I've been thinking about how I want to write this all week. I've got mixed feelings about birth stories via the interwebs. I mean, birth (to me) is a pretty private thing, but at the same time, I've shared a lot with those who read my blog and honestly? I'm pretty freaking proud of myself for how everything turned out, so I'm going to brag(?) a little bit. Here we go...
Grant was born Tuesday morning at 4 am. The Monday before that (so Feb 24th) I was having contractions aaaaalllll day. They were really painful and were coming quite frequently. I started timing them around 3 in the afternoon and they despite drinking water, laying down, taking a bath, etc, they were coming strong about every 7 minutes for the entire afternoon/evening. Around 9, they were coming every 4-5 minutes and they were
painful. I called the on-call midwife and let her know what was going on and she calmed my nerves down a bit and convinced me to hold out a few hours and try to get some sleep. Sleep didn't come and the contractions were now about 3 minutes a part pretty consistently. So, we called our neighbor to come stay with our girls and headed to the hospital around 11. I really, really, REALLY didn't want to be "that girl" that rushes to L&D at every cramp and I legitimately thought this was it. I could barely walk when they hit and was borderline yelling out in pain. So, we get there and they hook me up to all the monitors and all that jazz aaaaaaand I was hardly dilated. Like, barely at all. I was almost all the way effaced, but they said that I wouldn't be admitted until I was at a 4 and I definitely wasn't there. I asked for some water and they brought me a disposable cup. I almost burst into tears right then. It sounds so stupid, but it was such a visual nail in my "I'm not in labor" coffin. I knew if they were just giving me a disposable cup, we were going home. To make a long story short, we spent the next 5 hours at the hospital, walking around, breathing through contractions, to me even sobbing as I talked (I mean cried) to the nurse about scheduling a c-section. I mean, if non labor contractions hurt THIS bad, I knew I'd surely die during actual labor.
They offered to let us stay a few more hours, but I was delirious. Ask Josh, I was sobbing, shaking and exhausted. To be dramatic, I was humiliated and just wanted to sleep. I was a bit frustrated because I felt like nobody was making decisions. The midwife kept going over different options, but she was talking so slowly with dramatic pauses between thoughts and it was driving both Josh and I crazy. I wanted to scream, "CUT THIS KID OUT OF ME OR GIVE ME SOMETHING TO SLEEP!" Josh eventually did get a little more confrontational than we usually are and pretty much told them we were going home and to give me drugs. So, they gave me a morphine shot and sent me on my way. I spent almost the entire next day sleeping. We're talking 14+ hours of sleep and it was awesome. The rest of that week, I took it really easy because Josh was going back to work and I didn't want to have "early labor" contractions if they weren't going to progress me at all. I had an appointment that Wednesday and nothing had changed, even though I continued to have contractions daily. They just weren't doing anything, which is was I was terrified of. With the twins, my water broke once I had 10 lbs of baby in me. I had my c-section before I felt a single contraction, so I was convinced that my body wouldn't know what to do. I would go through exhausting and painful contractions and would stall and end up with a c-section anyway. I just knew that was my fate and my appointment on Wednesday confirmed that for me an I was extremely discouraged.
The rest of the week was pretty much the same. If I walked up my stairs, I'd have a contraction. If I went outside with the girls, I'd have a contraction. If I checked the mail, I'd get a contraction. It was obnoxious to say the least, but I was just hoping my body was making good use of them.
Fast forward to Monday. It was Josh's first day off of his 12 day "vacation" and I was officially 39 weeks, so I loosened up a little and decided to not be a shut in and deal with whatever contractions came my way. We bought the girls new scooters, so we decided to take them for a ...scoot... up to the elementary school. It's not that far and it's only up a slight hill, so I didn't think it would almost kill me. It definitely did. I was crampy, out of breath, and physically exhausted by the time we got up there. It took quite a while to get up there because two 3 year olds who have never been on a scooter don't go very fast (i.e. steering is hard) so I was on my feet more than I thought I would be. By the time we got home, the cramping was coming pretty hard and fairly regularly. I started tracking them and it was almost identical to the Monday night prior. Strong, painful contractions that I could hardly breathe or walk through. Again, I called the midwife around 9 and she kept me on the phone much longer than the other one did the week before. She later told me she wanted to hear me go through several contractions, so she made small talk without me even realizing it to keep me on the phone. Sneaky gal.... Since we live about 15 minutes away from the hospital, she told me to give it no more than a half hour and if they were still bad, come in. They didn't really ease up, but they didn't get worse either and I was NOT going to have a repeat of the last Monday, but at the same time, I didn't think I was going to get much sleep and in my mind, I thought we would probably go in at some point during the night, so we bugged our neighbors yet again, but this time we took the twins to their house. I was so grateful for that because I knew that either we could go to the hospital and not have to worry about them, or I could go to sleep knowing that just maybe I could sleep in a little past 7. I was in a LOT of pain though when they went next door and by that point I was pretty positive we would go in.
But we didn't. Can you imagine how annoying I was that night? Poor Josh, the entire night I was debating what to do and I wasn't doing it very calmly. Finally, around midnight I got up to go to the bathroom and started shaking uncontrollably. I also got extremely nauseous and light headed, so with those new symptoms, I knew it was time to head to the hospital.
This time felt different. I was pretty sure we weren't going home, but I also didn't want to get my hopes up. Two of the nurses I had the week before were there that night and I immediately started apologizing to them because I'm pathetic. Once again, I was hooked up to everything and I got the news that I was at a 5! A 5! They admit people at a 4, so we weren't going home! The nurse also noted how low he was and predicted it would be a short labor. And just like that, they handed me my treasured, plastic hospital mug and got me ready for the epidural.
My midwife came in and introduced herself because she was the only midwife in the clinic that I hadn't met with. It was crazy how I instantly trusted her, we just clicked. She was by far the friendliest midwife of all the ones I met with and I was SO glad she was the one delivering Grant. And speaking of Grant, she has a son named Grant too. It was almost cheesy how everything was falling into place. She checked me and I was a little further along that I had been when we arrived and Grant's head was looooow. She predicted he'd be here within 5 hours tops and by this time it was almost 2am.
The next few hours were really relaxed. I tell ya, epidurals are awesome. I got a little bit of sleep and was completely relaxed. Josh and I were able to have good conversation, all while my body was birthing a baby. It was wonderful. A little before 3:30, I felt an enormous amount of pressure and I knew I needed to push. I had a "walking epidural" so I could completely move my legs and although I didn't feel pain, I knew when I needed to push. The nurse was in my room and she had push through the contraction and then she called the midwife in. Turns out, her "he'll be here in 5 hours" was an over estimate. I was officially ready to have him. She had warned me that I might be pushing for a while since this was my first "birth". I'm glad she over estimated everything because it made everything seem to go so much more quickly. I ended up pushing for almost 40 minutes, but it only seemed like 10. The whole night went by so fast!
When Grant was born, the plan was to immediately do skin-to-skin and have him get checked out as much as they could while he was on me. We'd cut the cord once blood stopped pumping to it and he'd stay with me for a while before he had all the routine tests and things done. Except that didn't happen. He was born with the cord wrapped around his neck twice. His cord was immediately clamped and cut by Josh and they rushed him to the other side of the room. It took them an uncomfortable amount of time to get him to cry and instantly there were a LOT more people in the room than there had been. My midwife and the hospital staff were so great though. For as scary as the situation was, everyone was pretty collected and professional about it. Once he did start crying, he was wheezing really bad. It was a cross between an old man wheeze and a pig's snort. They brought him over to me, but he was still having a really hard time breathing/crying. They decided to take him and get him on the c-pap because his breathing wasn't stable at all. The nurse and midwife apologized several times, but honestly? I was so at peace. I felt like I had dealt with two babies in the NICU before and as much as I would have loved to have him with me and do things according to my plan, I've always tried to have a realistic perspective on things and if he was better off getting help breathing, I was ok with it. Plus, I knew that no matter what, this situation would be "better" than we had with the girls.
About a half hour, a bunch of stitches and about 5,000 "I just had a vbac baby!" announcements later, I made my way up to recovery. It was awesome because I was able to get up and get in the wheel chair on my own. Where as, with my c-section, they wheeled my entire bed into recovery because I was paralyzed for 6 hours. I got feeling back rather quickly this time and I could always move my legs, so I felt normal relatively fast. It wasn't for another hour and a half that they brought Grant into my room, so we were a little over 2 hours from the time he was born. I was trying SO hard not to be bummed about it, but I was. So many things had gone right and I was getting a lot of updates from Josh, but I couldn't help feel sorry for myself that I had birthed 3 kids and all of them were taken from me immediately after they were born. You're so emotional and hormonal after birth and I'm assuming it feels great to have your baby with you?
They finally brought him in a little before 7 and I didn't really have him leave my room after that. I did try to send him to the nursery one night (just for a few hours right after I fed him), but they sent him back to me because he was crying and they thought he was hungry again. Nope, he just wanted me. He dropped a significant amount of weight in the hospital (one ounce away from them "intervening") and his blood sugar was a little on the low side, so they wanted me feeding him around the the clock, but he wasn't a good nurser, so we worked with a LOT of nurses and LC's and got it figured out...sort of. Luckily, we've basically got it figured out and he's definitely not a light eater anymore. Grant is such mama's boy and is so different from his sisters. They didn't like to be rocked or held tightly and preferred to sleep on their backs. Grant likes to be curled up on you, rocked, and hates being put flat on his back. Me thinks transitioning him to a crib is going to be tricky....
Our first attempt at a family picture. I'm running on zero sleep and the girls were...not overly thrilled to be at the hospital. Ha!
We like him a lot and the girls are incredibly protective over him. Every peep he makes brings the girls rushing with a binky and toys. Any time anyone besides Josh or I holds him, they freak out and beg them not to take him home.
They love him, but they've had a really hard time transitioning. They're really emotional about everything and they FIGHT with each other. Everyone told me that I was lucky they had each other because they would play together and be entertained. Good idea in theory, but they've never fought with each other like they have the last two weeks. It's been awful! We had them stay with my inlaws when we were in the hospital and they only came to visit once, so I think when we got home and they were brought back, it all sort of came to a head and exploded. We probably should have included them more from the start, but having two 3 year olds in a tiny hospital room is rough! Things should start getting better. We've got a sticker chart for each of them and we've made a point to do one on one things with them when we can. They both feel pretty abandoned by me though because Josh has been taking them places and doing fun things with them while I stay home with Grant. Some women bounce back from having babies but I am NOT one of them. It's been a much harder recovery than I imagined it would be and there were several days I could hardly get off the couch (and then there were the few days where my midwife put me on "bed rest" because I was having an alarming amount of bleeding, so...that was fun....) I'm feeling better and will hopefully start getting out the house soon because as much as I'm a homebody, I'm going crazy!
Anyway, that definitely wasn't a condensed version and it certainly wasn't void of gory details, but what can ya do? That's the story of our goopy eyed, sleepy Grant.
