Labor started early Sunday April 6th around 6am with contractions and bloody show. At that point we still didn't have a car seat for David and I was starting to freak out. Things weren't too intense so I tried a number of things to get rest and see if this was the real thing or not. Through that I worked on some things and managed to get things sorted out to go pick up a car seat. I had contractions all through that day, but they were still pretty easy to deal with and I could keep going on with life. By late that evening the contractions did pick up in intensity, but they didn't get closer together. They were coming between 5-10 minutes apart and kept me up all night long aside from a little dozing when I could between contractions. By 4am Monday April 7th the contractions were getting more intense so that I could not sleep between them, but they were still pretty far apart. I still wasn't sure at that point if I was in active labor, but I was exhausted and ready to get checked out to see if anything was happening. I didn't want to go through the ER so I waited until close to 6am to give my midwife a call about coming in. I couldn't get through to leave a message with her message service so I called the Woman's floor at the hospital and after talking with a nurse there got things ready to go in.
We got to the hospital a bit before 7am and went right to the Women's floor. On the way up I told dh that I would cry if the contractions didn't seem to be doing much. We got upstairs where they checked me out in a triage room and to my great relief I was at least 4cm with a paper thin cervix as the nurse put it. They moved me to the largest room on the floor shortly after that as both Annette and Joseph were there with us. We had planned that the children would stay at home with my mom, but David was in a hurry and my mom's flight wasn't for a couple more days. My midwife came in to check on me and see how things were going as we were getting things settled in to the room. After hearing about my exhausting day and night she offered to break my water to move things along, but I declined saying I'd rather wait. I labored through the morning mostly in sitting up in bed trying to rest when I could between contractions. The L&D floor was empty that morning with only myself and another lady there. In addition to the normal nurses there were also student nurses on the floor so there were plenty of people if we ever needed anything. Around 11:30 my midwife's backup ob came in to check on me as my blood pressure readings were consistently very high. At that point she broke my water and I went from 5-6cm to 9cm in minutes. My nurse called my midwife at that point and my midwife was in my room shortly after that. It took another half hour for me to be ready to push. The nurse kept talking and wanting my midwife to do something, but she just sat out of the way and waited like I needed her to. When I started feeling an urge to push I just looked at my midwife and she jumped up to get her scrubs on. At that point my contractions were still about 4 minutes apart so there was a lot of waiting going on. When I started pushing we lowered the end of the bed and I managed to lift my rear off the bed right at the edge. As exhausted as I was at that point it worked out really well. It took several pushes and a good bit of time with the waiting between contractions for David to be born. He emerged at 12:26pm and was brought straight up to my stomach as I had asked. As they were wiping him up on my stomach they noticed a good bit of dark meconium. Because of that instead of waiting for the cord to stop pulsing they cut the cord after just a couple minutes. He was then moved beside my bed to the warmer to be checked out. He also had not cried enough for the nursery nurse so she was holding air near him. After being checked out his Apgars were 8 and 9.
When the nursery nurse brought David over to me to nurse she was trying to help me get him latched on. Her idea of help wasn't that helpful as she was trying to shove the back of his head towards me. I told her to leave us alone and told the IBCLC of her "help" later on that day. After she stopped trying to help I was able to get David to latch on and he nursed well. He does have a tiny mouth and recessed chin which makes nursing more interesting and latching difficult at times. David also ended up needing to have a couple tests run as I was GBS + he had bruises for several days following all those pokes. I came out of the delivery rather well with only a couple skid marks to show for it. Even my swelling was pretty much gone by the time I left the hospital. The one thing that didn't get better was my blood pressure. The numbers were high enough my midwife had her backup ob check on me several times and I am on blood pressure medication at least until my 6 week checkup.
We got to the hospital a bit before 7am and went right to the Women's floor. On the way up I told dh that I would cry if the contractions didn't seem to be doing much. We got upstairs where they checked me out in a triage room and to my great relief I was at least 4cm with a paper thin cervix as the nurse put it. They moved me to the largest room on the floor shortly after that as both Annette and Joseph were there with us. We had planned that the children would stay at home with my mom, but David was in a hurry and my mom's flight wasn't for a couple more days. My midwife came in to check on me and see how things were going as we were getting things settled in to the room. After hearing about my exhausting day and night she offered to break my water to move things along, but I declined saying I'd rather wait. I labored through the morning mostly in sitting up in bed trying to rest when I could between contractions. The L&D floor was empty that morning with only myself and another lady there. In addition to the normal nurses there were also student nurses on the floor so there were plenty of people if we ever needed anything. Around 11:30 my midwife's backup ob came in to check on me as my blood pressure readings were consistently very high. At that point she broke my water and I went from 5-6cm to 9cm in minutes. My nurse called my midwife at that point and my midwife was in my room shortly after that. It took another half hour for me to be ready to push. The nurse kept talking and wanting my midwife to do something, but she just sat out of the way and waited like I needed her to. When I started feeling an urge to push I just looked at my midwife and she jumped up to get her scrubs on. At that point my contractions were still about 4 minutes apart so there was a lot of waiting going on. When I started pushing we lowered the end of the bed and I managed to lift my rear off the bed right at the edge. As exhausted as I was at that point it worked out really well. It took several pushes and a good bit of time with the waiting between contractions for David to be born. He emerged at 12:26pm and was brought straight up to my stomach as I had asked. As they were wiping him up on my stomach they noticed a good bit of dark meconium. Because of that instead of waiting for the cord to stop pulsing they cut the cord after just a couple minutes. He was then moved beside my bed to the warmer to be checked out. He also had not cried enough for the nursery nurse so she was holding air near him. After being checked out his Apgars were 8 and 9.
When the nursery nurse brought David over to me to nurse she was trying to help me get him latched on. Her idea of help wasn't that helpful as she was trying to shove the back of his head towards me. I told her to leave us alone and told the IBCLC of her "help" later on that day. After she stopped trying to help I was able to get David to latch on and he nursed well. He does have a tiny mouth and recessed chin which makes nursing more interesting and latching difficult at times. David also ended up needing to have a couple tests run as I was GBS + he had bruises for several days following all those pokes. I came out of the delivery rather well with only a couple skid marks to show for it. Even my swelling was pretty much gone by the time I left the hospital. The one thing that didn't get better was my blood pressure. The numbers were high enough my midwife had her backup ob check on me several times and I am on blood pressure medication at least until my 6 week checkup.
