a baby story
i had a regular weekly doctor's appointment on may 18, at 38 weeks and 4 days. evan surprised me by taking the day off work, doing a lot of cleaning and chores around the house, and then showing up at my doctor's appointment. i was 2.5 cm dilated and 80% effaced, which was progress from my last appointment. my doctor also told me that he had stripped my membranes during the exam, and there was a 50-50 chance i would go into labor within 2 or 3 days. he was hopeful that i would go into labor sometime over the weekend. we left feeling really excited that something might finally be happening.
after a few days went by and nothing felt different, i was starting to think that nothing was going to happen and went back to woefully envisioning going past my due date. i worked a full day on thursday may 21 and then went home and did a lot of chores with evan. we finished putting away all the baby clothes, hung up the new prints from krystle and gavin, installed the changing pad on the dresser, put together the stroller, and put together the cradle. i woke up at 2 AM to pee and i was going back to bed, it felt like i peed my pants a little. sadly peeing your pants isn't that uncommon during pregnancy, so i didn't think much of it, and went back to sleep. i woke up again at 2:45 AM and as soon as i got out of bed, i felt like i was peeing my pants again. i saw some spotting, and was pretty sure at that point that my water had broken. i went downstairs and told evan, who was sleeping on the couch. he had taken some unisom and was feeling pretty wiped out, and i wasn't feeling any contractions, so we decided to go back to sleep. i dozed for maybe an hour and then got up and watched tv. i started feeling mild contractions around 4 and they were getting fairly strong by 5:15. i woke evan up and told him it was time to get moving. he fed and walked the dogs, ran around packing up, called the doctor, and called the concierge to fill in for me at work while i paced around the house breathing hard and snapping at him to hurry up. luckily we live literally 2 minutes from the hospital and we checked in at 6:05 AM. evan helped me get into a hospital gown, and then it took about an hour for the nurses to ask me the necessary questions, get me to sign the forms, put in my iv, attach the fetal monitor, etc. i was already 4 cm dilated. i got an epidural at 7:10 AM. it was something i had been nervous about during my pregnancy, but i was in so much pain that morning that i didn't care. the local anesthetic they used to numb the area burned pretty badly, but other than that, i didn't feel anything and the relief was almost instant. after that they put in a catheter, something else i had dreaded previously but didn't care about at the time. krystle and gavin came to visit for a few hours, until krystle had a wave of morning sickness.
i was progressing pretty quickly, and my doctor said i should have the baby by lunch time. i was fully dilated by around 1 PM, and started pushing around 1:15 PM. it was hard for me to feel the contractions with the epidural, and surprisingly hard to push effectively, even though they tell you to just act like you're trying to go to the bathroom. evan says i was pushing around 45 minutes with the nurse when my OB came in. stephen wasn't moving down, so they tried a vacuum on his head. that didn't move him down either. my OB said his head was stuck behind a bone and that i would need a c-section for failure to progress. i was as nervous as you can be when you're totally drugged up - i had never really considered that i would need a c-section. they prepped me and rolled me into the operating room sometime after 2 PM. evan had to dress in scrubs and followed behind me a few minutes later. they put up a curtain so that i couldn't see what was going on, and evan sat by my head behind the curtain. my OB was chatting casually with the other doctors and nurses, and i wasn't even sure he had started the surgery until i could feel some tugging at my body. it seemed incredibly quick - i think he had the baby out within the first 5 to 10 minutes. stephen william valentine was born at 2:41 PM. he was 8 lbs 6 oz and 20 inches long. i can't even explain how it felt to hear him crying. they called evan over to take pictures and cut the umbilical cord. i remember evan saying, in a surprised voice, he's cute. they brought the baby around by my head so i could see him and it was completely overwhelming. i still couldn't quite believe that that was MY baby, the same baby that had been inside me, kicking me in the ribs for weeks. evan got to take the baby back to the delivery room while they closed me up in the OR. they wheeled me back to the delivery room and my parents showed up shortly after, with flowers for me and a fishing pole for stephen. the nurses took the baby to the nursery (i didn't even get to hold him) and then moved me down to recovery. eventually they brought stephen to the room, and i finally got to hold my son. i couldn't believe how tiny and adorable he was, and evan and i agreed that he has the wallace nose, which comes from my grandmother on my dad's side. my parents spent a few hours with us, and then gave us some alone time. a nurse came by to help us try to breastfeed. we had a difficult time, and it was frustrating - unfortunately babies don't pop out knowing exactly what to do! evan slept on a pull out couch in my room, and we sent stephen to the nursery for the night so we could rest. i hadn't even gotten out of bed yet.
krystle and gavin came to visit saturday morning, evan's parents and brother arrived around noon and my parents came sometime later that day. the nurses took out my catheter that day and i actually didn't want them to, because i didn't want to have to get out of my bed to go to the bathroom! my nurse helped me out of bed for the first time that day for a meeting with a lactation consultant. she helped us with breastfeeding but it was still difficult and frustrating. we were supplementing with formula and so was the nursery when they had him overnight. we sent him to the nursery again that evening. i also took my first shower. evan had to help me get to the bathroom and get undressed. as soon as i walked in there, a huge pool of blood dripped out on the floor, freaking both me and evan out. the nurse was like, oh, that's perfectly normal! lovely. luckily the shower had a bench and i just sat in there for quite a while. evan helped me get dried off, dressed in my own jammies, and back to bed. i'm so glad that we're so comfortable with each other, because i really needed his help.
sunday and monday we had both sets of parents over again, and evan's cousin brian. we met with two different lactation consultants, who were a godsend. it was still difficult, but they were VERY helpful and we finally started to see some improvement. i was able to take a little walk around the hospital on sunday and shower on my own on monday. we could have gone home on monday, but my blood pressure was high and i was still feeling some pain, so we decided to stay another night. we kept stephen in our room that night, and watched the fugitive on vhs. stephen was really good, and only woke up once during the night. it gave us confidence about taking him home!
tuesday was spent packing and going through all the red tape necessary to be discharged. i had to be cleared by my doctor, stephen had to be cleared by the nurses, we had to have his electronic ankle bracelet removed and have his car seat checked. it was a ridiculous production getting packed up and getting out of there for a 2 minute car ride home.
overall, our experience with the hospital was very good. i had a nurse assigned to me each day and night, and probably had 5 or 6 different nurses over the course of my stay. almost all of them were excellent. the lactation consultants were all excellent. most of the baby's nurses were good, but they were pushy with us about making sure we fed the baby often enough and had a tendency to act condescending at times. the labor and delivery and recovery rooms were huge, and the front desk was very liberal with letting us have as many visitors at a time as we wanted. we came home with quite a bit of free stuff, including diapers and formula.
this has gotten so long. i'll save our first week at home with him for another post!