Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Lainey's Birth Story - Part 3

Disclaimer: This is a birth story with all the gory details. If  you don't want to read about blood, cervix or discharge...Don't read!

Sorry to leave you on another cliff hanger! 

To say that I was a little disappointed to be only 6 cm dilated would be an understatement. The doctors (2 of them) started throwing around some scary words. "Failure to progress", "c-section prep", "pit drip". 

With me over hearing their conversation I grew increasingly more and more worried about the outcome of this labor. I began to regret my decision to have an epidural as I had watched and read all the stories that say it leads to higher complications including c-section. 

Finally, the doctors decided it was the best bet to go ahead and break my water and see if that helped things progress. They looked and thought maybe it was already partially broken but I had to question that, as I had never had any signs of leaking. So they went ahead and "broke the rest of my water". 

I also stood up and spent the next few hours walking around the room and bouncing on the exercise ball. I have no idea if that was doing anything but I wanted to try everything to have a vaginal birth. 

I felt like I was doing it and contractions were SO close together. Right on top of eachother and according to the monitor, very strong. I was excited to see how far along I was at 11:57 PM when the nurse came in to do a check. With her elbow fingers inside, her eyes got huge and she looked at me and said..."I don't think your water is broken. It's RIGHT there and bulging but you are still only 6 cm dilated." 

EXCUSE ME? 

So apparently when the doctor "broke my water", it didn't break at all. Which thinking back on now, doesn't surprise me because as I was doing my bouncing and walking, I never had any leakage. The nurse paged the doctors and they immediately came in. At first they denied but after checking, a fully intact water! They broke it (again) and immediately the water was EVERYWHERE. It was shortly after midnight at this point and Ryan and I looked at each other as we knew our baby was going to be born (one way or another) on February 11.  

Everyone left us to rest for a couple more hours before the next check. Except at 12:45 am I decided to call the nurse in because for about 15 minutes I started to experience very painful contractions every minute apart. I tried to use the button that would administer more medicine but it didn't help at all. 

The nurse came in and seemed confused. She manually administered more medicine and still no relief. She checked me and to our surprise I was 10 cm and that is why I was feeling pain. The nurse said that she wanted to wait a while before I started pushing so that my body would move the baby down and into a good position all on it's own. I had told her about the long pushing process with Sam and she said it wouldn't be like that if we waited. 

The nurse stayed with me the whole time while we waited. The epidural started working again and I only had slight period like pains but lots of pressure. At 1:40 AM the nurse asked me to do a couple practice pushes but then during the first one asked me to stop. She frantically started to get the room ready and called the doctor saying it was time. 

Two doctors came in but one left as another delivery was happening at the exact same time. The baby's heart rate started to drop similar to Sam's at this point in the birth canal. They put me on my side to push. I pushed with all of my might. The epidural was still doing it's job. I could still feel the pressure "down there" and the tightness so I knew when to push. I even could feel the baby as it came out but again, no pain. It was amazing!

The last 10 minutes happened so fast. Between the doctors coming in, everyone getting ready and then me pushing. I began to push and at one point didn't really know what baby body part had exited but yelled to Ryan, "WHAT IS IT?" He said, "Lindsay, it's a head. You have to keep pushing". 

From start to finish, I pushed 6 times! So much easier then last time. It felt like time had frozen as the doctors and nurses waited for Ryan to declare the gender. I kept saying, "What is it? What is it?" before they could even put her on my chest. As they lifted the baby to my chest, Ryan had trouble getting out the words. And I was still anxiously waiting. Finally he gathered himself enough to say, "Babe, it's a girl!" It was 1:51 AM. 

I couldn't believe it and the nurse standing at the other side of my head put her hand in mine as we had discussed the loss of our baby girl almost a year ago. Without even realizing at first, they had brought our sweet girl up to my chest to hold. I instantly felt like I had known her all my life. 


Our girl stayed on my chest for over an hour. We stared at her, she started to nurse and it was the most blissful hour of my life. I had very minimal tearing and they only took 5 minutes to get me fixed up. 

We were allowed to stay in the birthing room for 2 hours so I knew I eventually had to hand over our girl be weighed and measured. 

Born: Sunday, February 11, 2018 at 1:51 AM 
Weighing in at 8 pounds 4 ounces and 19 3/4" long with a head circumference of 35 cm. 





We were too exhausted to start discussing her name. We had two favorites to choose from but wanted to spend more time with her and get some rest before deciding. We lucked out with a private room! Of course Ryan and baby girl dozed off to sleep and I just laid there in adrenaline fueled bliss. It was all over. The grieving, stress, anxiety, many appointments, sadness, happy moments and wondering what little person would be joining us! SHE was here, healthy and ours. In the silence of our hospital room, I quickly said a prayer of thanks. God knew exactly what we needed to heal from this last year, our Lainey. 

xo 

Wednesday, March 7, 2018

Lainey's Birth Story - Part 2

Disclaimer: This is a birth story with all the gory details. If  you don't want to read about blood, cervix or discharge...Don't read!

I left you off on a little cliff hanger but it was the easiest way to break down the story! 

Thankfully, the time of day was perfect and we saw little traffic and Ryan was able to drive fairly reasonable! I continued to time contractions in the front seat and you could feel our anticipation in the car on getting to the hospital and hoping this being the real deal! 

We arrived at the hospital around lunch time. Ryan dropped me off and went to find parking and I went inside and waited for him in the lobby. He came through the lobby doors looking out of breath and flushed. He immediately told me he parked but didn't get a parking ticket to allow us to leave. Which was fine but something we would have to deal with when we go to leave. 

I had Ryan leave our stuff in the van just in case. We walked casually to the 8th floor (while having a major contraction in the full elevator!) where we checked in with triage. I had a wonderful nurse and she hooked me up to all the machines. Sure enough....contractions every 4-5 minutes apart. She checked me and declared I was 5 cm dilated.  

I was a little surprised I was only at a 5 as two days before I was 3-4 at my doctors appointment. She knew my "birth plan" was to have a natural labor so she suggested she didn't check me in just yet. When they checked me in it would mean I would not be allowed any food. So we ran down to the Tim Horton's for a quick lunch. It was a little difficult to try to be normal during a contraction with all the people around. After our lunch, we decided to walk more to make sure things REALLY progressed. Things were getting closer together and the contractions were getting VERY painful. By the time I waddled back to triage to get checked, I was sure I was closer to at least a 7! The same nurse checked me and said...."Ok, don't freak out...but I think you are 3 cm dilated." This was at 2:30 PM. 

PARDON ME?????!?!?! I WENT BACKWARDS? 

So I did start to panic slightly but the nurse tried to tell me that I need to relax my body. She said she knew by the contractions that I was in labor and didn't want to send us home as we lived so far away. She suggested that we go for another walk for a couple hours and go to the early birthing room to watch some TV and rest. I attempted to walk but the contractions were hitting every 1-2 minutes and were so painful that I didn't want to go far. We watched some Olympics and I did my best to try and relax while on a birthing ball. The contractions were coming back to back and I couldn't take it anymore. SURELY I had progressed. This was feeling similar to when I was in transition with Sam. So, we headed back to the triage nurse (same one!) for another check. At 4:06 PM, she declared I was only 5 cm. 

So this is the part where I MAY have freaked out and started panicking more! Ha ha!  What the heck was happening? My body stopped being able to process with Sam but not until I was 9 cm. It was then that I threw in the towel. I (loudly) declared that my birth plan had changed and I did not want a natural labor. I think at one point I even screamed, "GIVE ME THE DRUGS". 

The nurse and Ryan tried to talk to me about staying with the original plan and did their best to convince me but I was like a rabid animal. Thankfully, I was far enough along to get checked in and get some pain meds. 

While we waited for our birthing room, I suffered through more contractions for another 2 hours. The nurse thought maybe I had progressed more so before I got the epidural, checked me again....still 5 cm. Over 6 hours of 1-2 minute apart intense contractions...I was spent! 

At 6:11 PM we were finally moved into our birthing room. Ryan continued writing in our labor book timing the contractions and leaving me notes. I love having these notes to look back on now because at the time it was such a blur! 


 6:34 PM, I finally got the epidural and may have even promised the doctor administrating the drugs to name this child after them. 

Truthfully, the epidural wasn't nearly as bad as getting an IV. I wasn't scared about getting one as I had a spinal for my cerclage surgery so I knew what to expect. 

By 7:07 PM the epidural was in full effect and I was literally on cloud 9! I was able to get up to walk, use the washroom and yet not feel any pain. I could feel the tightness of a contractions but literally zero discomfort and have full movement of my legs. I take it I was one of the lucky ones who had zero issue with the epidural and had what they call a "walking epidural". Ryan and I settled in for a little rest before the next check. It was at this point that I really...dare I say....started to ENJOY labor! We napped, excitedly talked about baby-to-come and just had some quiet time before we welcomed our new baby.

At 9:30 PM the doctor came in again to check and you guessed it...5 FRICKIN cm dilated. Now we need to have some serious conversation about where to go from here....

Stay tuned for part 3!