T.M.I.

I feel I should warn you...but really, isn't every birth story too much information?  When you're pregnant, and especially when you're giving birth, all sense of modesty flies out the window.  It's almost like your body has become a science experiment for people to study and comment on, and when the time comes for the baby to enter the world, you don't really care who sees what and what they think about it.  Then, after things settle down, and you're sitting down to write about this amazing experience of bringing a child into the world, you want to remember everything - even the disgusting details, but it doesn't feel proper to write them down and share them with the world.  I apologize.  I'm writing them anyway.

Once I hit thirty-seven weeks, I was ready to have the baby.  I felt I had done my job, and I was done. I had spent the better part since Thanksgiving feeling like I had the flu.  I was still throwing up every morning, and even then, around thirty-eight weeks I tried to go off my anti-nausea medication (because I had run out, and I didn't want to go to the pharmacy) and I ended up throwing up all the time again until I got back on it.  I was so tired of feeling sick.  I started to go to each doctors appointment hoping that things would be wrong - that my blood pressure would be too high, or that they discovered I had gestational diabetes - anything that would cause the doctor to say, "Let's get you to the hospital and induce you."  But instead, he kept saying, "I'd really like you to go into labor naturally."  I knew this was best for the baby, which made it a little easier to wait.  Plus, the closer I got to my due date, the easier the wait became, because I knew that I was closer to being done.  Still, I did all that I could to get labor going.

I spent those last three weeks of my pregnancy cleaning like a mad woman.  Partly because I wanted things to be clean for when the baby came, but mostly because I hoped it would put me into labor.  I cleaned the house thoroughly, multiple times.  I spent a day with Brian cleaning and organizing the garage.  I cleaned out the car.  I mowed the lawn.  When I went to church on my due date, the seventeenth, the bishop's wife said that I could come mow her lawn, but by that time I told her I was done trying to make things happen.  Nothing had worked so far, so I was going to wait it out.

On Thursday, the fourteenth, I went in for an exam, and the doctor did a membrane sweep.  My mom was watching the kids, so I went back to her house, had dinner, went for a walk, and timed my contractions at six and three minutes apart, back and forth for about an hour.  Things felt like they were picking up, so I told my mom that Brian and I would go home and put the kids to bed, then we would most likely give her a call and head to the hospital.  We loaded the kids in the car, headed home, and everything stopped.

Friday.  Brian had Friday off from work, so we all slept in.  Brian's sister was in town visiting from Indiana, and everyone was planning to spend the afternoon at Ice Harbor Dam.  I thought walking around the dam and playing in the park would be a perfect way to get contractions going again, and I was excited to go.  Brian's mom agreed with my theory, and she was concerned about me going into labor forty-five minutes away from the hospital, so Brian's parents volunteered to take the kids without us.  Brian played Star Craft while I took a nap on the living room floor.  I contemplated mowing the lawn again, but Brian said not to worry about it.  He would do it later.  Nothing was happening anyway, and mowing the lawn would probably do nothing to help, so I decided to leave the lawn to him.  Instead we went out to lunch, which was nice.  We hadn't gone on a date for a while, and it was great having some quiet time as just the two of us.  When we made it back home, just as Brian's mom was dropping off the kids, I discovered that I was losing my mucus plug.  I came running out of the bathroom exclaiming, "Things are starting to happen.  I'm going to mow the lawn!"

Well, it didn't work.  This is when I really gave up and decided that the baby was coming when she was ready, and I just needed to be patient.  On Saturday I did some laundry and some extra straightening up around the house, and we bought a couch and love seat off of Craigslist for the family room.  On Sunday we went to church, and I came home after sacrament meeting to rest.  On Monday, things still weren't happening, and I had another doctors appointment.  My doctor is in Richland, and Alyssa's soccer practice is in Richland, so I called Brian's mom to see if they could watch the kids, and if we could stay for dinner to be able to get to soccer practice easier.  I even finished packing the hospital bag and a bag of clothes for the kids, just in case the doctor finally decided to induce me.

So I went to my appointment, the doctor did another membrane sweep, and said, "That should do it.  Hopefully we'll see you tonight."  This was at 3:00 in the afternoon.  With the first membrane sweep on Thursday, I felt cramps and contractions immediately after.  This time, I felt nothing.  I headed to Brian's parent's, walked on their treadmill for fifteen minutes.  Nothing.  I walked around the back yard.  Nothing.  I thought, "Yeah, right, doctor.  I'm not going anywhere tonight."

At just before 4:00 I started feeling cramps that started coming and going.  I looked up "how to use a birthing ball" on Google and sat on an exercise ball for a while.  This is when things started to hurt.  I called my sister, wondering how to tell if I was really having contractions, or if I was just having cramps from the membrane sweep, and if I went to the hospital a day past my due date with just cramps, would they send me home?  "Yes," she said, "They probably would."  So I got off the phone, bounced and did circles on the exercise ball, and started timing these cramps.  They quickly went from eight minutes apart at 4:30 to six minutes apart until 5:00, then five and four until 5:30.  Diane fed the kids dinner, and got them all ready to go to Alyssa's soccer practice.  At this point, the plan changed from "possibly going to the hospital" to "definitely going to the hospital."  At first, Brian was going to stop at home to change out of his work clothes, but I was hurting bad enough that I called him and said, "Come straight here.  Things are happening pretty fast, and they hurt!"  Brian wondered who would take the dog to her obedience class the next day, and I told him I didn't even care about that and that he needed to get here right now and get me to the hospital!

Brian pulled up shortly after his mom left with the kids.  He and his dad gave me a priesthood blessing.  I was silly enough to ask Brian if he wanted to eat dinner before we left, and thankfully, he declined.  We made the short drive to the hospital, made it to the birthing center, and I was admitted to have the baby.  They weren't just cramps after all!  From 5:30 to 6:30 they quickly moved from four minutes apart, to three, to two, to one and a half.  Brian had my phone and was still timing these contractions while we were waiting for a nurse to come, and once they said I was really in labor, we stopped timing things and asked for an epidural.

Things were happening a lot faster than they did when I had Marcus, and they were also hurting a lot worse.  I thought a lot about the pioneer women while we walked to my room, pausing for my contractions, and when I leaned against Brian, hurting like crazy.  Those women were amazing!  After the nurse hooked me up to the I.V. to get the right fluids in me before I could get the epidural, I lay in the bed and had Brian squeeze my hand.  He tried talking to me at first, but I told him that when I start breathing really slow and close my eyes, he needed to not say a thing.  I even resorted to saying, "Honey, hush!" a few times.  I would honestly love to hear Brian's side of the story, because I'm sure I said some other crazy things during this time that I don't remember.

And then that blessed man came with the epidural.  It went in quick and easy, and I seriously contemplated sending the anesthesiologist a gift basket.  This is when things settled down.  Brian ran to Zips to get himself some dinner, he came back, the doctor broke my water, the nurse had me lay on my right side, then my left side, then I told my nurse that it felt like I had pooped (seriously, it's what it felt like!) and she said it was actually the bloody show.  She checked me, claimed I was at a ten, and said that I could start pushing whenever the doctor and I were ready.

So this is the cool part.  With Marcus, the epidural had worn off enough that I could feel the contractions just enough to know when to push, but that's all that I felt.  This time, I could feel the contractions and know when to push, but I also felt the baby move down through the birth canal and make her way out.  After all was said and done, I told the doctor that I felt everything as she was coming out, and he apologized.  "No," I said, "It was so cool!"  The other really cool thing is that I didn't tear or get an episiotomy.  Right in the middle of everything I told my doctor that I really didn't want to be cut, and he said he wouldn't.  He said, "That's the point of a non-surgical birth - to not cut."

When Rebecca was born, they pulled her away for a moment to make sure she was doing well, then they immediately put her on my chest.  They wanted skin-to-skin contact, so they unsnapped my gown before laying her on me.  (See?  That whole modesty thing was gone.)  Brian was disappointed, because he wanted to take pictures of her, but because of this immodesty, anything he took would be unfit to send to his parents.  I held her, and was able to nurse her right away, then after a little while I gave her to Brian so he could meet her.  It wasn't until after a couple of hours that they took her to be cleaned up, weighed, and measured.

After everything was calm, we settled down for the night and got what little sleep you can get in a hospital.  They were actually going to keep us a second night, because Rebecca was born at 11:30, and she needed certain tests done when she was twenty-four hours old, but both she and I were doing so well that we convinced them to let us go home after these tests were done.  So we checked out of the hospital at 11:45 on Tuesday night, headed home to a quiet house, because the kids were still at Brian's parents, and we were able to sleep in our own bed.  It was nice to have that little bit of extra time alone (but at home) the next morning to cuddle and get to know Rebecca before the kids came home.  It was also nice to be able to get some good rest after an exciting couple of days.