Birth Story

No pictures for this post. I think that labor and delivery are among those things in life that should happen and then be over without more than the foggy memory leftover.

My birth experience was good, as far as labor and delivery can be good. It was definitely painful, but I had so much wonderful support and I never stalled so it went really well.

Brian Gold brought dinner over for me and Brett on Monday, July 16th. This was such a blessing because Brett was usually very tired every night from working during the day and then making dinner at night that he was worried that if I went into labor at night he wouldn't have enough energy to support me. Since Brian brought dinner Brett was well rested. Thanks, Brian!

After dinner, Brett and I watched "Oceans 12" and I was having contractions 2-8 minutes apart the whole time. This had happened before so we didn't really think much of it. Before we went to bed, around midnight, they seemed to be more intense so we called our doctor. She said that we should stay home as long as possible so that we could be comfortable until labor had definitely begun. So, we went to bed thinking that we'd sleep through the night like all the other times I had contractions like these.

At 2:30 am, a contraction woke me up. When I stood up to go to the bathroom, my water went everywhere. For weeks I had been praying for a clear sign that labor was starting because I kept having contractions and never knew if I was finally going into labor or what. Well, God answered my prayers because it was clear that my water had broken and that it was time to go to the hospital. :-) We got our stuff together and called our doctor and our doula, Maria, and headed out the door. We called our parents on the way to the hospital.

I was all checked in and in a labor and delivery room around 3:15 am. My contractions came steadily and I dilated about 1 cm per hour without any stalling. I had arrived at the hospital 100% effaced and about 4 cm dilated so I only had dilating to do.

I wanted to have a natural childbirth just to see if I could do it. I got doses of narcotics three times which really helped to take the edge off the contractions and helped me get through most of labor. I also received fluids which helped to perk me up. At one point I felt like I couldn't do it anymore and had decided to get an epidural, but Maria encouraged me to wait and see how dilated I was and when Dr. Dintini checked me I was at 9 cm so I decided to forego the epidural. At 10 am I was 10 cm and could finally start pushing. I needed to have an episiotomy and a catheder to help Micah come out. Micah was born at 11:40 am!

I feel so good about the accomplishment of birthing Micah. I'm so proud of myself. I could not have done it without Brett. He was a fabulous support and never left my side (except I think he went to the bathroom once). I also could not have done it without our doula, Maria. She applied counter pressure to my back during contractions which enabled me to keep going (I had back labor). She also supported and helped us through the whole process in many ways. We also had a really great nurse named Sally who stayed with us for the majority of the time. Dr. Dintini was invaluable during pushing.

Usually, for every difficult experience in life I can find some sort of silver lining within the experience itself to share. Labor is not like that. It's really hard. I'm glad that I have had the experience of doing it naturally, but I think that next time I might get an epidural right away and not go through all the pain again. ;-)