked around for a while and I had a few good contractions. On the drive home, I felt a few small gushes but still wasn't completely sure it was amniotic fluid.
My husband called into work and during that time, around 11am, I started timing contractions and my water had *definitely* broken because I was gushing every few steps. They were around 4-5 minutes apart at that point, but still pretty much just strongly crampy. I did have to vocalize through them, but I could focus on other stuff between them.
Within an hour, they'd increased to every 3-4 minutes. We called my mother and she picked up DS around 1:30, and we headed for the hospital since the contractions had increased to every 1.5-2min. We got to the hospital at 2pm.
All 6 L&D rooms were occupied, so I waited in the waiting room/pantry for about a half hour. I rocked on the birth ball and bent over the counter and made deep, low sounds through the contractions.
Got into a room around 2:30. Hopped on the bed on my hands and knees for the contractions. I was around 5cm dilated at the initial check (didn't want many checks - but I was okay with a couple here and there.) Sometime between 3:00 and 3:30 I hit a wall and asked for an epidural. My mother arrived shortly after this. They took blood to check platelets and I just keep vocalizing with the contractions. At that point, they were one on top of the other with only a few seconds break. At 4pm, I felt like pushing, so I did. The nurse wanted to check me and when she did she found I was fully dilated (I could have told her that, given how strong the urge to push was and the fact that I felt better when I pushed.) She called in the OB.
OB comes in, starts gowning up, and I got halfway onto my side and back (the position my body wanted to be in) and pushed again because I needed to. The doctor was still getting her gown on when the nurse took a look and she goes "Uh, Dr C we have a head on the perineum." They tried to coach my pushing, but I ignored them.
Three strong pushes (12min total), and she was completely out. She went right on my chest and I worked at getting her latched.
I had two tiny 1st degree tears. No stitches - they seem to be mostly healed already. Had trouble with the placenta and due to a history of placenta issues, I agreed to be put on syntocin. They ended up having to do a manual removal (HOLY COW THAT HURTS!) which I did allow because of the accreta I had with my son.
Charlie has been nursing very well. Her bilirubin was a little high so we ended up stuck at the hospital FAR longer than I wanted.
From the point that it was *Definitely* labour was only just over 5 hours, and until I hit transition, I was doing really well managing on my own. I'd read that a lot of women hit a wall when they enter that period, and I think that's what I did. I feel great, though. Better than I did at a week postpartum with my son.
Her on the bilibed our second night there. I *really* disliked this, and she did too.
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Our family.
Of course, I look like crap, but I felt great!
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