November 22 rolled around like every other morning, I got up when Jake got up, ....well I rolled out of bed and heaved my giant body up and out of bed to be honest, and starting changing lyrics to songs about the baby coming such as hit me baby one more time but into get out baby now its time...things like that. It was for this blog obviously, I wasn’t just entertaining myself...well, maybe it was both.
I then continued to feel sorry for myself for a couple hours, eat some runt candy and some cereal, and proceeded to go back down to bed for my mid morning nap. I was awakened from this nap with a nagging cramp in my belly. This cramp turned into more, and then more, just like the same cramping that period pain is like (for you women), and I started noticing that they were pretty regular, every 5 minutes and thought oh MAN! Its baby day!!!! I called Jake and he came home and made sure to put the sheets and blankets from our bed into the laundry....(because honestly, at the time, that seemed VITAL...sigh pregnancy)
So it went from YAY its baby day to....oh shit....its baby day...
The pain unfortunately got worse. It wasn’t really bad until about 4pm, thats when it got pretty uncomfortable, but again still, manageable, and always 5 minutes apart. Things like “the bloody show” started happening and to be honest my excitement started to dwindle since the pain was starting to make me think I wouldn’t enjoy the entrance of my baby into the world and that maybe I could hold out and wait another week to try this on for size. The contractions were about 40 seconds long, and 5 minutes apart when jake convinced me we should head into town since he would “never forgive me” if I gave birth in the car. Men are so dramatic.
Anyways it was about 530, and about 6 before we got to the hospital. Up we go, to have our baby.
Nope.
“you are about 2 cm dilated”
Worst words ever...or so I thought at the time. Turns out there is much worse. But thats later.
So I have the option of hanging out in triage for the next 8 hours before I am dilated or going home. I use the “im the one in labour” card to convince Jake that I want to go home for a while.
So we get home, and shit gets real....or so I thought. Again thats later.
My contractions turned into something I really really really didn’t enjoy at that point. I sat in the bath and had minute long contractions that I couldn’t speak through every 5 minutes while Jake sat in the bathroom timing them....and trying to convince me we needed to go back.
I stuck it out until 930. At that point I was like yes, I am a warrior, I have put in a solid 4 hours of hard labouring so when I go back I am going to be 8 cm and we are going to have the baby and my life will dramatically improve. So while I am mentally high fiving myself for sticking it out and hoping my water doesn’t break in the car ride back to t he hospital, I am already preparing for the baby to be here any time.
So despite my mental high fives and hours of home labouring, the nurse seems to not know my plan because she proceeds to tell me the worst words ever (again so I thought)
“yeah, you are about 3cm along now”
WTF.
So I just went through 4 hours of agony for ONE BLOODY CM?
Shit.
So Jim comes in. Jim is the doctor, Jim is a doctor who literally could not ever be shaken up .Everything is always great, and everything is always wonderful.
Jim thinks I should hang out at the hospital now, “we’ll have your baby here by ten am tomorrow for sure”
Again. WTF.
Its only ten pm....12 MORE hours? Are they shitting me?
But I maintain composure..mostly because I have zero energy for freaking out since every 5 minutes im immobile with pain.
Then I sit up, and hear an explosion in my ears...well like balloon popping mostly. But this explosion led to a very wet bed. My water broke and had soaked the crap out of my bed. I looked up and explained to my nurse that I was very sorry but I was going to need new linens...and a bathtub to empty the rest of the water leaking out of me into.
She gives me one of those enormous pads to get to the bathroom in. I make it but it is soaked in like the 8 steps to the washroom. And fluid is STILL coming out. Seriously? So gross. I would like to not be continually leaking amniotic fluid all over the floor through this whole process....
Little did I realise the leaking fluid would be the LEAST of my concerns.
It took less than 6 minutes for the big show to really pick up its pace.
From the time it took me to get from the triage room to the birthing room, so maybe 2.5 minutes, my contractions turned into one GIANT contraction. There was no more breathing between contractions, just straight up intense non stop pain. My body literally was doing one thing and I was desperately trying to convince it to stop. We were again, at war with each other.
So the nurse realises that shit is getting real up in here and decides we need a doctor in with us in case I spontaneously explode. So the resident comes in (that means doctor in training) and takes one look at me and tells me “ it seems that your labour has intensified quite quickly”
No shit Sherlock.
Keep in mind at this point I am leaning over an IV pole unable to sit up right and unable to catch my breath AT ALL.
Obviously a good time to start a conversation.....oh? you don’t think so? Well thats something they don’t apparently tell doctors in med school.
Dr resident decides to start asking me how it has intensified/how I am feeling/ have a I considered an epidural/can he check me out? (ps Jake had just run down stairs to park the car since we had been told we had about 12 HOURS TO BLOW)
I am literally at the point where I just look up at him and hope he just understands what im trying to say...which is “ IM DYING”.
So he checks me out, because again, I LOVE getting up and down on the table while my whole body is in a state of sudden and ultimate revolt.
“hmmm...well, you’re only about 5 cm...you really aren’t dialated enough for the kind of pain/kind of contractions you are having”
Again. THIS is the worst thing anyone has ever said.
So again he starts getting into a discussion about epidurals, how they can slow labour down, which is what we need to happen, and that it may take time so if I have considered this as an option he can contact the anaesthesiologists...blah blah blah blah blah.
ENOUGH WITH THE CARE PLAN DOCTOR, LETS DO SOMETHING!
Jesus.
Obviously I want the epidural, I started nodding the minute you were talking about it. You said it could relieve my pain and I was all OH GOD YES in my head but since I cant breathe or sit up or even consider speaking out loud without screaming lets let you interpret what nodding means please.
Ugh.
So thats the plan. Sometime soon, there will be relief. I just have to make it through the next little while....
Again. This is before I knew better.
So all that was around eleven, maybe midnight.
An hour and half later, things are still just getting worse and worse, and im just trying to not pass out from the fact that I cant breathe. ...and im confused as to why nobody is fixing this WEE little problem?
Eventually, someone gets an oxygen mask on me (apparently it was for the baby mostly) , and instead of appreciating that, I hated it. Sigh.
At that point I was pushing....well lets do this right, I wasn’t pushing, my uterus was. I was doing everything ic ould to stop it from pushing, trying to breathe, which lets be honest, I had been putting effort into that for the past 2 hours with no luck so the chance it would work now was less than good. It was bizarre. My body was acting on its own it felt like, and me? I was just along for the ride...and the ride SUCKED.
So my doctor gets called back in to the hospital, Jim is back to save the day. Unfortunately Jim is here to say, “listen madi, you’re about 8cm dilated, but we are going to have to start pushing now, you will dilate as we go”
And then the REAL worst words ever: “We are going to give up on the epidural coming, this baby is coming and we are just going to have to deliver him this way”
WTF.
SOMEONE DO SOMETHING?!?!
I sure as hell am not doing anything anymore...i want to be tagged out SO bad.
So an hour and half of pushing commences.
BRUTAL.
But at least I felt like I was finally allowed back in t he show that my body was putting on, I finally wasn’t fighting it, I was helping it destroy my special area.....lets be honest, at that point I would have torn that thing 3 ways from sunday if it meant getting this thing OUT of me.
During it all Jake was there. Or so I assumed....it was like being in a coma, you can hear people around you but you know they are super far away from where you are. The pain was bad, thats true. But it was the fact that I couldn’t even breathe that made me think I was going to die. I remember saying it at one point..or at least saying “I cant do this anymore” and Jim just smiling and saying “oh madi, women do it all the time, you re doing it right now!”
If I could have lifted my leg to kick mr positivity in the face ...i would have.
I remember Jake telling me I was pushing so well...and then Jim saying “madi, I need you to push like 50% harder”
Again, he was lucky I was too overwhelmed and in too much pain to lift that leg up. If I could have spoken it would have been something along of the lines of “LISTEN JIM, have YOU ever done this before?! And where the FUCK is my god damned epidural you all promised me?!”
Sorry for the curses...but lets just be honest about what I would have ACTUALLY said, my politeness would have been out the window hours ago.
SO Jim wanted 3 pushes with each contraction, so I started giving him 4 , that shut him up pretty quick. And made me feel better, because I could feel the baby coming, and I was DESPERATE to get him out.
So the whole process proceeded, me pushing and popping blood vessels in my face, jake holding my leg back, Jim chatting about what he had for dinner, and a fast forming team of health professionals arriving in my room.
I remember Jim telling someone in the room, “oh the baby will be here in ten mintues tops”
And I remember thinking, “whos baby? Not mine I tell you that. Im about to pass out any minute and then you jerks are going to HAVE to give me a Csection and the epidural you promised me”
I felt the baby crowning, and the whole “ring of fire” Jazz...but to be honest, I barely noticed it through the pain of the contractions, it was SO overwhelming. I think thats what the worst part was, the pain sucks HUGE for sure, but it was the over stimulation, the contractions were SO hard and so ...heavy almost? That the sharp pain of the baby crowning , the ring of fire pain, was nothing I could even compare to the pain of the contractions, because the pain of the contractions was so ...HEAVY.
Sorry I cant really think of any other word for it. My descriptive words seem to fail me when it comes to describing birth....all I can say is, when you do it...you will know too how hard it is to explain to people who haven’t.
Then baby’s head was out. It was sudden, but I also felt it coming for awhile. Then one more push and he was out. And he was on me.
EVEN though the nurses had asked me if I wanted him on me right after he was born and I SHOOK MY Head which in my language means “no thank you” or “GOD NO” either or, depending on the situation.
So I have this big blue baby on me. And like 3 nurses rubbing him to make him cry since the umbilical cord had been wrapped around his little neck. I remember thinking what the HELL is going on? Why are so many people shaking me? Why is this baby blue? How was something THIS BIG inside my tummy?
He started crying and they finally took him off me and did what they had to do. He weighed in at 8lbs. Born at 3:05 am.
I didn’t actually get to hold the little guy for about an hour after he was born, mr placenta took its sweet time coming out and then I needed stitches. But seeing Jake holding this tiny perfect little baby, was amazing. I didn’t need to hold him, because seeing Jake holding him made me feel like I was already on top of the world. Also because thank the good lord my body was no longer in a state of utter revolt.
Literally right after he was out, I felt 85% better. And once that placenta came out, and ALL the pressure inside me was gone, I felt 100% better. Its amazing how fast your body goes from making you think you are about to die, to being just fine. I remember clearly in my mind, getting up from the bed with my nurse and walking into the bathroom and thinking first of all 1. How am I walking? How am I living right now? And 2. WHY DO I STILL LOOK PREGNANT?!
Oh yeah. You still have the stomach of a pregnant woman, except now you push on it and it goes ALLLLLLL the way in. Nasty.
It does go down significantly even within a week but good god, standing up from t hat table I felt pretty gyped.
Birth is like something beyond yourself takes over your body and just has its way. You go along for the ride pretty much. Which for me was hard to c ome to grips with, since im a huge control freak. And you’re still locked inside your head, so when you become in so much pain you cant breathe, you can still talk to yourself, and can hear yourself thinking “this is it....its over...i had a good run..but im done now” your body is still in gear, full throttle for the finish line. Its definitely better once you get to participate and actually push, because your body LOVES having help from your head, and you do get some control back finally.
Walking over to the maternity ward was bizarre also. Here I am WALKING, wheeling a cart with my own brand new little person in it....HOW AM I ALIVE? HOW IS HE HERE?
Shit.
Mind=blown.
Also, every SINGLE muscle in my body hurt. Like literally. Even my fingers. EVERYTHING hurt. But I was just SO thankful to not be in the midst of birthing a baby anymore so I was thankful. Jake says I was so sore because the doctor kept moving me around, putting my legs into weird positions to get the baby out. Apparently I gave birth in the “lotus” position.....lotus is just a nice word for foot palms together and knees at your ears. Apparently giving birth makes you more flexible than you think you are....or you just cant hear the muscles tearing since you are the midst of ...well....other things.
So Sam was finally here. I was so so thankful. I AM so so thankful.
And now...for the question: would you do it again?
If you had asked me the month after....NO.
If you ask me now.....sigh. Chalk me up to those crazy women because I would. In a heartbeat.
The prize is really, truly worth the race.
Which is something you just don’t know until you win it.
And on November 23rd, I won.
