Hi all!
Baxter Davis H was born yesterday, Nov 1 at 1:36pm, weighing in at 9#7oz and 21" long. The labor started slow but picked up pace, and I did get the natural birth we wanted. A few snags at the end though, story below.
My water broke at 9pm on Oct 30th but my contractions didn't really start becoming regular until 2am on Nov 1.
They were coming around 7 minutes apart and weren't very strong, but I had a few random strong ones that suggested I might want to make the drive to the hospital to meet the midwife since it was a 45 minute drive. We got there around 515am. She checked me and said I was 3cm and almost completely effaced and let me labor for a while on my own. She suggested after a few hours that I might want to hop in the tub and try some nipple stimulation with the hand held spray to try to move things along. Did that, and they still weren't all that intense or getting closer, so she suggested a warm water enema. Now I've never had one and was very hesitant/embarrassed by the whole thing but it seemed to work. She had checked me right before, and I was a little more than 4cm but she stretched me to 5cm. The contractions picked up quickly after that (it wasn't all that bad to be honest) and started coming less than 5 minutes apart and became rather strong.
The next thing I knew I felt very warm and needed to start removing clothing, I could not get comfortable and everything seemed super intense. Transition. It was hard to keep up with everything, I was sore and having really sharp nervey pain right on the pubic bone. She noticed I seemed pushy so she checked me quickly and said I was a little over 9cm and there was a lip of my cervix I needed to get over his head...she asked me to push gently (impossible) and she would help me along. This was at 1:32pm. Once I started pushing, I couldn't stop - so through one contraction I pushed the cervix, his head out and then his body.
Unfortunately, when his head was born, he had a VERY tight nuchal cord. It was stretched thin and was white. When she tried to remove it from his head, it snapped. It become urgent to push him out immediately and thankfully I was able to in one more push. He wasn't breathing and had a very low heartbeat, so he was taken from me while many nurses worked on him.
I birthed the placenta only about 5-10 minutes later easily, by myself on the bed and watched while they worked on Baxter. My husband was crying at this point and it was kind of intense. I noticed I started feeling a lot of pain, and suddenly felt contractions so bad I needed to moan through them. They got so bad with seconds I found myself laying on my side screaming. When the midwife came back over to me she realized my uterus had filled with blood and they couldn't stop the bleeding. It took 4 IVs and numerous injections to stop the bleeding. I lost 3 pints of blood. It was pretty harrowing, but after a few hours we were reunited and Baxter started nursing and hasn't really stopped since.
Because of everything and adding in the 40 hours of having broken waters, we weren't able to leave the hospital like we had planned. Which was OK by me, I was absolutely exhausted and weak and didn't mind having meals brought to me in bed. We were able to come home this afternoon and we're both doing well.
Thanks for all your support you gave to me in my water breaking thread! I couldn't help but think of the irony of working hard to have a natural birth and then still ending up with pitocin, cycotec, stadol, IVs etc after the birth. A little disappointing but it all worked out and we're both safe and sound at home, so I really have nothing to complain about. Here he is...he looks so much like my first son. We're all in love with him already.
Edited by finnegansmom - 11/2/12 at 5:56pm
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