Baby number two was due to arrive on August 2, 2014. In the months leading up to the baby’s arrival I had a lot on my mind. On top of preparing Lily for the new arrival I had to worry about preparing myself as well. For Lily, it was a lot of talking about what was going to happen, and a lot of creating a new and exciting big girl room so that she would be happy to move into a new room and not resentful of the new baby. It worked, she loves her new big girl room, and since the baby is not yet sleeping in the nursery it is a neutral space for now allowing her a little extra time to get used to the idea. That was the easy part.
In my own preparations I had to relive Lily’s birth story to figure out how I was going to make sure I wasn’t blind-sided again. In my first pregnancy I did not have a birth plan, I had a birth idea – I wanted a natural birth, no drugs and no induction. I had no fall back plans, but I knew I didn’t want to have a c-section, an epidural or a monitor screwed into my baby’s head. And, of course, all of those things happened. After 5 days of no sleep, that was very difficult for me to take. So, as I said, I spent a lot of time thinking about these things. I began planning for the worst. I decided that I would not allow my pregnancy to go past a week without at least a trip to the induction clinic to arrange for the induction. I also made sure that anyone involved in the process knew that under no circumstances would I be having an epidural. I prepared myself for the worst; I was fairly certain that this baby would come at least a week late, I would be induced and end up with an emergency c-section where they had to put me under. I kept reminding my husband that if I ended up needing a c-section that he would not be allowed into the room. I made peace with the idea that my child would be hours old before I got to meet them and that everyone would know if my child was a boy or a girl before me.
Well, my second child has a hugely different birth story than I had anticipated! August 3, 2014, the day after my expected due date, one of my very best friends got married. I was not about to let a silly thing like an expected due date stand in the way of me being there when she got married. So, we went to the wedding, the contractions started when we were getting ready. They were not very intense nor were they regular, so I did not think much of it – I had been having Braxton Hicks contractions for several days at this point, I assumed it was just more of the same. We were, unfortunately, a little late for the ceremony, but we did make it! I sat through the whole thing with only one or two contractions, nothing too bad. Between the ceremony and the reception, however, the contractions started picking up a bit – they became more regular and slightly more intense, still nothing I couldn’t handle. By the end of dinner, the contractions were frequent enough that I could not make it halfway down the short hallway to the bathroom without having a contraction, and they had become intense enough that I had to stop walking for each one. To the relief of everyone at the wedding, I made the decision to go to the hospital. We arrived at the hospital at 8:00pm. I was asked to walk for two hours to try to get things moving a little more, I was happy with this because it was better when I was in motion anyway. At the end of my two hours the pain in my back during contractions had become very strong, and I ended up with so much back pain that I could not stand up even in between the contractions. They checked me out again, minimal progress, but there was some progress. This was not feeling promising to me – I felt that the baby had likely made it to my hip and gotten stuck in the same way Lily had. I had a hard time holding back the tears as I thought about it. They moved us into a birthing unit to monitor my progress. Two hours later, minimal progress, again, but the contractions were too painful for me to stand. The nurse gave me a shot of morphine and gravol to dull the pain a bit and to help me rest. It helped, minimally – between contractions I began falling asleep and I stopped screaming during my contractions. Two hours later, the pain began worsening again. I had gone from 3 centimetres at 12:ooam to 6 centimetres at 2:00am – and, my water broke as she was examining me. This was amazing to me; with Lily the doctor had to break my water, I had no idea what the water breaking would be like. The nurse who had been checking on me left to officially move me to the labour and delivery unit and to get the nurse that would be with me for the rest of my labour. When my new nurse came in she examined me again, this time I had gone from 6 centimetres to 10 centimetres. This was crazy, I could not believe what was happening. Only hours before this I was trying to come to terms with the idea that I would likely have to have another c-section and now the nurses were asking me to let them know when I felt I needed to push. I did not want to push. I did not think I would even know when I needed to push. What does that feel like, anyway? Well, the sensation came. I ignored it the first time, maybe the second time, too, I don’t really remember. I was very anxious about pushing. I knew that there was about to be a lot more pain. I also knew that a lot of women poop when they push, and I was not really wanting to go there. Well, the sensation was undeniable by the second or third time, so I told the nurse I needed to push. She tells me to push. What do you mean push? So, I tried to push. It was pathetic, I had no idea what muscles I was supposed to use. I kept asking for the doctor. The nurse refused to get my doctor until I pushed well. This made me very frustrated. I don’t know how to push, and I want my doctor! Oh, I forgot to mention that in this time, before I started pushing, with the contractions one on top of the other, I had another nurse trying to put an IV in my arm to take some blood and to give me some pain medication. She had to try three times, I had bruises on my left arm and hand for weeks afterward. I may have yelled at her a few times. I was not happy that she was telling me to be still while I was in the middle of a contraction. Okay, back to pushing. The nurse finally sat down and gave me a little more direction in the matter and I tried to follow her instructions the best I could. Then, they brought in my doctor! I spent the rest of the time, when I was not pushing, stating my amazement about how I was going to have a baby. It took about an hour to an hour and a half of pushing to finally have a baby. Once it was all done, I appologised profusely to the nurses, realising what a rude person I was, their job is hard enough without people yelling at them for doing their job. Luckily, they do deal with this all the time, so they took it all in stride. The nurses were fabulous! At 5:01am on August 4, 2014 our baby boy was born. It was a heck of a night, but everything went so well! No complications, no c-section, no epidural and all in one evening. Everything went so well, in fact, that we were discharged from the hospital the following day. It was such a different experience, it was exactly what I had hoped to happen with Lily.