So far I've gotten through the pictures from the actual birth and labor room done. I will post a part 2 with the rest of the hospital stay next. I really want to write out my labor experience as a record here though. There are so many things that I don't remember from having Carson and I never took time to write anything down either. This will probably be long, but it's just as much for me and my horrible memory as it is for anyone else who is interested. :)
Last Monday night I was 4 days overdue. Around 1am on Tuesday morning I woke up with what I thought were real contractions. They hurt like crazy and so I ended up on the couch timing them until after 5am. I must have fallen asleep for about 45 minutes and woke at 5:45 with my alarm. There were no more contractions for the rest of that day so it was just another false alarm. I slept about 30 minutes during Carson's nap time so I was very tired at this point. That night at dinner I was still feeling kind of funny. I told Carl something felt different, but I couldn't put my finger on it. He basically said "yeah right" and I didn't want to get my hopes up. We got Carson in bed and around 9pm while I was getting ready for bed I started getting contractions again. I was SO mad because I was already so tired and needed to sleep. These ones were the most painful so far. Again, I went straight down to the couch so I could at least watch TV while I was timing them and hopefully Carl could sleep if he had to go to work the next day.
Around 1am my contractions were an average of 7 minutes apart. Everything I've been told by my doctor etc. says to call in at 5 minutes apart. However, I had to finish getting my bag together, we live 45 minutes from the hospital, I was already dilated to 4cm the week before and I was supposed to have 5 hours of IV antibiotics before he came into the world. I figured it wouldn't hurt to just call and see what they say. They immediately told me to get to the hospital. Apparently second+ time moms should actually watch for 8-10 minute intervals because we tend to progress much faster. I went up and started getting my stuff together. Carl didn't budge so I went over and poked him. He looked at me like I was lying! He was up in a daze. I went in to tell my mom and she about jumped out of her bed, both from sleep and excitement.
We got to the triage unit at about 2:30. They checked me and I was almost at 6cm. We were quickly taken up to the laboring room. Apparently they had a huge rush of people after us and ran out of rooms so we had good timing. The IV was hooked up at 3:45am so I knew that meant they wouldn't want my water to break until at least 8:45. The nurse said if I wanted an epidural I could have it at any time. I was still going back and forth on this because with Carson it took away the contraction pain, but I felt everything during the active labor. While the nurse walked out I had a few contractions that I didn't even know what to do with. They were so painful and I couldn't figure out how to work through them. I quickly decided it was a big fat YES to the epidural. They called for it and it was done and working by 4:40am. This also meant that I had a few hours to sleep because I was now so relaxed and my water hadn't been broken. I was also still at 6cm so we were good to go.
Lights were out at 5:00am on the dot. Literally at 5:05am I was dozing off when I felt a pop. There goes my water! I called down for the nurses and they were just laughing. I still tried to sleep, but my legs were extremely numb and it was hard to be comfortable. At 6:00 my hip started to hurt really bad and I was too numb to move on my own. I called the nurse again to come help me move and make sure all the cords were okay. As she started to move me I realized I could feel something down there. She said it was probably nothing, but would check anyway. Sure enough, his head was right there and ready. I knew I wasn't totally crazy! haha Talk about fast progression though!
Everyone started getting ready to go and I started pushing at about 6:20am. For some reason my contractions never ended up being closer than that 7ish minutes apart. In total I only pushed through just over 4 contractions, but it seemed to take forever since they were spaced far apart. I pushed for an hour and 15 minutes with Carson! On the fifth contraction they yelled to stop pushing and he was on his way out. I never cried at all. I couldn't wipe the smile off my face and was actually laughing. I guess that's the power of a good epidural! He had the funniest little cry and was actually crying before he was all the way out. We were beyond happy to meet little Max, even if it was 6 days late. He was born at 6:48am on June 29, 2011 weighing 7lb 15oz and 21 inches long.
I set the camera up to the settings I thought would work best and Carl quickly went between the camera and video camera for the first few minutes. For a rookie he did pretty good! I'm just happy to have photos of our first moments together. We got to stay in the room for about an hour before moving to the post-partum room. It was nice and quiet so the three of us could just sit and be together. Other than not being able to walk for at least 6-8 hours afterward, I couldn't believe how good I felt through everything. I'm sure part of it was that I was so much less anxious this time around, but I didn't walk away from Carson's birth with positive thoughts about the labor. All I wanted this time was to go into labor naturally. Everything worked out like it was supposed to. To say we are so in love with these two boys would be a gross understatement.
The first time I laid eyes on him.
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