Sophia's Birth Story

Here's the short version:

April 29th around 11:00 PM- I started feeling contractions and began timing them.  They were about 5 mins apart lasting for 1 minute each.
April 30th around 11:30 AM- Checked into the hospital...I was about 3 centimeters dilated and 100% effaced.
May 1st 7:46 AM- Sophia Caroline arrived!!

Just a warning...I had a super long labor, and I want to be able to write and remember all the details, so feel free to skip all of the below if you don't have a good 30 mins to read it all. :)

And now the (super) long version:

Matt had already gone to bed since he had to wake up early in the morning for work, so I was catching up on some DVR shows in the living room. I had been having some braxton hicks and cramping for the past few days, but the first contraction was totally different.  I knew right when it happened what it was.  I waited a little bit and began timing them and sure enough they each lasted about 45 sec- 1 min and came every 5-6 mins apart. Around midnight I figured if this was the real thing, I should probably try and get some sleep.  I let Matt know that he might not be going to work the next day.  I got about 4 hours of sleep and when I woke up, the contractions were coming more frequently and were getting stronger.  They were still not painful, just a little uncomfortable.  Matt started packing the car up and I threw some cookies in the oven to bake for our nurses.  It sounds silly to do, but it helped me keep my mind off of the contractions.  We both let work know what was going on and around 8:30, we got in the car to head to the hospital.  My contractions were still about 1- 1.5 min long and they were coming on every 2-4 mins.

Last belly picture!

We called our parents to let them know what was going on and we called our OB on the way and they told us they wanted us to turn around and head in to be checked before going to the hospital.  They checked me and I had progressed to about 3 cms and I was 100% effaced, so they told us to go ahead and go to the hospital.

Our birthing room..it was so nice and big!

We got there, checked in and got settled in our room.

They started me on intermittent monitoring, where they would monitor my contractions and Sophia's heart rate for 20 mins and then let me walk around, get in the tub, bounce on the birthing ball, or whatever else I needed to do to help things progress for about 40 mins.

They checked me around 2 and I was about 3-4 cms, so they had me walk around the hospital some more.  My parents had arrived at this point, so we walked out to the waiting room to see them for a little bit.  My contractions were still relatively mild at this point and I will still ok just breathing through them.

 The contractions had picked up and were coming about every 2 mins. Sitting in the tub definitely helped with the pain, but didn't really help me progress any faster.  Around 8 they checked me again and I was at about 5-6 cms. It had taken almost 6 hours to progress 2 cms.  My water had broken at some point and the contractions picked up and were coming  one on top of the other with no breaks.

At this point, I was exhausted.  I had been up since 4 in the morning and I was working off of about 4 hours of sleep.  I was worried about not only having to get through the other 4 cms, but also the pushing.  When I made my birth plan, I wanted to aim for a med-free birth with as few medical interventions as possible.  However, I knew I also had to listen to my body and I made the choice to get some pain medication.  I spoke with the midwife about my choices and decided on the epidural.  I went back and forth a lot in my head before I even talked out loud to Matt about it.  Part of me was totally scared of the entire procedure.  The though of the needle going into my back completely freaked me out. The other part knew that because I was laboring so slowly, my body needed to rest to make it to the end.

At about 9pm they called the anesthesiologist to administer the epidural and after it kicked in, I knew it was the best decision that I could have made.  It allowed my body to relax while still progressing.

Post epidural happiness

Our parents came in for a little to visit and then Matt and I were able to try and get a couple of hours of sleep.  I was fully dilated and began pushing round 3:00 am.  I only pushed a couple of times when the midwife then realized the Sophia was positioned a little funny coming down the birth canal.  Instead of being completely head down, her ear was facing that way instead.  They had me lay on my left side with my right leg up in a stirrup for about an hour to try and get her to turn...not the most comfortable position.  Since I was on one side, gravity started causing the epidural to make my left side a lot more numb than my right, which also made me feel a lot more pain on my right side, what they call a "hot spot."  We called the nurse back in because the pain was pretty unbearable at this point.  They had me lay on the other side to try and even out the medication and came back in another 30 mins to continue pushing.

They had me pushing every other contraction for about 3 hours when I told them that I needed to rest.  I was making progress...slow, slow progress and her heart rate still looked good, so they sat me upright for about 30 mins to take a break, hoping that gravity would help bring her down some.  The pain all of the sudden got really intense and we called the nurse back in again.  I wasn't sure what was going on and it turns out that there was a kink in the epidural line and I wasn't getting any more medication.  The nurse would come in try and fix it, leave for 5 mins to get another nurse, come back and find that the bag was defective, leave for another 5 mins.  I was at the point where I just wanted someone in there who could FIX the darn thing! I started getting sick because the pain was SO intense.  Around 7:00 am our nurses and midwives had shift change and our favorite midwife was on call, so she came in to check on us.  At this point, they had stopped worrying about fixing the epidural and started focusing on me just pushing through the contractions.

 The on-call doctor came in and told us that she needed a little bit of help getting out.  He told us our two options were using the vacuum or doing a c-section.  Obviously a c-section was our last resort, but using the vacuum scared the crap out of me! That was also one of the interventions that I wanted to avoid.  However, it was the lesser of two evils, so we opted to go that route.  They let me know that a few more people were about to be in the room...I think we had a nurse from each shift, two midwives, the doctor, two additional nurses, and 3-4 people from the respiratory team (a precaution since they were using the vacuum).  I pushed about  6-7 more times and she finally came at 7:46 on Wednesday morning...32 hours after my first contractions started. They put her on my belly for a couple of minutes and then took her off to the side to make sure everything was ok.

It was the craziest rush of emotions and I will never forget that moment of looking down and seeing her on my belly.

They cleaned her up and gave her to Matt, who brought her over to me.  One of the sweet nurses grabbed our camera and snapped a few pictures of the three of us.

The baby nurse came in, took her measurements and gave her the first bath.

After they bathed her, I was able to try nursing her for the first time.  I had heard so many horror stories about breast feeding and about how difficult it can be.  I was trying to mentally prepare myself in case she didn't take to it very easily.  To my surprise, she latched on like a champ from the very beginning and has been doing great ever since!

When we were done, the pediatrician came by to look her over and said everything looked great! She scored an 8 and a 9 on her apgar test.  They had to take her to the nursery to do some blood work on her because I had a fever when I delivered and they needed to make sure that it wasn't the cause of an infection.  

While she was in there, we got moved to our postpartum room, where we stayed until we were released on Friday.  Our parents had been in the waiting room all night long and after that long, long wait they were finally able to come back and meet their very first grand baby around 10:00 AM.  The rest of the day was a complete blur as both Matt and I were exhausted, elated, sleep deprived, in disbelief, still running on adrenaline and every other emotion in between.  I will do a separate post on everyone that met Sophia that day.

Well, it only took me a week to write, and I applaud you if you have made it this far. ;)