Mason's Birth Story
Thursday
Daily routine was to get up around 11am, do some light housework, eat and then take Hershey the doggy to the park for his run. I sat by a tree as the weather was quite nice and then decided after a while it was time to head home. As I was walking across the street, I felt like I peed a little bit, "Odd" I thought. Took a few more steps and my pants were wet. I started to giggle. Ummm hmmmm. Yep definitely wet and definitely not pee. "Okay Hershey, time to go home!" I said to the dog. Oh yeah, probably should call Clayton! "My water broke!" I exclaim excitedly. I then waddle home with a happy dog and think, wow, it's time!
I decide to call the doctor and let him know things are starting to progress. He tells me to wait until 6:30pm to call with another update (it's 2:30pm when I call).
6:30pm comes along and nothing has happened, no contractions, no pain. I'm a bit disappointed. lol. I google 'water broke, no contractions' I see a lot of posts from other women wondering when the baby is gonna come out! The Doctor says usually things happen in this time period but it's okay if they don't. We'll wait through the night and see if there is any change. I wake up shortly after 2am (12 hrs later) and realize that Mason may be taking his time (which isn't shocking since I arrived into the world 2 weeks late).
Friday
The plan was that if nothing happened over night to call in the AM and set up a game plan. I call the Doctor at 7:30am and he says to come in any time as he's already at the Hospital doing a delivery and they can check me out. Within 2 hours Clayton and I arrive at BC Women's. We tell them that we have been 2cm dilated since Monday and that my water broke the day before. They set me up in a room and put me on a heart monitor and a contraction monitor. I have a Med Student (whose name I cannot recall) setting me up. The Dr seems pleased he has a helper. Clayton watches the monitor constantly with curiousity. Mason's heart is strong! I didn't think the contraction belt would even pick up anything since I was at zero pain. I do have a pretty high tolerance for pain though being put through many years of labour imitating cramps :( Dr. Farmer checks me out and says I am having minor contractions but nothing to indicate a baby coming anytime soon. He suggests we head home and relax. Clayton and I decide to go have lunch and since it's a work day, we opt for Indian food at one of my favorite places! Saffron Indian Cuisine for all you can eat buffet. I started to feel a bit different once we sat and started eating, light contractions.
I only had one plate as there wasn't much room for baby. After lunch Clayton insists that we walk to the Library which was only another block and a half away. We picked up a whole bunches of books and dvd's and had a nice walk in the fresh air.
Upon 'resting' at home, I watched a whole lot of tv and found a great contractions counter online here and told Clayton to time me when each one came and went. I eventually was hitting 5-6 minutes apart lasting 45 seconds. They weren't overly painful but definitely there! By 9:30pm my contractions were coming in regularly and I figured now was the best time to head to the hospital once again. So we packed up, parked and went in. Upon another exam, the nurse announced that I was only in prelabour and unfortunately I wouldn't be admitted quite yet. We talked about my options and the only thing that convinced me to go home was the promise of a shot of Morphine. Initially I decided to go as pain free as I possibly could stand as I thought it was best for baby. I knew taking an Epidural wouldn't affect Mason and was going to leave that as my last resort option. I really didn't want to go home either, the back and forth was getting annoying. So I got my shot and we headed home.
Saturday
I figured the meds would kick in by the time we got home (20-30 min drive) and was disappointed when I didn't have that 'ahhhhh' feeling of relief. Icrawled back into bed and the relief never came. The morphine didn't work. The contractions now were at least 4 mins apart and were tearing ME apart. I wanted to wait as long as possible and would gear myself up for another yell and then say once it was over I'd wake Clayton up (who was snoring) and we'd leave. But the 4 mins of pain free bliss was nice and I wanted to enjoy it! Finally at 2am I had enough and off to the hospital we went. The car ride was quite the journey. I do not consider myself to have much of a potty mouth but I turned into a trucker en route. My 'high tolerance' of pain had hit its peak and I was definately screaming. Along with crushing Clayton's hand so I opted to hang on to the 'oh shit' handle on the car to help me through. I waddled my poor body into the reception, plunked myself into the chair and felt like I was in a haze. I think at one point the Nurse rubbed my shoulder, I tried to be quiet and no bad words escaped from my mouth. Finally we got undressed, into a room and I really begged for the Epidural, something had to save me. I have to give some Kudo's to Clayton as he couldn't have been any more attentive, accomodating and unbelievable supportive through this journey I was on! Finally the new Doctor came in (Dr Farmer was off shift) and I met Dr. Fernandez who was at the Birth Doc seminar we attended in early Feb. She couldn't have been much younger/older than I! What seemed like an eternity, I finally was told we were ready to head to the birth room (they actually asked me if I could walk there? Uh I don't think so) so I was wheeled to another floor and was told as soon as the IV was inserted, I'd get some nice drugs. One thing I knew that they didn't was I am extremely hard to get an IV into. Small veins. I think I even wished the nurse luck! 4 pokes later she gave up and said that the Anesthesiologist would take over. She tried and tried and the contractions kept coming. Clayton got frustrated and asked them to wait until my contraction was over before attempting again but I yelled, "NO! I need my epidural" I didn't care if they poked my whole body with needles, I wanted some pain relief! Finally the IV was in and they taped up my back for the Epidural. I am quite knowledgeable on this practice but didn't do any googling of the actual procedure so it was interesting to say the least! The relief wasn't as instant as a good shot of Morphine but it quickly disappeared as if it hadn't been there. I actually felt useless as no pain, no body awareness. They checked Mason's heart but was having a hard time getting a good read so we agreed to let them put an internal monitor in which was a little probe that went into his little baby head. This worked much better. Finally they checked me again and I was at least 8cm's and fully efaced (yay). They kept an eye on me and had some concerns that his heart rate was dropping slightly and mentioned the forcep/suction option which I was against. Finally I was fully dilated and upon command, was ready to push! This was the weird part, I had no clue when the contractions were coming! Clayton was watching the monitor closer than anyone else! My Birth Team consisted of four - Dr. Fernandez, Clayton and a birth team of two students (Chris (guy) and I think? Amanda) who were all wonderful!
I'll spare you the details on the pushing but after two hours, Dr Fernandez told Clayton to get ready to catch Mason and I geared up for one final push. Despite zero pain, I did feel him passing through me! In an instant (9:05am), I had a squacky baby on my chest which unfortunately was at a bad angle and I only could see the top of his head! He was fairly clean (they don't clean them first, policy is skin to skin first for quite a while) and my first words to my Son were 'Oh baby!'. Finally they took him, cleaned him off, weighed him - 7lbs 2ozs and measured him - 21 inches and gave him a good APGAR score. Finally he was handed back to me for my first look. He had really pink skin and was perfect head to toe! I was surprised at how dark his eyes were (knowing that babies don't get color in their eyes for a little while) and finally he had hair on his head! For myself, my hair was so blond that I looked bald until I was at least Two!
We had a lot of skin to skin time and had a chance to breast feed for the first time. It was a bit of a challenging experience but Mason latched on quite well and then we were left alone to sleep! The remainder of the hospital stay was pretty uneventful and my little family slept most of the time with disturbances from nurses and food delivery people every few hours. I have to say I usually don't mind hospital food and for the most part the breakfast and lunch were good with the exception of one meal which was not edible. I felt bad for wasting food but they should have known better to serve something like that.