Time for Te: Birth Story

Below is the birth story of Wills. This is a warning that you may get some details you might not want. Feel free to skip this post if you would rather not know!

At my doctor's appointment on Wednesday the 20th, I was dilated to a 1 and 80% effaced. We discussed scheduling an induction for the next week, but Charles and I both wanted to at least go to our due date of July 30th. I went ahead and scheduled my weekly appointment for the next Wednesday.

On Friday evening, I lost my mucus plug. I wasn't entirely sure this is what happened, so I called my sister to confirm. I then used google images to double check. Amazingly, there are people out there who actually took pictures of theirs. Luckily for you, I didn't. When you loose your mucus plug, labor could be hours to weeks away.

So on Saturday, July 23rd I cleaned the house, I made a casserole to freeze for maternity leave, and I packed my bag and the baby's bag. Looking back, this was probably a sign that labor was imminent. We went to dinner with some friends and that night I made the remark that I thought we would go past our due date. Baby Te had other plans.

I was having a really hard time sleeping and getting comfortable that night. At 2:15 am on Sunday, my water broke. Mine was an actual gush of water. I tried to stop it like when you try to stop your urine flow and it wouldn't stop. This made me realize I was not actually peeing the bed. Just to be sure, I sniffed it, and sure enough, it did not smell like pee. Thank goodness! I woke Charles up to let him know that the baby was on his way and then I called my mom to tell her. I then took a shower. Now this is probably not how it is for everyone, but my water continued to flow. I was leaking large amounts and every time I thought it stopped, more would come. I put leggings on to wear to the hospital to keep it from dripping down my legs and grabbed a towel to put in the front seat. At this point, my contractions were lasting about 30 seconds and happening every 2 minutes. I had an app on my phone to monitor my contractions. Charles hopped in the shower and packed his bag and we headed to the hospital. Charles called his dad to let them know and called the hospital to tell them we were on our way.

We checked in and went to delivery room 7. I was hooked up to a fetal heart rate monitor, a contraction monitor, and an IV was started. They checked me and I was only dilated to a 2. This was so disheartening, because I felt like the contractions really hurt! They asked if I was going to want pain medication and I said definitely. They gave me stadol to help with the pain while we waited on the anesthesiologist to give me an epidural. After the epidural, I felt pretty good and the contractions didn't really hurt anymore. At around 5:30 they checked me again and I was at a 4, but my contractions were starting to slow down. They decided to give me pitocin to help them pick back up again. At this point, I noticed that my epidural was only working on the right side of my body. Not cool. They had me roll on to my left side to see if that would help. It didn't. The anesthesiologist came back in and adjusted the placement and also gave me a direct line of pain medication. The contractions had become very painful. I honestly felt like if they would just let me push him out I would feel so much better! I told my nurse this and she decided to check me again. This time I was dilated to an 8! In the meantime, my mom, stepdad, and sister had arrived. Just in time too. The epidural finally kicked in on both sides of my body and the contractions didn't hurt anymore, it was just a feeling of pressure. My OB is awesome. She wasn't on call that weekend, but came in anyway to deliver our little boy. When she got there, she checked me and we were fully dilated and he was at position +2. It was time to push. I was told to take a deep breath and push during the contraction, 3 pushes per contraction. This is the awesome part, 2 contractions later, and we had a baby! That's right, I only had to push 6 times!

Before the pain kicked in: