Miss E’s Birth Story

Hi friends- I had a couple of minutes so I figured I should write should write a little before all of my days start blurring together.

First off, thank you so much for all of your sweet comments. I am amazed at how much being a mom has changed me. In just the short amount of time that I have been blessed with this miracle I have fallen deeper in love every day with both my daughter and my husband. Watching my husband love our daughter and be involved in every little part of her day truly amazes me. God has truly blessed me with this little family and all I can do is praise Him for His timing!

So on to miss E and her birth story. I am going to try and make a long story short… but it will probably still be pretty long… sorry about that!

I started laboring Monday evening. As the week went on my contractions got progressively more painful, but never consistent. On Tuesday I felt almost flu-like and by Wednesday evening I was having very intense contractions, they were anywhere from 5-20 minutes apart, lasting anywhere from 1-5 minutes long. I was able to sleep through the contractions Monday but when Tuesday came around that luxury disappeared. I spent Tuesday night and Wednesday morning trying to breath through contractions either on the couch or in our jacuzzi tub. I was willing to try anything!

Wednesday afternoon the contractions were too painful to breath through, nothing I was doing was helping. So I called my midwife and headed into her office. E was doing great and not in any sort of distress but I was only dilated to 1cm. We were told to head home, get some rest (ya right), and come back when contractions were 5 minutes apart and too painful to eat, sleep, walk or talk through. So we headed home and I immediately started having more intense contractions. I spent all of Wednesday evening and most of the night awake trying to breathe through contractions. They were incredibly painful at this point and any move I made sent me into another contraction that lasted anywhere from 1-5 minutes, but were still 5-20 minutes apart. At about 4am Thursday morning I was so discouraged, thinking that if the only way I was going to be admitted to have her was by the timing of the contractions that it was never going to happen. Because I was in a lot of pain and unable to eat, sleep, walk or talk through these contractions I called my midwife and was told to go to the hospital to be checked.

So Thursday morning at 4:30am we headed into the hospital and layed in a hospital bed through about an hour of contractions to be told that I was still only at 1cm and that my contractions weren’t consistent enough to be admitted. Because I was in so much pain and couldn’t get any sleep I was given a shot of Morphine (in the thigh- ouch!) and was told to head home and try and rest and come back tomorrow if I had progressed. They checked me one more time before leaving and I had actually progressed to 2cm and effaced about 20% more… PROGRESS!!

So I headed home slept for about 2 hours and was again awoken by these unbearably painful contractions. I was still exhausted from the Morphine but I couldn’t sleep through them any longer, so I got up and the hubby and I spent the day breathing through my contractions, still too inconsistent to do anything about. They still lasted anywhere from 1-5 minutes and came anywhere from 3-15 minutes apart. At about 3pm Thursday afternoon, again unable to function from the pain, I called my midwife hoping to move the induction up to Thursday night. We headed into her office and were given a few options. I couldn’t be induced that night because there wasn’t room for any elective inductions at the hospital, however she would move the induction up to 5am Friday morning. She also said that because I had been in labor for more than 72 hours at this point my uterus was probably too exhausted to actually deliver and I had about a 50/50 chance of having a c-section, so we could go ahead and just schedule that instead. We decided to just go in at 5am and start the induction. She then checked me and I was dilated to 4cm! This was an automatic admit to the hospital because I was in active labor. So we headed over to the hospital around 5pm Thursday evening.

Things actually went really fast from here- thank God!

I was admitted around 5:30pm and was dilated to 5cm already. After getting all settled in my anesthesiologist came in for my epidural, it was about 6:30pm Thursday night and I was dialated 6cm. She asked everyone in the room to leave and spent about an hour putting my epidural in, checking my pain levels, and asking me some medical history. The epidural was the best decision I made! It helped me relax to progress and completely took away the pain- it was WONDERFUL! It didn’t hurt, it was a small pinch and a little pressure and then sweet relief! Hubby and my mom were finally let back in and my midwife came in to break my water around 8pm and I was fully dilated at 9pm.

At this point she hadn’t dropped far enough, so they gave me Pitocin to get my contractions consistent (they NEVER were consistent until the Pitocin was administered, the nurses were a little baffled that I was dilating but not contracting regularly). The hours of 9pm Thursday night to 12am Friday morning were spent being flipped from side to side to help move E down. Around midnight I was checked again and she had dropped but was now laying sideways across the birth canal. My midwife then mentioned that this often results in a c-section. BOO! There was no way I was going through ALL of that and then having a c-section. I was determined to push this little girl into position and out. So with everything I had I started pushing around 12:30am and by 12:40 she was in position. My midwife was shocked (I think she thought I was a big wimp), she said what took me 10 minutes usually takes women over an hour! I felt pretty great about that. I continued to push and miss E was born at 12:54am! I asked to have the cord clamping delayed so they let her rest on me for a little while. She actually didn’t scream, she just stared around looking at her new environment. She was perfect! We were in love!

I had some excessive bleeding due to the long labor, my midwife said my uterus was exhausted and wasn’t capable of contracting back to stop the bleeding so it had to be done manually, and I had to be watched a little longer than usual, so were finally moved over to recover at about 4:30am Friday morning.

We were discharged on Saturday and were finally on our way home with our precious little girl!