The labour and delivery story...

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Originally uploaded by The Herages

I wanted to try and get the full labour and delivery story down before I forget it - even though it has already been about 2 weeks, I still feel like it was yesterday. And this way, the little princess will be able to read about it one day (I hope), since she won't have a traditional baby book. I have never been any good at those things!

My contractions began on Sunday, March 2nd at about 10pm. Since I had had a couple of contractions here and there, I didn't really think labour was actually starting. After all, I had plans for Monday that I really wanted to get done! :) However, they kept coming and I didn't get any sleep that night. I basically hung out in the bathroom so as not to wake up Greg, reading and breathing through the pain. I took a really long shower (long even for me), and eventually tried to sleep a bit. At about 5am I woke Greg up because I didn't feel like doing the contraction business on my own any more, and let him know that we were likely going to the hospital soon. Of course, we had freezing rain that morning so he had to spend about 30 mins scraping off the car while I hung out on the exercise ball. Our hospital was the Ottawa Hospital - General Campus.

We ended up heading to the hospital around 1pm on Monday because I had a previously scheduled ultrasound to check on the baby because I was overdue. Of course, I don't really remember having many contractions on the way to the hospital or during the ultrasound, but they were about 8-9 minutes apart when we left the house. The ultrasound went fine and we were told the baby would weigh about 8 lbs. We then headed to the triage desk and I was assessed as being about 2.5 cm dilated. Because the hospital doesn't admit people until they are 3cm dilated, they told us to go walking around and get something to eat. I wasn't really keen on that idea because I was having serious trouble keeping food down (ask Greg about me vomiting up blueberry sauce in my hands in the bathroom at about 6am - and about him having to clean it up). But we went to the caf, hung out for a couple of hours and then went back to triage. I was eventually assessed again and was only at 3cm - and the hospital still wouldn't admit me! I got seriously cranky because the contractions were pretty strong and about 5 mins apart, so they offered me Nubane, a narcotic. I had never really thought about taking narcotics that early in the process, but I did and I was so glad because I was able to sleep on the couch in the early labour room (!) for a couple of hours, and when I was assessed later, I had dilated to 7-8cm. So they finally admitted me then!

When we got into the labour and delivery room, I had to make a decision about having an epidural. I had never planned on having a natural birth with no drugs, but I was just trying to last as long as possible without taking anything. I guess the Nubane kind of threw a wrench in those plans, but I definitely don't regret that! I started waffling about whether to have the epidural or not, since I was relatively far along, but in talking it through with the nurse, I realized that I would probably "need" one eventually. So I got the epidural at just before midnight on Monday. The worst part of that was having to get the IV needle inserted - the nurse missed and blew the first vein she tried on the back of my hand, and I had a bruise for about 1.5 weeks as a result. Thankfully she called in another nurse to try the second vein and that worked fine. Of course, once the epidural was in my contractions slowed down and became fairly irregular. This allowed me to get some sleep, but they eventually had to give me oxytocin in order to make the contractions regular and have me start pushing. So much for no interventions!!!

I finally started pushing at around 5:20am on Tuesday. I pushed for close to 1.5 hours with very little progress - in retrospect, I think I just wasn't pushing as hard as I could have but I really didn't know what was what at the time. A decision was eventually made to use the vacuum to get Avery's head out, because I really wasn't going to be able to get it done on my own. With the use of the vacuum, hospital protocol states that certain people need to be in the room. All of a sudden it seemed like there were about 10 people there - 2 nurses, one OB, 2 residents, a med student "observing", and a few people from pediatrics, along with Greg and I. And of course, this was shift change time, so as soon as I delivered Avery there were a whole bunch more people coming and going.

So the vacuum...basically once it was on it was about 2 more contractions before her head was out. And they weren't fun contractions but at least it was over with fairly quickly after that. The part that I found challenging (well one part), was the "stop pushing" phase. How do you stop pushing when that is all you have been doing for 2 hours and the baby isn't completely out yet? There was some tearing of course and the requisite stitching afterwards. I guess the residents sewing me up saw the looks on my face because they offered me a local anaesthetic for the pain of the needle. I took it because they said it would take them 5-10 mins to finish. Shouldn't the epidural have covered the pain of the sewing process as well???

At any rate, by this point we had held Avery, figured out she was a girl, weighed her in at 7lbs 11 oz, and gotten her back all cleaned up. The first thing I said to her after that was that I hoped she was ok with being an only child because I really didn't think I could do that again! Of course I was kidding, but holy Hannah, was that ever a process!!!

So that is the labour and delivery story. Next time Avery takes a nap, I will try to write down some memories of our stay in the hospital. I can't believe this all basically happened two weeks ago. Time is flying and yet the nights seem to drag on and on... :)