On October 3rd I went to my doctors appointment sure that it would be the day. The Day. The day I’d been waiting for for 9 very long (and occasionally scary) months, and through the unbearable South Florida summer heat. As I sat in the waiting room for my appointment I thought about all the ways I was over being pregnant – shortness of breath, The Cankle, the pressure that never seemed to stop, and running to the bathroom every 45 minutes. So. Done. I don’t think that anyone is really ready for the chaos that a newborn brings with them, but I was as close as I could be. I went into my doctors appointment convinced that my baby would be born later that same day. After all, it was my due date. I had plans to have my membranes stripped like I did with Hazeline – and since that worked so quickly that time – there was no doubt that it would be “The Day”.
Until, of course, I got to my appointment and my midwife informed me that I was 3-4 centimeters dilated. Unlike the week before when I’d been between 1-2 centimeters, but closer to the lower number, this time I was closer to the bigger number. And low. Very low. All of which prompted the midwife to tell me that she couldn’t strip my membranes. As it turns out, progress is great when it comes to your body preparing for labor, but too much progress? Um, not so much. Because of all my progress it turns out that there was too much of a risk of breaking my water and if that happened, I’d have to be taken by ambulance to the nearest hospital which wasn’t the hospital where I planned to deliver. Oh, and my husband was still at work in another county. It was a no go. The midwife gave me pep talk about how I was going to go into labor on my own, but I was doubtful. My kids don’t come out on their own.
For a day that was supposed to be so big and important, the rest of the day was remarkably quiet. I thought I felt some mild contractions that night as we were picking the girls up from school, so I was happy to see the sitter when she arrived around 7pm that night. Since we were sure that it was going to be “The Day”, I had arranged for our favorite babysitter to stay with us for a few days… As I went to bed that night, I wondered if I would have another early morning baby, like Hazeline. But when I woke up still pregnant the next morning, I felt like a failure. Who can’t have their third child on time? Everyone kept saying how this baby would be early. What happened to The Day?
Suddenly, I was desperate. I needed to get the baby out. The sitter had a trip to Italy the next Thursday, so after that, we were on our own as far as child care was concerned. I mean, we had lots of offers from friends to take care of them, but I really didn’t want them bounced from person to person. I wanted as much consistency as possible. I spent most of that morning and early afternoon booking induction massages and trying every old-wives tale you can think of. I might have googled “ways to induce labor” more than once.
And then we got the bad news. At my appointment the day before, the midwife arranged for me to have an induction on Monday, if I didn’t go into labor over the weekend. On Friday afternoon, I called the doctors office only to find out that the hospital where I wanted to deliver was booked. Overbooked, actually. That really inconvenient hospital I didn’t want to go to the day before? Yep, that’s the only one that had room. We grudgingly scheduled an induction for 5am Monday morning at a hospital really far away. The sitter agreed to stay one more night – just in case – but would leave in the morning and come back late Sunday. Because it was clear that nothing was happening.
Around 9pm that night, the pelvic pressure that I’d been experiencing for weeks (months?) and that I was pretty sure was trying to split my pelvis in half, suddenly shifted backwards into my butt. It wasn’t painful, but just enough let myself think, “Hey, maybe something is happening here,” before pushing it out of my mind. My kids don’t come out on their own. Besides, I wasn’t having contractions. In fact, I hadn’t had any contractions at all the entire pregnancy. I hung out in bed, surfed the internet, and watched a football game with Erajh before finally deciding to go to bed around 11pm.
I dozed in and out for 30-40 mintutes before the first contraction came. It wasn’t unbearable, but it was just enough to keep me up. Then another contraction came 12 minutes later. And another after that about 8 minutes later. A little after midnight, I looked over at Erajh, who was still watching the football game, and casually mentioned that I was having some contractions. He told me to let him know if they got worse, and I said I would. My contractions were coming irregularly to say the least (ranging from 15 minutes apart to 5 minutes apart and then back up to 7 minutes) and I wasn’t really all that concerned about having to tell him anything that night. There was no way I was in labor…at least I didn’t think I was.
And then a little after 1am, something just didn’t feel right. I can’t exactly explain it, something just wasn’t right. I got out of bed to go to the bathroom, but about 2 steps out of bed, I felt a small pop. Before I knew it, water was rushing down my leg. I yelled a string of expletives as I struggled to get to our tiled bathroom and off of our carpet. Erajh, who had turned the light to go to bed less than a half hour before, reluctantly woke up and asked what was going on. I told him my water broke, or at least, I thought it had broke. For about a minute, I questioned if I had peed on myself then decided to commit to the idea that it was in fact my water. Erajh got up to check on me (at this point I had set up camp in the bathroom, refusing to leave for fear that amniotic fluid would stain our carpet) and started to get ready. Before we left, he went upstairs to tell the sitter that we were leaving and he’d call her as soon as he had any news.
We got to the hospital just before 2am and the contractions were getting more painful and more frequent. I went to the front desk and immediately realized that I’d brought my envelope of important documents – insurance cards, hospital pre-registration forms, authorizations, etc. – but forgot my drivers license. Turns out that I had put my wallet in the diaper bag when we went to dinner that night and never moved it back to my purse. On the verge of tears (because, seriously, who does that?), the security guard assured me that it was okay, looked me up based on my last visit there, printed out an ID sticker, and had someone take me up to Labor & Delivery in a wheel chair…which was soooo much better than my delivery with Hazeline where they told me that because it was so late I had to walk and take the stairs. It was 2:03am when they wheeled me into maternity and I’m pretty sure the first words out of my mouth were “I just need an epidural”.
The triage nurse was extremely nice and had me fill out a form before finally getting me to a bed. My contractions were still really irregular, and right as she handed me the form, a big one hit. I did the best I could to fill out my name, address, and insurance information, but couldn’t make it through the rest of the form, so she told me I didn’t need to fill it out anymore. At that point Erajh arrived (he had stayed behind to park the car) and the nurse got me to a bed in triage. After checking me, she announced that I was at 5cm…as if it was a good thing
Um, what? I was 4 the day before! Five centimeters seemed like very little progress. Half way there, but very little progress.
And then my water broke again. What. The. Hell. I only had a small gush when I was at the house, but I didn’t think there was that much more. Little did I know that there was a whole lot. And a ton still waiting to escape.
We stayed in triage for a while while they got a room ready, Erajh on facebook and making phone calls, me saying the word “epidural” anytime a medical professional dared to draw back the curtain, and both of us laughing at the other women moaning through their contractions (and ignoring the fact that I was probably doing the same). The contractions were really painful and were coming closer together, but still weren’t terribly consistent.
Finally they had a room for us and we moved from triage to delivery. Our delivery nurse checked me and happily announced that I was at 7 centimeters. My response? “Great. Now how about that epidural?”. I knew we were getting really close to that point of no return where an epidural isn’t possible anymore. That couldn’t happen. I wasn’t going to let that happen.
Thankfully, the anesthesiologist arrived soon thereafter. And naturally, I immediately professed my love for him. But then came the hard part. I forgot that to get an epidural, you need to sit up, lean over, and stay completely still for several minutes. By this point the contractions were killing me. I was on my side, clutching the side of the bed through most of them. Lots of curse words were said. Extreme amounts of grunting. As much as I wanted the epidural, I wasn’t sure that I could be still enough to get it. Hell, I wasn’t sure if I could sit up at all, let alone for a few minutes. Luckily, our delivery nurse was a pro and kept me still…she probably just didn’t want to have to hear me say the word “epidural” ever again. Either way, the relief was immediate and much appreciated. Then the doctor laughed at me, because apparently he had just given me the test dose. Whatever. It was awesome. And it got even better when I got the entire dose.
Suddenly, I could talk and joke and laugh. The delivery nurse and I talked about thing other than epidurals. Not surprisingly, things moved pretty quickly from that point.
The nurse checked me around 4am and said that it wouldn’t be long. For a girl who desperately wanted to go into labor the day before, I was still in pretty deep denial that I was actually in labor now…I thought I still had a few hours. She told me the doctor on call from my practice was already at the hospital and was downstairs performing a c-section. I asked if the doctor on call would change at 7am with the nurses shift change, and she replied that it would, but that I would deliver well before that point.
And she was right. The doctor was called soon after that and arrived around 4:30am. He was so calm as he was introducing himself, you’d think he was at a backyard barbeque instead of a delivery. While you’d think that would be concerning, it was actually very calming at that point.
Before I knew it, it was time to push. I asked the nurse to count me down from 10 to 1. By the time she hit “2” during my first push, I heard Erajh say, “Look Jen!”. I opened my eyes and saw the baby’s head, but couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t all the way out. Sensing my panic, the nurse told me that his shoulder was stuck and I needed to push again to get him out. One quick push later, Everett was born at 4:46am with a head full of black hair. Total time from first contraction to delivery was a little over 5 hours…not quite “flying out” as everyone promised, but close enough. And way, way better than the 2 1/2 hours of pushing with Greenleigh.
Erajh went into full paparazzi mode and the nurse got me cleaned up. I begged to keep the epidural for old time sake, but she rattled on about that not being allowed. Everett’s temperature was a bit low, so he stayed on my chest for an hour or two following delivery (after spending some time under the heat bulbs, which weren’t working). While we worked to get Everett warmed up, Erajh went home to get the girls who wasted no time getting to the hospital and meeting their baby brother. We even took our first family photo:
It was a crazy morning, followed by 3 extremely frustrating days in the hospital – I just about kissed the ground when I was discharged – but it was all worth it. My family is now complete.
