Birth Story of my First Daughter

It’s true every mom has a birth story.  The birth of my first daughter was beauti… who am I kidding.. it sucked! I wish someone warned me about how much it truly really would suck.

It’s 10pm. My due date is in 5 days. The husband was sleeping on the couch because I was a floppy whale that was never comfortable. Just as I was able to barely doze off, I started feeling strong flutters. I tried to validate it as gas from dinner because when you’re pregnant you’re just a big ball of gas anyways.

Once I realized the flutters were happening cyclically, I started using whatever “contraction counter” app I had downloaded to my phone months before. I had twenty minutes between funky flutters and they lasted about 30 seconds. I called the after-hours number and talked to the OB on call.  (I strongly disliked my doc. I mean, how many times can a doc call you the wrong name or make the appointment about her until you’d get annoyed? ) Anyways, the Doc on call said to go to the hospital. I woke up the husband and calmly said, “um, it’s kinda time to go to the hospital.”  We grabbed the pre-packed hospital bag and left the house at midnight.

We got to the hospital and did all the check-in stuff. My personal favorite… the oh-so-awesome and not painful at all (eye roll) dilation check. Not far behind in second place of my favorite things to do when I’m having excruciating back labor is telling the 4-thousandth person how far apart the contractions are. Then, after all that, they sent me home at 2am. Because even though they admittedly agree my contractions show signs of a baby soon, I’m not dilated enough to stay in a hospital bed and possibly get drugs.

My mom met us at the house and the dude (husband) got some sleep while I walked around and tried to not break the mantle off the wall as I gracelessly hung on it with each contraction. Between contractions and feeling like an elephant was about to blow out my butt, I was able to get 5 minute kitten naps by sitting straight up in a chair.

I had an OB appointment that morning and dumb doc wouldn’t let me come in early at 7am so once I showed up at 9am, I made sure to let the whole waiting room know I was in labor.  Figured I wouldn’t be waiting my usual 2 hours. Once in the room, another terribly painful dilation check and I was advised to go straight to the hospital.  After checking into the hospital for the 2nd time in 12 hours, every person wearing scrubs that came in the room apparently needed to know what I had eaten, how far apart the contractions were, and what my friggin birthday was.

Finally received the epidural, labor slowed, got pitocin, epidural wore off, got more epidural juice and that wore off too. Because obviously I wasn’t having a horrible enough labor experience, my stubborn baby girl was turned posterior and I was advised that she would be even harder to push out.

Right now the epidural is wearing off…

At this point, I had been awake for about 35 hours, I don’t remember much about pushing except sleeping through a contraction because I was so out of my mind tired.

At the moment C-section was uttered by the doc I disliked most, I woke up and pushed her out in the next few contractions.  Nothing wrong with C-sections but I’m not good with wounds and the necessary care of them. I am a fainter.

Finally, baby girl is out, I have a two degree tear, and dumb doc is stitching me up without enough numbing meds.

my sweet girl

So, I have two regrets.

Regret #1, not insisting I hold my baby girl right away. They just took her to the lit-up crib thing to check how many toes she had.  There was nothing wrong with her to whisk her away to count toes. I promise one will not grow or fall off in the hour that I should be holding her after being in labor for 21 hours.

Regret #2, not “accidentally” kicking dumb doc in the face.