Thursday, June 16, 2011

Crazy Day O' Birth

Do you remember me whining about all those contractions keeping me awake at night, and then turning out to be nothing? Well, Tuesday morning my body decided to say, "Hey! You've been punked!"

If you know me very well, then you know I am a big supporter for a woman's choice to have her baby how she wants, as long as it doesn't threaten her or her baby's life. So having a baby at home is just as ok as having a baby in the hospital, same with having a baby using pain drugs vs no drugs. If you know me at all, you also know I'm not brave enough to have a baby without being in a hospital.

I will admit, that this time around, I had a definite opinion on how I wanted to do it this time. I refused to have a baby while on my back and my legs in stirrups. I had done it that way the last three times, and hated it. My babies always chose to be sunny-side-up (facing my belly button instead of my spine), which meant slow dilation, because their heads weren't positioned to push on my cervix the best way. Aka, loooooong labors. Even longer when you take gravity out of the equation. I was in labor with Alex for 36 hours, Anthony 14, and Autumn 4, simply because they induced me with her. All of them I had an epidural, because with sunny-side-up babies, it means horrible, awful back labor and I, frankly, am a wimp. Having an epidural means I am stuck with having a baby on my back with my legs in stirrups. So this time, I was going to attempt no epidural. I didn't want them telling me I couldn't use gravity to help me out. So I enlisted the help of a dear friend who is a doula. She was to be my bulldog while I was busy trying not to give in to having an epidural. She would be the one to help me tell the nurses I would NOT be putting my legs in those stirrups and they could shove those stirrups....in the closet!

Ok, long explanation out of the way. That is so you know, I did not intend in ANY way to have a baby on my living room carpet. Yes, that's exactly what happened, and no I do not intend to repeat that again.

I woke up throughout the night, as I had done for over a week now with contractions here and there that were strong enough to disturb my precious sleep, but weak enough I knew it wasn't "time". Around 2:30 am they were frequent enough that I gave up trying to snooze in between, and went to wait it out in the recliner. Around 3:45 they were about 3-5 min apart, so drank some water and went for a walk around my block. I pulled out my phone and played on facebook while I walked. About half way around the block I realized these contractions were hurting enough that I was pausing when I had one. So I walked back home, and at about 4:10 am, called my doula to let her know what was going on, that she and her daughter (who was going to baby sit my sleeping kids while I was at the hospital) might want to head my way.  At 4:20 my contractions were strong enough I felt this wasn't my body psyching me out, so I woke Tony. My contractions at this point spread back out to 3-4 min apart and I was thinking, "Great, watch them stop now!" Tony put the car seat for the baby in the mini van while I packed a bag for the hospital in between contractions. I was in no hurry, knowing I still had hours to go. At this point I got really whiny. I told Tony, I was seriously reconsidering the epidural thing, cuz I'm a wimp and couldn't handle it if the pain was going to get worse than this, and I just knew it would with hours left for it to escalate. I just hoped that I was dilating enough that the hospital didn't send me back home (like they had done on one of my previous labors). Then I started to whine that maybe I'd waited to long and wouldn't get the chance to get pain killers. I was soooo worried at that point that I was not going to have a choice in the pain killer department and was stuck doing this pain killer free. I called the OB ward to let them know we were on our way and would be there in about 45 min. Two contractions later my water broke at 5am. Yup, I'd waited too long, but at this point it wasn't just for the pain killers. My water had never broke on it's own before, and there I was kneeling at the couch in the living room. I told Tony I felt like I really had to push, and his response was, "No, don't do that!" He heard the splash from the kitchen. Remember when I was whining about having an extra month of fluid for Abigail to swim in? Well, let me tell you, that's a LOT of liquid to be splashing on my carpet. I then moved to the door to put on my flip flops to get in the minivan, cuz I knew we needed to go, with or without the duola. I just hoped the sleeping kiddos would be okNOW! I told Tony we weren't gonna make it, and he asked, "What do you mean we aren't gonna make it?" Right then my doula walked in the front door as Abigail was crowning. Luckily she is awesome and is also a midwife in training and brought her birthing kit. Three more contractions and Abigail had arrived at 5:13am. She must have been in one heck of a hurry.

Doula Dee, clamped the cord, had Tony cut it and we wrapped Abigail up and headed to the hospital. They kinda freaked when Tony called them halfway there and let them know we were coming with a brand new baby in tow. Security met us at the door, wheeled me in, whisked Abigail off to the nursery, and then set me up to sew me up. Abigail and her shoulder shanks got me pretty good.


Everything turned out well. Looking back, it was really crazy, and I'm glad I was in a labor induced fog, or I might have freaked out a little bit about all the amniotic fluid on my carpet and having a baby in my living room with no drugs. I'm glad it happened the way it did, actually. I was able to have her in a position that felt way more natural to me, and without drugs, not that I had a choice though. I am really glad it only took 2 hours and 45 min (I was surprisingly not wore out since it was so short), otherwise I would have had time to succumb to the wimpier majority of my personality and would have ended up having a baby exactly how I didn't want to, on my back, with my legs in stirrups.

Friday, June 10, 2011

What Insanity Must Feel Like...

I have come to a firm conclusion that insanity must feel just like being pregnant. Not just any part of being pregnant, because honestly most of pregnancy can make you question why on Earth anyone would want to do this, let alone more than once, but specifically the last two weeks. In my case, this pregnancy's last two weeks has been far more unbearable than my other three pregnancy endings. Mostly because I have LOTS of extra amniotic fluid this time.

Let me give you an idea. When I was 36 weeks along (that's 4 weeks from due date), I had enough fluid that my uterus was as big as it should be at 40 weeks. So a whole MONTH'S worth of extra fluid. Now compound that with already not being able to tie my own shoes, sweep the floor without my hips aching, not being able to sit for more than 5 min without my tailbone making me want to scream, and not being able to bend over without sending shoots of stomach acid up my throat, and I think you get the idea. Sick of my whining? Well get over it. I'm pregnant and whiny and if you don't like it, go read someone else's blog.

To make things worse, my body is gearing up for labor. It's not being very nice about it either. Why? Because it's interrupting my sleep, every night, for the last four nights. Just three nights ago I was woken up by contractions strong enough not to let me sleep, for four hours, and they were about 5 min apart the whole time. It's worse than hitting snooze for 4 hours. I also don't do well on lack of sleep. I get snarky. Especially when my body is already drained making a baby AND a bunch of extra fluid. Sheesh.

So I'm tired, snarky, uncomfortable, hot, feeling a little crazy, and just plain ready to get this over with......anyone got a crochet hook I can borrow?

Monday, June 6, 2011

Toothless

Alex lost two more teeth. So now he looks like this......

Kinda cute right?

Well he was kinda scared about it. He had already lost his bottom teeth, (as you can see they are growing in nicely now) and his top two teeth were loose then. For some unknown reason, it's taken months for the top two to fall out. Well, they had help. Daddy and dental floss.

You see, he got kneed in the teeth on the trampoline, they were no more ready to come out then, than before. He got hit in those teeth with a baseball (he missed catching it) and again, still the same. I thought for sure one of those events would have made one fall out. They've been really loose for at least a month now, but Alex has been timid about tugging on them or pulling them out.

So finally we bribed him. I believe it was with candy. We also played it that Daddy was nicer at pulling teeth than Mommy. So Alex agreed to letting Tony do it. We tied floss to one and gently yanked. Came right out, bled a little too, but Alex was worried enough from the little pain he felt, that he didn't want to let Daddy do the other one right away. Although he did promise to let him pull the other one the next night.


Night two. The second one hardly bled, and Alex said ouch before Tony even tugged, but it came out. That night we put both teeth in an envelope and put it under his pillow for the tooth fairy, who rewarded him nicely.

So out of all of this, I finally got some peace of mind, (cuz those teeth hanging all funny in his mouth and turning yellow, really bothered me), Daddy got to do the yanking, which I think he was glad to take part in, and Alex got candy, a $2 bill ($1 for each tooth) and a lisp.