He's Here!

Well, it's been just over two weeks now since Peter made his appearance into this world and I am finally getting around to writing his birth story. I mainly want to document this so I can remember it later, but I also really love reading other women's birth stories so I wanted to share mine as well.

I can already tell it will be a struggle to keep this somewhat concise. It's difficult to sum up a 28 hour labor in a few paragraphs. As the day went on, I made notes in my phone about what happened and when so I could blog about it now. However, I think it's probably best to ditch the hour by hour summary I originally started (when I thought it might be 8 hours or so) and go for a more general overview now. 

41 Weeks

I wasn't progressing toward labor by my due date but I wanted to go into labor naturally so we kept waiting another week (and I tried every home remedy I could to try to start labor). At my 41 week appointment, we learned that my body was producing more amniotic fluid each day to accommodate my growing baby. (Typically you lose fluid at the end of your pregnancy.) Instead of Peter dropping down and putting pressure on my cervix causing dilation and effacement, he was actually floating up and getting farther away from where he needed to be. We decided to go ahead and induce that night. We left my midwife appointment was about 4:30 p.m. and met my parents at Applebee's for an early dinner. (My parents arrived on Sunday and we induced on Monday night.) We arrived at the hospital at 6:00 for my induction to begin, but there had just been a crazy fast labor (baby came 3 minutes after they arrived at the hospital after driving 125 mph to get there!) and everyone was tied up with them so we just got put in a room and we watched TV for about two hours while we waited for someone to come check us in and get things going. 

A nurse finally came in about 8:00 and things got started from there. They gave me a pill that was going to thin out my cervix and a sleeping pill so I could get some rest before labor really got going the next morning. The plan was to start Pitocin the next morning but I woke up about 2:15 a.m. and felt some pretty strong contractions. I labored on my own for about an hour before I woke Kory up and called a nurse because I could just barely breathe through the contractions. She helped me get in the jacuzzi tub, which sounded really relaxing and ended up being very painful! The jets were SO powerful I could barely force myself to stay in there for about 15 minutes.  

Going into this labor, I really wanted to do it medication-free, but I always gave myself the freedom to change my mind during labor. I held out until almost 5:00 am before I realized this pain was going to be more than I wanted to/would be able endure "naturally". I was still only at 2 cm and not completely effaced and I knew I had a long road ahead of me. My contractions were one minute apart and lasting 30-40 seconds so I just felt like I couldn't catch my breath and recover in between. 

I got pain medication including an epidural and it was absolutely the right decision for me. My labor continued to progress very slowly and they started Pitocin mid-day Tuesday. I slept off and on through the day as the meds made me very sleepy (and also quite sick to my stomach, so I vomited several times). I spent the day texting friends, watching TV, visiting with my parents and Kory, napping, and thanking God for the gift of modern medicine and pain relief.

By about 7:40 that night, my nurse figured I was probably getting close to fully dilated and effaced, so she checked me one last time. I was finally ready and she decided we should start practicing pushing so I could be ready for the real deal when my midwife finished delivering the baby across the hall. I still had the epidural at this time so pushing was really difficult because I couldn't really feel if I was doing it correctly. We kept practicing and basically just never stopped. After about an hour and a half of pushing, my midwife, Cherie, said she needed to go get the OB and bring him in because we weren't really making progress and we needed to talk about our options.

The OB-GYN Cherie works under, Dr. Wonderly, is a good friend of ours from church and even though I wasn't under his care, he stayed around for my whole labor and delivery to make sure everything went well. He came in and explained that 95% of the time, women who've pushed as long as I had and haven't really made progress aren't going to be able to deliver the baby vaginally. Peter's head was kind of stuck and he was having trouble making his way down because of it. I was really determined to avoid a c-section if at all possible so I asked if we could keep trying and told him I knew I could do it if they'd just let me try. He asked if I could push for another hour and I told him I definitely could. What I didn't know at this point was that they had turned my epidural off and pumped up the Pitocin so that my pushing could be more productive. If they told me they were going to do that, I probably would have folded and said I couldn't do it, so I'm grateful they didn't tell me what was going on.

Kory was holding one of my legs and counting through the pushes and coaching me and encouraging me and being all around amazing the whole time. I truly can't get over how helpful he was to me in delivery. After another hour of pushing, Dr. Wonderly came back in and said we had made enough progress to keep going and that he believed I could push this baby out without surgery. I was so thrilled! However, I had no idea that we were just over half-way through this pain. I ended up pushing for just over 4 hours. I asked Cherie to let me know when I could feel his head coming out as I thought that would be good motivation for me to keep going. I am so thankful I did that as it gave me the boost of energy I needed at the very moment where I was saying, "I can't do this. Maybe I should have got the c-section. I can't do this anymore."

One of the coolest parts of the whole experience was that Kory got to be the one to actually deliver him.  Peter's head and shoulders were out and Cherie had me quit pushing and told Kory to reach down and grab Peter under the arms and pull him out. In addition to being the biggest physical relief I have ever felt in my entire life, I will never forget the sight of Kory holding our baby boy and turning to give him to me.

Peter was born at 12:03 a.m. on Wednesday, November 5. He weighed 8 lbs. 7 oz. and was 21 in. long. His head and chest both measured 14.5 inches. These past two weeks have been really difficult and really amazing! We can't stop thanking God for this newest blessing He's given us.

Next up, I'll share about our extended hospital stay and what I've learned in the past two weeks of being a mom.