Birth Story #3

Well, I suppose now that Payge is almost two, I should write down about her entry into the world.

This was another of those long labors, but it was a little worse than Chayce's. For about three days before delivery I hurt so badly that I would cry if we rode in the car, sitting was uncomfortable, and standing only felt good for so long. My mom kept getting her hopes up because she'd flown out here for the birth and wanted some time with the baby. Plus, the due date had come and gone before she'd even arrived, so we really felt it could be any time.

Finally, one evening (a day and a half before my mom had to be on her plane) a friend of mine suggested acupuncture induction. Her husband is a chiropractor, acupuncturist (and a bunch of other stuff) and he agreed to do the induction for me on their living room couch for free! They are such awesome people. That was about 9PM. All the next day I felt worse, but no progress, just lots and lots of trips to the potty (hey, this is a birth story, I can say that). My mom was getting nervous because her flight left the next day at noon, and since she was flying out of Chicago, she had to leave by 8ish AM. That night (so I guess about 24 hours after the induction) I went full swing. I was at a six by the time I made it to the hospital! BUT she still didn't enter the world until noon. Yes, my mom missed her flight. I called her while I was in labor and told her I'd buy her another ticket. Yeah, I could still talk. In fact, my contractions never got closer than three minutes apart. It was a pretty easy labor. Funny things happened during this delivery that I'll never forget. Things like: Seeing the word "push" on the soap dispenser, and finding it funny that it was so fitting, sitting there staring me in the face like that when I was washing my hands before delivery; calling my mother in-between contractions, and talking like nothing was going on; getting to use wireless monitoring rather than being strapped to a table (I loved this!); my nurse bringing me food and drink, even though I was in labor with a VBAC.

Delivery, on the other hand, was harder. See, it turns out that I'd hit a ten, little Payge had descended, bruised my cervix with her huge head, and it was starting to swell shut. Luckily, my doctor noticed that I was working very hard with very little progress so decided to check me while I pushed. He looked at me and said, "You have to push this baby out now, push and don't stop!" while he was using his hands to hold my cervix open. So, I pushed Payge through his hands (yeah, it was as painful as it sounds, remember--this was my completely drug free baby!), then I rested. I think the best part was the end (isn't it always?) but not for the usual reason. See, my bag of waters was actually behind Payge, it hadn't emptied, so when her shoulders emerged, all assisting staff got really wet, the doctor said a few choice words, and a large clean-up effort took place.

My doctor was amazing and really on the ball, and I'm grateful for that. In a way, I'm grateful I chose no epidural as well, because about 8 other women went into delivery mode at the same time I did, they had epidurals, and my doctor said that those without pain meds get first dibs on his time (they were all his patients!), and the others had to, uh, hold it. Sorry to any of you women who have been told to hold it in, but I was glad I came first that day. I was especially glad because if he hadn't checked when he did, I would have been looking at another c-section. Whew.

So that's it. The third and final story I have. Will there be another? I don't know. I love my children dearly and want more children just like them (well, of course they'll be different...). But I'm afraid. I've had three deliveries and all three have had something weird happen: emergency c-section, half-body epidural, swelling/bruised cervix. I'm not really ready to know what other surprises await me. But yet, what if there are no more surprises--at least not horrible ones? What if it would have gone beautifully? But if not? What if it's worse than them all? I guess I'll just have to wait and see--see if my faith grows enough to take that jump.