An Unintentional Unmedicated Birth: Jared's birth story.

Friday morning I had an OB appointment with the NP in the office to check how things were going.  I should say that this pregnancy by far as been my easiest  health wise.  I still gained the same amount of weight, but spending so much time at the gym, I wasn't feeling it.  My back has been really strong, my pelvis didn't hurt, and I slept pretty good (except for getting up to use the restroom all the time!)  So that was a big blessing and thankful since I was pretty healthy, I think that helped with labor.  Anyway, at my appointment I was dilated to a 3 and 90% effaced which was positive news and progress from the week before.  The NP, Dr. Sharp, thought I had a 50/50 chance of delivering over the weekend.  I was slightly discouraged since I hadn't really had any early labor pain that I was going to go over due, and as we know from my previous babies, we make big ones.  Doug and I spent Friday night on a "date," walking the mall, Best Buy & Barnes & Noble together while my mom watched the kids.

Saturday Doug let me sleep in a little, which was nice.  With nothing planned for the day, we decided to stay in pjs all day and be lazy.  I can't tell you what we did all morning, just passed the time I guess.  Afternoon, I took a shower, and I was starting to feel some mild contraction pain, but I wasn't really concerned.  Sometime after two I decided to whip out my iphone and start timing.  Nothing really hurt, so I wasn't concerned, but I did have Doug get showered, dressed and pack his hospital bag (mine had been packed for awhile) just in case.

At 3:30 we sat down to watch the Broncos/Ravens game.  Laboring during football was pretty awesome because I get really into the games and this one was intense.  My contractions were pretty regular at this point, too, 3-4 minutes apart lasting 35-45 seconds or so, but they still didn't really hurt, so I wasn't really concerned about rushing to the hospital, not when there was good football on anyway.  At halftime we had dinner.  Doug and I had talked about it and since the contractions were not going away, we thought we'd eat and put the kids to bed, then head to the hospital.  My contractions stayed the same duration during dinner, but some of them started to be a bit more painful.  It was becoming clear that we weren't going to make it through the bedtime routine, so after we finished eating, we kissed Sariah and Bryson and headed to the hospital.

The drive there wasn't bad.  Constantly timing my contractions was giving me something to focus on, plus a pretty good idea on when the next one was coming.  They were still surprisingly easy to breathe through, so I was kind of worried that we'd get there and have very little progress to show for it.  I guess I shouldn't have been so worried, but my previous experience of heading to triage and not being induced wasn't a pleasant one (I spent 2 hrs in triage with Sariah freaked out and throwing up my guts.)  The walk from the car across the hospital and up to the 2nd floor was more painful.  My contractions got closer together so I was having them every minute and lasted longer, plus I was feeling more pain and pressure so I had to stop walking.  It was slow going.  I think I even stopped and tried to use the restroom half way there, but that was kind of in vain.

So we finally made it to L&D and they set us up in triage one with a very nice nurse named Char.  She was going to hook me up to the monitors first then have the resident come in and check me, but after a look, she decided to have him check me first.  Good thing, too, because I was already progressed to an 8 and a half.  I was pretty shocked, I was hoping for a 4, maybe a 5, Char was rooting for a big number like 6 or 7, but 8, pushing 9?  Yeah, I was having a baby, and soon!  So monitoring could wait, and they walked us to L&D room 10.  (Our hospital is currently remodeling and we were placed in one of the three brand new rooms, lucky us!)

Char had asked what I had done for pain in my last two deliveries and I told her that I had an epidural both times, she was like, "Yeah, there's not going to be time for that!"  But mentioned that I could probably get some IV drugs once I had my IV in.  So they checked us in, put my IV in (this is when I gave Doug my iphone and finally stopped timing my contractions), and set up the monitors for the baby's heartbeat and my contractions.   Because I had tested Group B Strep positive, they hung a bag of penicillin, and were waiting to break my water until they could hopefully get it all in.  Doug asked about the pain meds. at this point.  I was still doing okay with the pain, so I hadn't bothered.  The resident said they could give them to me, but since I was so far along sometimes the drugs caused the baby to stop breathing, but they could give him meds after the birth to fix that.  That seemed like a whole lot of danger to me, and since I was still breathing through the pain okay, I declined, much to Doug's surprise.

At this point it was about 7pm give or take.  They wanted to monitor me for 20 minutes but the monitor for the contractions wasn't always picking them up, so I laid on my left side quite awhile watching the clock and trying to breath through the pain.  It was getting harder to breathe through the pain.  They had evened out to about every 5 minutes, but I was falling asleep in between and seriously questioning my sanity about doing all this unmedicated.  I want to say it was about 7:35pm when I started talking to our L&D nurse, Carmen, about maybe getting something for the pain.  We were discussing it when my water broke!

The next 20 minutes are kind of a blur.  The pressure and pain got really bad after my water broke and my body wanted to push, push, push!  Meconium was present in my water, so the NICU was called just in case he has aspirated any into his lungs.  The resident (who I cannot remember) and Dr. Ogden from my OB practice came in.  I'm pretty sure Carmen called in one other nurse to help.  At one point Dr. Ogden was worried about shoulder dysplasia, where he shoulders get stuck, because he was such a big guy, so the OB surgery team was called in.  Basically, all I remember is voices, faces and a wall of blue scrubs.  My previous calm from labor was gone and I'm freaking out, having a hard time.  Pushing hurt, I'm forgetting to breathe until one of the nurses talked me down.  I remember at one point turning and looking for Doug, he had a quite a look of concern on his face, so I decided not to look at him anymore.  I remember being so tired, there was burning as I tore through old scars, and oh, the pressure, but finally at 7:57pm, his head popped out, followed by the rest of him, and Jared Alan was born screaming his head off!

Crisis averted, people melted away, and they gave him to me to hold.  He was red and perfect.  The nicu checked him out, but he hadn't aspirated anything so they let me keep him.  I didn't hold him too long because I was shaky from delivery, so Doug took him while I got stitched up.  I had a 2nd degree tear, which is better than my first two deliveries, but it took a bit to stitch up because it went funny ways around the old scars.

Jared weighed in at 9 lbs, 9 oz.  Our biggest baby yet!  At 21 inches, he's also our longest.  Because he was so big, they had to check his sugar levels for the first 12 hrs., but everything except the first time came back great, and a little extra nursing after the first test fixed things right up.  We spent 2 hrs. bonding and then were moved to the 3rd floor to our recovery room where we spent the next two nights.

Sunday morning Doug went home about 7:45am and picked up Sariah and Bryson, who were more than a little excited to meet their baby brother.  We gave them the choice of going to church or spending the day at the hospital and they decided that they'd rather be with us.  It was a great day of bonding as a new family (and watching all my football teams lose!  What was up with that?!)  Both kids are doing a pretty good job adjusting to new baby brother.  It's easy to love such a cute little guy!

I'm glad it's over and Jared is here.  I can now say that I never went overdue with any of my labors.  I don't know if I'd say this was my best delivery, I don't know if I'd say them about any of my deliveries.  It's something I've been thinking about a lot, but maybe a post for another day.  Instead, here's some cute pictures to enjoy! 

   More from us later...