The Birth

On Monday I went in for my weekly midwife visit and I was hoping that they would see some progress on the labor part since I had started doing some natural labor inducing methods once I hit 39 weeks.   I was wanting to avoid an induction, which we did!  At the appointent I weighed 155, so I gained a total of 34 lbs from the beginning, which means I stayed in the desired range.  The midwife asked if I wanted to do an internal check and I did, she said I was progressing right along and even stripped my membranes.  I was really hoping this would help speed up the process and we would have a baby by the end of the week.  If we did not, we would have need an ultrasound the following week to make sure everything was measuring fine and fluid levels were in the desired range.  For most of the day on Monday after the appointment I felt really crampy but I was not getting my hopes up knowing that her checking could cause cramping and that it could still be awhile before labor actually started. 

Once Jeff got home that day we decided to go on a walk, again I was really trying to do anything to help move things along.  Then I took a really late nap, which is good that I did because as the night progressed I felt more and more cramping.  I was still trying to not get my hopes up because I didn't want to get excited and think it was happening for it to just stop, like it  had been few nights prior (was having cramping at night for about a week but it would always stop at some point and never got stronger).  But at around 8pm I was thinking the cramps were getting stronger so I decided to take a bath and relax a bit.  Once in the bath I was beginning to realize that they were becoming stronger and  more regular.  So I got out and let Jeff know that I think this is the real deal.  He was about to fall asleep for the night, but I think his adrenaline took over right away.  He started grabbing things off the list I had made of items to take to the hospital and things that needed to be done before we left.  While he was running around crazy, my contractions were getting stronger and longer and I was having to really breath through them or have him do some counter pressure.  He was also having to time the contractions so that we could make sure they were coming close enough to make a call to the midwife.  Around 10pm he made the call and she said we could come in or stay a little longer, but I knew that the car ride would not be fun and I need to get a dose of anitbiotics in because of testing postive for GBS, so we headed in. 

We got to the hospital around 11pm and went to triage to be checked and monitored.  I was progressing very fast, which I felt was a good sign but the pain was getting worse and worse.  We quickly got admitted to labor and delivery and everything kept moving along.  I was really trying to stick to my natural birth plan method but my back pain was becoming  unbearable and I was having a really strong desire to push when it was still too early to push, so at 8 cm I decided to go with the epidural.  This was also after the midwife broke my water in hopes that it would relieve the pushing urge.  I feel that looking back it is really hard to comprehind what was going on that night because I was so focused on trying to get past the pain and it was not working.  We later find out that Leo was in the wrong position, his face was facing up, which explains the unreasonable pain I was experiencing.  But the midwife was awesome and had me push on my sides once it was time to push and that helped him to reposition to the correct position, face down.  I think that if I was not experiencing back labor I would have been able to make it med free, but I am not disappointed with the results. 

Once the epidural was placed I was able to relax a tiny bit [she was a completely different person-Jeff] which was very much needed.  I had progressed very quickly in a short time and I needed a break.  When the contractions came I still felt a lot of pressure but the massive pain and urge to push stopped.  Once I was fully ready to go, he was still a little high, so we just waited about 30 mins for the contractions to do the work before we actually started the pushing part.  Pushing started around 2:30am and he was born at 3:37 am, it really did not seem that long but apparently it was.  I really lost my whole sense of time while at the hospital.  We did skin to skin contact for over an hour and then he did some skin to skin with daddy.  He was so calm after being born, and he is still calm.  He cried a tiny bit but then he just laid on my chest forever and hardly made a peep, he just was wide-eyed and calm.  The first thing Jeff and I both thought when we saw him was he looked like my dad.  But he does have Jeff's toes. 

We had to stay at the hospital for 48 hours since I tested positive for GBS and we ended up not having  four hours after the antibiotics were administered like they prefer.  But he has looked great when ever the doctors looked at him, so we got to finally leave after 48 hours of him being born.  And it is really nice being at home.  My mom has been here to help out and Jeff has a good amount of time off too.  Overall everything went smooth and I cannot believe that we have this sweet little boy to hold all day. 

We had his first appointment today and I will update about that later.