Alright, well let me start by saying that Riley's birth went NOTHING like I expected. From my first contraction to being fully dilated took a total of 4 hours! Anyway, it went a little something like this...
Saturday June 26, 2010
11:30 am
I was trying to take a nap because I had woken up at 5am that morning, and as I was laying in bed, I felt a "pop" and it felt like my water had broken. Not a whole lot of fluid came out, so I laid back down, and when I got up again, the same thing happened. I called my midwife, who said she'd call back in a few hours to check in and see if anything had changed.
12:45 pm
I tell Mark to go to his soccer game, since it's my first baby, it will likely be a while before anything starts happening. He leaves to play in has game, kicking off at 2:30.
2:00 pm
My midwife calls, I tell her I'm 90% sure it was my water that broke. She asks if I'm having any contractions, I say no, and she says she'll come over and confirm if it was in fact my water breaking.
2:15 pm
My midwife arrives at our house, and confirms that yes, I was right, my water broke. I was not having any contractions (just some mild cramping, same as the weeks prior), and she said if my labor didn't start naturally by the following morning, we were going to head to the hospital for an induction. So I knew that we would have a baby in the next few days! I started cleaning things up, making sure everything was ready.
3:00pm
I felt my very first contraction. OW. Basically, like a period cramp, but WAY worse. And then I felt another one. And another one. I timed them like my midwife said. She told me to call her when they eventually got to 5 minutes apart, lasting around 1 minute each. Well, immediately my contractions were lasting 45 seconds to 1:15 seconds, and were about 3 minutes apart.
4:00
I call my midwife, and I'm pretty sure she doesn't believe me that my contractions really are that close. She says she'll be over in 10 miutes
4:15
Midwife comes over and checks to see if I'm dilated... SIX CENTIMETERS. She says, ummm, let's go to the hospital NOW. Oh and p.s. she tells me to bring a towel in case we need to pull over and deliver the baby on the high way... no joke.
5:30
We arrive at the hospital, get all checked in, and I ask for an epidural because the pain is just SO BAD and not giving me any breaks. But not before my midwife informs me she thinks the baby is BREECH and I will need a C-section... WHAT?? She had always been head down, why would she flip NOW? So she called in the techs to do an ultrasound to confirm... And just kidding, she was head down... phew! Meanwhile I had to sit still, on my back, to get this ultrasound. SO. MUCH. PAIN. Then the anesthesiologist came pretty much right away, but then it took her forever to find a vein for the IV, so it took a while to actually get the epidural. Meanwhile I was using the nitrous oxide, which did nothing for the pain, but made me feel high as a kite. Needless to say I continued to use it until the epi kicked in. :) I think the problem was that I wasn't using it correctly. You are supposed to breath in the gas at the very beginning of the contraction, but sometimes I'd miss thebeginning, and not start breathing until the middle, and then the "relief" kicked in after the contraction was gone (hence the high as a kite feeling).
7:00
Epidural has kicked in, but I'm still in a fair amount of pain. My midwife checks me, and I am fully dilated, and the baby's head is verrrrry low... locked and loaded. :) Time to start pushing!!!!
7:00 onwards....
Pushing a baby out is a learning process... I had to learn the best way to push, and I got better and better with each push. But seriously, I had always heard "oh it's such a relief to push the baby, blah blah blah..." well I disagree. Pushing that baby out was just plain hard. Really really hard. Maybe because it lasted for 2.5 hours for me (obviously not straight pushing, you only push with contractions, and by this point, they had eased off a bit so I got breaks in between pushes. But with each contraction, I maybe had 3 pushes, and the baby made a tiny bit of progress... it seemed like there was no end in sight!! By the end, I was so exhausted, I just wanted that baby OUT! And the worst part is, the very end is when you are supposed to STOP pushing, or "gently" push, so as to avoid tears. Yeah. right.
9:29 pm
Riley Katherine Bartlett made her way into the world!! She was gorgeous, in an alien-like, slimy kind of way. :) But seriously, the relief of her being pushed out of me entirely was something I cannot even begin to put into words. Aaahhhh. The next 30 minutes were spent delivering the placenta (ouchie, more cramping), and getting stitched back up (just a few stitches for very minor tears, I was quite lucky).
POST-DELIVERY
Riley scored 9 and 10 on her apgars (yay!), but we soon noticed she had a few little quirks.
(1) She grunted non-stop pretty much from the moment she came out. She was breathing fine, but she was just very grunty. This eventually led to a 2 hour stint in the NICU for observation, and of course as soon as we actually got into the NICU, she stopped grunting and didn't grunt again after that! Better safe than sorry, I suppose. :)
(2) Her toes. Apparently she was so squished up inside of me, that her little pinky toes were squished across her other toes! Sadly we didn't get a picture of these, because they have gone back to normal now, but they were pretty funny-looking to begin with!
(3) Her foot. She has one foot that is a little bit funny... Its natural position is a little abnormal, but it's nothing too concerning to the doctors. We might have to get it checked out by a bone doctor at some point just to make sure, but in all likelihood it will fix itself.
Other than that, she was born just perfect!! We spent the next 40 hours in the hospital, recovering, and learning how to breastfeed. The midwives at the hospital were extremely helpful, but I could not wait to leave that place. I got one hour of sleep while I was there, which means I had about an hour of sleep over about 50+ hours. Not pretty. But we finally got to go home, and we could not be happier!!
Now, just a little video to share with you...
Saturday June 26, 2010
11:30 am
I was trying to take a nap because I had woken up at 5am that morning, and as I was laying in bed, I felt a "pop" and it felt like my water had broken. Not a whole lot of fluid came out, so I laid back down, and when I got up again, the same thing happened. I called my midwife, who said she'd call back in a few hours to check in and see if anything had changed.
12:45 pm
I tell Mark to go to his soccer game, since it's my first baby, it will likely be a while before anything starts happening. He leaves to play in has game, kicking off at 2:30.
2:00 pm
My midwife calls, I tell her I'm 90% sure it was my water that broke. She asks if I'm having any contractions, I say no, and she says she'll come over and confirm if it was in fact my water breaking.
2:15 pm
My midwife arrives at our house, and confirms that yes, I was right, my water broke. I was not having any contractions (just some mild cramping, same as the weeks prior), and she said if my labor didn't start naturally by the following morning, we were going to head to the hospital for an induction. So I knew that we would have a baby in the next few days! I started cleaning things up, making sure everything was ready.
3:00pm
I felt my very first contraction. OW. Basically, like a period cramp, but WAY worse. And then I felt another one. And another one. I timed them like my midwife said. She told me to call her when they eventually got to 5 minutes apart, lasting around 1 minute each. Well, immediately my contractions were lasting 45 seconds to 1:15 seconds, and were about 3 minutes apart.
4:00
I call my midwife, and I'm pretty sure she doesn't believe me that my contractions really are that close. She says she'll be over in 10 miutes
4:15
Midwife comes over and checks to see if I'm dilated... SIX CENTIMETERS. She says, ummm, let's go to the hospital NOW. Oh and p.s. she tells me to bring a towel in case we need to pull over and deliver the baby on the high way... no joke.
5:30
We arrive at the hospital, get all checked in, and I ask for an epidural because the pain is just SO BAD and not giving me any breaks. But not before my midwife informs me she thinks the baby is BREECH and I will need a C-section... WHAT?? She had always been head down, why would she flip NOW? So she called in the techs to do an ultrasound to confirm... And just kidding, she was head down... phew! Meanwhile I had to sit still, on my back, to get this ultrasound. SO. MUCH. PAIN. Then the anesthesiologist came pretty much right away, but then it took her forever to find a vein for the IV, so it took a while to actually get the epidural. Meanwhile I was using the nitrous oxide, which did nothing for the pain, but made me feel high as a kite. Needless to say I continued to use it until the epi kicked in. :) I think the problem was that I wasn't using it correctly. You are supposed to breath in the gas at the very beginning of the contraction, but sometimes I'd miss thebeginning, and not start breathing until the middle, and then the "relief" kicked in after the contraction was gone (hence the high as a kite feeling).
7:00
Epidural has kicked in, but I'm still in a fair amount of pain. My midwife checks me, and I am fully dilated, and the baby's head is verrrrry low... locked and loaded. :) Time to start pushing!!!!
7:00 onwards....
Pushing a baby out is a learning process... I had to learn the best way to push, and I got better and better with each push. But seriously, I had always heard "oh it's such a relief to push the baby, blah blah blah..." well I disagree. Pushing that baby out was just plain hard. Really really hard. Maybe because it lasted for 2.5 hours for me (obviously not straight pushing, you only push with contractions, and by this point, they had eased off a bit so I got breaks in between pushes. But with each contraction, I maybe had 3 pushes, and the baby made a tiny bit of progress... it seemed like there was no end in sight!! By the end, I was so exhausted, I just wanted that baby OUT! And the worst part is, the very end is when you are supposed to STOP pushing, or "gently" push, so as to avoid tears. Yeah. right.
9:29 pm
Riley Katherine Bartlett made her way into the world!! She was gorgeous, in an alien-like, slimy kind of way. :) But seriously, the relief of her being pushed out of me entirely was something I cannot even begin to put into words. Aaahhhh. The next 30 minutes were spent delivering the placenta (ouchie, more cramping), and getting stitched back up (just a few stitches for very minor tears, I was quite lucky).
POST-DELIVERY
Riley scored 9 and 10 on her apgars (yay!), but we soon noticed she had a few little quirks.
(1) She grunted non-stop pretty much from the moment she came out. She was breathing fine, but she was just very grunty. This eventually led to a 2 hour stint in the NICU for observation, and of course as soon as we actually got into the NICU, she stopped grunting and didn't grunt again after that! Better safe than sorry, I suppose. :)
(2) Her toes. Apparently she was so squished up inside of me, that her little pinky toes were squished across her other toes! Sadly we didn't get a picture of these, because they have gone back to normal now, but they were pretty funny-looking to begin with!
(3) Her foot. She has one foot that is a little bit funny... Its natural position is a little abnormal, but it's nothing too concerning to the doctors. We might have to get it checked out by a bone doctor at some point just to make sure, but in all likelihood it will fix itself.
Other than that, she was born just perfect!! We spent the next 40 hours in the hospital, recovering, and learning how to breastfeed. The midwives at the hospital were extremely helpful, but I could not wait to leave that place. I got one hour of sleep while I was there, which means I had about an hour of sleep over about 50+ hours. Not pretty. But we finally got to go home, and we could not be happier!!
Now, just a little video to share with you...
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