Around midnight I was regretting all the onion strings I ate with the burgers and felt nauseous and sat on the ac vent awhile then fell asleep...I roused myself after 20min and hit the sack at like 12:30.
May 9: At 2am, I woke up from some light contractions...very random and unsteady but enough to just keep me awake and make me think it WAS the day. I was really sensitive to the concern that things could go fast (remember Benjamin's precipitous birth) so I paid attention to timing.
4am, things started to get somewhat regular but they weren't the good contractions that peak in the middle...they were peaking on the front end which did happen with Benj. Just in case, I woke up Nathan and had him call Braxton to come over. Poor guy ended up waiting awhile before we left. So awesome that he drove over from Soddy at 4am in the morning!!! Once he arrived, I was able to relax and not worry about the big boys.
6am I was sure I was in progressing labor with normal peaks in my contractions and I did the dosing between them thing that I could do with Samuel. I also knew this was going to be a slower labor. They were 5/6 min apart but not a min yet...really they need to be over a minute to be making great progress for me - at least in the past. I would have paid more thought to the proximity but every time I got up and moved around, something crazy happenned. Everything slowed down. The reason this is weird is that usually movement makes things speed up but I ended up with much shorter contractions and all variables of lengths between them. It was confusing.
Anyways, I took shower and they slowed a bit in length but closer and then farther apart. I laid back down and 20 min later, they were back to the 5/6 min and like 45 min apart.
8am, I could tell intensity was increasing and I was really having to concentrate!!!!! I stalled about leaving until Nate dragged me out the door. I was in the zone and just feeling very comfortable at home. We paused for pictures on the way out though.
9:20am We got to the hospital and of course the stress of getting there and all the moving around had my contractions at like 30 seconds again and farther apart. So, we sat in the parking lot and I ate crackers with peanut butter and drank a ton of the mint/honey tea Nathan had been making me all morning (I seem to really like tea when I'm in labor and it doesn't give me heartburn at that point in pregnancy). I knew when I got in there I'd only get ice.
10am Everything was back to being regular, around a min, intense, and 4/5 min apart sometimes 3.
So, I walk in unassisted and was directed to registration. I really wonder about that but anyways, I took two good contractions standing there but it was calm and I knew what it was about so I just breathed through them knowing standing was good for me too. I am in my own world too by that point during the contractions. Then, I just walked all the way back to labor and delivery with Nathan.
10:15am: I'll tell ya a funny moment. Remember how the movement was slowing things down? Well, even with the contractions on the way, things were slowing down with me moving again (this is just unusual). So, by the time I was at labor and delivery, it all had slowed down again and i just calmly walked up, introduced myself and matter of factly said i was in labor. I just stood there looking at them and they all just kind of sat there and stared at me. I was like no really this is my 3rd kid naturally and im sure im pretty far along in the process. Yea, no contractions. I keep standing there. One nurse slowly stands up an takes her time taking me to a room so i can change. She leisurely asks a few questions and says to lay down and then the contrax start right up. She looks at me, decides to skip everything, checks me, picks up the phone and calls over to the desk saying: um, tell her doc to get over here right now, she is an 8!!!!! Then she calls for labs stat and a room stat and everyone just starts scrambling. I honestly didn't realize I was at an 8. I was estimating I was around a 6.
Oh, and I should mention at this point that the bag of waters were still intact and there were none of the other normal labor signs. After she checked me though I finally had the bloody show so that is something I guess. I was really chatty with all the nurses between contractions. I mean, if you haven't done labor, in between contractions, you feel completely normal and usually I rest calmly between contractions but well, this time I was all chatty. Hopefully, that's a nice change for them in terms of dealing with the woman in labor.
10:45: I was in the delivery room waiting on the doc and kinda trying not to move thinking if I moved then maybe the doc would miss it all! Well, I will go ahead and mention that I did let the monitoring bands be on me. I knew the hospital rule was 20 min of monitoring and at that point, I didn't even know if it would be 20 min. They put them on there really loosely and there was some element of humor to watching him bump the monitors between contractions. (Oh yea, he was moving a lot between them so I knew he was okay the whole time I was laboring). It actually really struck me as interesting. I guess I've kind of worked out a mental coping mechanism concentrating on relaxing parts of my body. You could hear the fetal monitor audibly but when I was having a contraction, I didn't actually hear anything and then I'd come out of it and hear the monitor and it would sound like it was just racing because I hadn't heard anything. I asked the nurse about it a few times and she was like, 'no it's been going just like that the whole time'. Isn't that interesting?
They also gave me a heploc. I could have and probably would have refused BUT in this pregnancy I turned out to be Strep B positive...which is no big deal to the momma in terms of diagnosises. 1 in 3 pregnant women will have a positive response and some women with a positive in some pregnancies will have a negative in others. There's a lot of debate about the whole strep B thing because it just comes and goes in women and tends to be something they check during the end of pregnancy. It causes no problems to the women and is not related to the kind of strep you get in your throat. That said, 1 in 10,000 babies vaginally born to women with strep B have problems in the first 24 hours from picking it up during birth. Clinically, the main treatment is penicillin given via IV at least 4hrs before delivery. There are no treatments offered early because even if you take something, the second you are done, it can come back (or not). The hospital is really uptight about a positive strep B response and I knew that going in so I just went with the flow EVEN THOUGH I knew I wasn't getting the antibiotics in the time it would need to be effective. It needs to be 4 hrs in advance of delivery and this is the other feature of why my being strep B positive this time was really annoying since I know I can have a fast labor and that I prefer to labor at home. (BTW, this is also why we had a 48 hr hospital stay) SO...I had previously talked to a midwife and an old friend who referred me to several different studies on ideas of things I could do at home and I really think some of them did work. Anyways, I got the heploc and antibiotics but nothing else. I consider that natural. I had them unhook everything afterwards as it is just annoying to try to hold and nurse an unexperienced newborn with one.
11:00 or so: Dr. Seeber arrived and checked me to find me at a 9. After he checked me, the pressure was crazy!!! I was mentally ready to be done with this thing!!!
11:20: Things switched so I was feeling that 'lovely' incredibly irresistable desire to push (and to make strange gutteral noises while doing so). I was kinda just ready to be done laboring the last 2 hours as it was you know, intense. Oh, he did break water as they were bulging and I just wanted a little relief from the pressure. It was about 5 min before he was born.
11:30 They all suited up and got things ready. Dr. Seeber just told me to listen to my body and push whenever i wanted. It was great. No one held my legs or anything. I told him i was ready to just push him out and be done with it and he said that was fine. I did not let the ring of fire burn much as I just needed him out.
11:40 They positioned the mirror and I could see him starting to come out! It was actually really cool. I didn't want to see the other two but I really did want to see it all this time after talking to Nathan about watching it. SOOOOO, the really COOL bit was that after I got the head and shoulders out, Dr. Seeber had me put my hands down and PULL HIM OUT MYSELF!!!!! That was just cool!! :)
I was really happy with Dr. Seeber's work and that he just let me do what I felt like doing. I asked him to let the cord pulsate and he said no problem. He told me when it had stopped so they could cut the cord. I asked him to have them skip the pitocen if he nursed right away and he said, "sure". There were just a lot of little things that he did that were nice. He said I could get that heploc out fast too. I also told doc to hurry up the stitching. Haha. I told him he was taking too long. I don't know how many stitches but I have recovered really fast so not that many.
It was a good labor...shorter than sams...longer than benj and thats a good thing. Prob about 9hr long total but not intense that whole time of course. We had time to get the boys settled before leaving. I think that is just a nice length of time to labor. It's long enough to get things in order and get used to the contracts but not too long that you are exhausted and it isn't so short that the contrax hit you like a train and leave you trying to wrap your head around them.
So happy again for the natural birth. Recovery was again great. I just had about 5 total ibuprofin (and some ice) for a few days and I feel pretty much good. In fact, I feel better than I did feel because I'm not 40 weeks pregnant anymore! I mean pregnancy is great and all but for me at the end, it gets a little ridiculous and just hard to do anything. It just feels good to be a bit more back to 'normal'. Every time Dr. Seeber visited he just said, "You did really great, you should have six more." Haha. I told him I was getting old and tired.
Oh and i have to admit I really enjoyed being in the hospital two days. It was so quiet and calm and I sent him to the nursery for a few nice long showers and part of both nights too. That surprised me as we have always roomed in the whole time with the others but I was pretty tired the first time and worried I wouldn't hear him. He was pretty gaggy having swallowed some extra amniotic fluid when he came out. I was still tired heading home from the hospital but my spirit was so calm having a vacation from the boys. I mean i love my big boys but they are exhausting esp with a huge belly and i needed a vacay from them. Nathan stayed home with them.
Welcome home baby Jonathan. :) Glad to have you!
