Maddie's Birth Story

Meg here, finally.

I finally have time, energy, and a free hand - it must be time to blog! Here is Maddie's birth story, as I remember it - and it's quite possible that I'm a bit fuzzy on some details. At times I was more, uh, mentally present than others. And sorry if I'm long-winded. You know how women love to tell their labor stories.

Disclaimer: in retrospect, it's probably easy for someone who's gone through it before to see that on Sunday evening I was indeed in labor and would be having a baby very soon. But nothing - NOTHING! - was as I'd ever heard it would be. No books, classes, or personal recollections ever mentioned anything like what I felt. Everybody and every baby is different, clearly. At least I might know for next time (yes, I agreed to a next time. In the delivery room, actually).

Saturday I felt great, we went to Ikea and walked around like crazy, bought tables, and had a lovely day. I woke up Sunday feeling QUITE different. I thought that A) I'd completely overdone it the previous day or B) the baby was dropping further, and this was all part of the magic of pregnancy. MAJOR pressure, major pain. Ow.

I spent the majority of the morning and early afternoon in the one position that didn't make me want to scream, lying back on the couch. Again, I really thought that the pain was baby-head related. (Well, the little battering ram had begun its work, of course it hurt!) It really felt like an intense version of baby-head pressure.)

Around 4:45, I had been up and around, and the pain got much worse. It seemed to be related to movement, and we'd been told that true labor contractions weren't, so, again, I thought "not real". Bob started writing down when I felt these "not real" contractions. They were 15-20 minutes apart, sort of.

We went over to Bob's parents house for our usual Sunday night dinner. I was feeling somewhat less than ok, but it was manageable (at this point Bob was still timing, and I was still thinking he was probably wasting paper). As the evening went on, I really couldn't tell where one "contraction" started and one stopped, so our timing wasn't particularly accurate. They were, I guess, anywhere from 2 to 8 minutes apart, but again, it was very difficult to pinpoint. (A sign that we should have been driving to the hospital?) At 9:30 I called the doctor and explained what I felt, and she didn't seem really concerned. She said to take a shower, lie down, take a Benadryl, and call her when the contractions were regular.

We went home, I followed the doctor's instructions, but things went from bad to Oh-my-God by 11:00. We called, and the doctor said to come into the hospital to be checked. We got there a little before midnight. I told Bob to just leave the bags in the car. I still wasn't convinced that we'd be staying. The man working in the ER asked me if my water had broken and I told him I had no idea. He said I'd know - well, maybe, maybe not...

We got up to Labor & Delivery and got checked in. People kept asking me questions that I either didn't know the answers to or didn't quite have the ability to answer at the moment, so Bob had to most of the talking. When the L&D nurse checked, she announced happily that I was 5 cm dilated and 100% effaced (thinned) - and if you don't know what that means, keep yourself blissfully ignorant. The nurse was ridiculously excited for me, I remember, and went on and on about how lucky I was to come in so far along in my labor, when other women would sit for hours waiting to get that far. Being "so far along" did not amuse me. I just wanted my epidural. I had been set on that from the beginning. In the moments that I could speak, I asked "When do I get my epidural? When when when?"

We had to have tests (and wait years for the results from the lab), we had to get the I.V. in (didn't work well), we had to have the 100 cc's of some liquid through the I.V (dripped soooo slowly), and so on. Meanwhile I 'breathed through the pain', as the L&D nurse called it. I called it cursing every roadblock between me and that nice, big needle. At this point, I wasn't having contractions anymore. At this point in labor, as any mom will tell you, you are one BIG contraction.

Finally she said we were ready for the epidural, she just wanted to check me one more time. It had been about 20 minutes, which to my perception was about 20 years. The doctor checked, and I was now a lovely 8 cm. dilated! "You're not getting an epidural, honey! You're practically there!" OH they were SOOOO happy for me at this point, and I sooooo wanted to beg them to pretend that we were still at 5 cm. and I wouldn't tell if they wouldn't. I wondered if there was anything else I could have, because I was NOT prepared for this whole natural childbirth thing. Had no idea how you do it when you can actually feel what's going on.

The nurse told me that whenever I felt pressure, like I wanted to push, I should call her, and we'd try pushing. Ha. Ha. Um, felt that for hours. Let's go. Eviction time, baby.

Baby didn't seem to mind. I pushed for about 40 minutes. Pushing was my least favorite part, to say the least, but it was, as least, very productive pushing. Baby had no problem with getting evicted. I didn't believe the doctor at all when she said her head had been born. I kind of stopped and thought "wha?" and at that moment, there was a baby on my chest!

She cried right away - so did Bob and I - and she was impossibly gorgeous. You see newborns on baby shows on TV and they're often ugly little suckers with purple skin and weird heads and God-knows-what all over them. You see yours, and she's perfect. They wrapped her up right there and gave her a hat and put her on my chest again, and we got to say our hello's. It was an awesome combination of joy and relief. Then they let Bob hold her, and then put her under the heat lamps to do her tests. She got a 9 on both Apgar tests, we found out later.

...and we had this long list of people to call at different times during our labor. When we got to the hospital, when we thought we were close, afterwards, etc. Ha. We arrived at the hospital at midnight, not even sure we'd be staying, had been in the hospital an hour and 40 minutes, and had our baby at 1:38 AM. THEN we called our parents to tell them that they were grandparents.

Bob's parents came in and visited their new granddaughter, and we all got to go down to the nursery together to have her weighed and measured and washed up.

I found out afterwards that natural childbirth does have its advantages; because I didn't have an epidural or any other pain medications, I was allowed to walk around, stay in the nursery when they weighed and measured her, go to my room and get into my bed myself. They nurses kept telling me how incredibly lucky I was to have such a quick labor & birth. I'd been in real labor since about 9PM, so I'd had about 4 1/2 hours. Not too shabby. Redheads delivery quickly, the doctor said later. Cool...we'll remember that for next time, and actually go to the hospital a little earlier, hopefully.

Bob came back from the nursery, having watched them give her a bath, and told me all about it. Then they brought her to me and we got to spend a little more time together. Incredible. She's absolutely incredible.

After a parade of doctors and nurses, Maddie's nurse came in and took her back to the nursery and told me to get some sleep. It was about 5 AM at this point. Bob eventually went home too, to get some rest. I was too jazzed to really sleep, though. I may have gotten an hour that first night (morning) in the hospital.

So there's our story! We had our baby! What a surprise, too! I really was lucky, I hadn't even been sure I was in active labor when I got to the hospital, and the whole thing wasn't as painful as I had anticipated childbirth to be - especially natural childbirth. We are very truly fortunate, and so very very happy to have this amazing little person in our lives now. Every minute she gets cuter and sweeter, and she's quite entertaining. I'll take a chance, tempt fate, and say that she's really a good baby so far, too. I mean, hey! I got 7 (non-consecutive) hours of sleep last night. That's pretty darn good, I'd say!

Thanks for reading our (long) birth story. We love and adore our new baby daughter, and we're looking forward to sharing her many little milestones here, from time to time.

Now if you'll excuse me, somebody needs a diaper change.