The wild ride (induction-free!)

I woke up on January 14 (the day after my due date) to get ready for an appointment with my midwife. We were going to be confirming plans for labor induction for the following day. As I was in the shower, I began having contractions about 5 minutes apart. This wouldn’t have made me think anything was different from false alarms that we’d had, but these contractions felt very different. They were mostly in my back and were quite sharp, yet slightly reminiscent of menstrual cramps. I wasn’t feeling too great in general at the same time. We decided to go ahead and grab our hospital bags to take with us to the midwife’s appointment, just in case.

I arrive at my appointment, still contracting every 5 minutes and beginning to need to breathe through them. Once the midwife came into the room, I let her know and she sat and watched me deal with a contraction. She agreed that I seemed extremely uncomfortable and that I just had a different “sense” about me. She checked me for dilation and I was 4cm and 85-90% effaced, different from 5 days prior at 3cm and 70%. She told me to go get something to eat, get Aiden to grandma, and head to the hospital. As we left, she was calling the midwife who was on call at the hospital to let her know what was going on.

After getting some food, a few more things from home, and sending Aiden off with grandpa, we headed to the hospital. My sister-in-law, who we had invited to view the birth (she’s a nursing student), beat us to the hospital! I was still contracting every 5 minutes, but they had increased in intensity so much that I was starting to cry. Still, it was all in my back. I was hooked up to a monitor and checked again, still at 4cm.

I continued at every 5 minutes for 3 hours. They refused to admit me until I was 5 cm, as they were short staffed and “just too busy” – the exact words from the charge nurse. They weren’t getting any closer together, but were getting more and more intense as time went on. I couldn’t walk, yet the charge nurse told my attending midwife that if I wasn’t 5 cm, my water hadn’t broken, and the contractions weren’t 3 minutes apart, she’d have to send me home. WHAT?? My midwife did her best to console me as I bawled through my contractions, still all in my back.

Around 4pm, I attempted to get up and go the bathroom. The contractions jumped to 2-3 minutes apart and became excruciating. I notified the nurse, who notified the charge nurse, who said I could stay for another 40 minutes and then be checked again for any progress (gee, thanks…). We then didn’t see anyone for another hour and 15 minutes, as I was groaning and crying in pain, packed in a semi-private triage room with 2 other women (one of whom was on her cell phone, telling the person on the other end, “there’s a woman giving birth in here”!).

So finally, John (who was getting very frustrated with the whole experience) thinks it’s time to go find the nurse. This is at 5:20pm. The nurse comes in and checks me – 5 cm. I beg for pain relief and am told that once they get me in a room, they’ll send someone in to talk to me about an epidural. She leaves to go get me a room and not a minute after she walks out, my water breaks. They come in with a wheelchair to take me to my room, as I am still moaning and crying from pain. They get me into my room at 5:30pm. I say that I need to use the restroom and right after I do, I feel this intense pressure. I need to push. They get me on the bed and I again beg for pain relief. “There’s no time – you’re at 10 cm”, they say. I ask for IV drugs. “There’s no time for an IV, you need to push.” I’ve gone from 5cm to pushing in 10 minutes. Trust me when I say that you NEVER want to go that quickly. I had to be hooked up to oxygen. Pushing was awful and I struggled so hard to not fight it. I began pushing at 5:35pm and Nathan Elliot shot into this world at 5:49pm.
It took a long time and multiple shots of different drugs to get me to stop bleeding. I lost a lot of blood, but still just under needing a transfusion. I only had a small laceration at the top, but it was so small, no stitches were needed and I can’t even feel it anymore.

Nathan weighed in at 7 lbs, 2 oz (1 oz heavier than Aiden), measuring at 20 ½ inches long (2 inches longer than Aiden). We are recovering well, though mommy’s after pains need heavy-duty painkillers at times. Nathan nurses like a pro and left the hospital having only lost 7% of his birth weight. Big brother Aiden said hi to the baby, but being a 2 year old boy, was more excited about all the buttons to push in the hospital room.

After having already had a baby epidural-free, I thought it would be no problem the 2nd time around. But I can’t even begin to explain to you how mind-bogglingly painful this labor was. Every moment of it was all in my back. I screamed and cried and honestly thought I could just die from the pain. I wouldn’t wish my labor experience this time around on anyone. I know that it was so painful because I dilated so quickly. I’m not saying long labors are great….but after this, I am pretty confident that he’s our last baby. My attending midwife came back in shortly afterward and said, “I am so glad that you told the nurse that you weren’t leaving. You wouldn’t have made it back to the hospital.” The next day, my primary midwife came to see me and said that she was shocked at hearing the story, because they aren’t actually supposed to let you leave if your contractions are 5 minutes apart. Here they’d been practically pushing me out the door because they “were busy”. We are still just shaking our heads at what might have happened had we actually let them make us leave. Birth is wild….