Reagan's Birth Story
12/28/2010
9 mos of waiting and she's here. It still feels quite odd that we have a baby girl, that I'm not pregnant and somehow we're now parents. I would say I was ready to be done around 37 weeks. The midwives started checking my cervix at 36 weeks and I was:
1cm at 36 weeks
2cm at 37 weeks
3cm at 38 weeks
4 cm at 39 and 40 weeks
Because of this dilation and it being my first pregnancy, I really convinced myself that I'd have this baby before my due date. Somehow I decided I wouldn't be like most other first time moms and I'd go early rather than late. Hah, turns out I'm just like everybody else. I had runs of contractions on 3 different occasions that were persistent, about every 3-5 minutes and all lasted more than one hour (one was about 4 hours). But they all died off and were never really that painful.
I saw the midwife on 12/21 at 39 3/7 and she said I would have the baby before my next appointment (which was on 12/28). I rarely make promises in the land of OB because who really knows, but you better believe her comment gave me hope. We picked up my mom and Oma that night from the airport and continued to pray that we'd have this baby before they returned to Texas on 1/1/2011. We enjoyed our time together, we had a lovely low-key Christmas at our house yet we were all anxious to meet Reagan and all praying on our own and together that she'd come before the New Year.
People tell me they had a burst of energy just before labor, did a bunch of nesting etc, I didn't really have that. On 12/27 my mom's friend from college came for an afternoon visit around 2pm. Around 4pm, I noticed the start of contractions. Like with every other run of contractions, I prayed, "God please let this be it." They stayed and were about every 3-5 minutes but weren't very painful. But then they started to get more painful to the point where I didn't want to sit any more. Then the point where walking didn't make them feel any better. Then to the point where being on the ball or on my hands and knees were the only comfortable positions. Then to the point where I decided to check my cervix and found I was 5 cm with a bulgy bag of fluid. Then I asked Shan to run the bath because I was huffing and puffing through each contraction. I guess I spent about 3 hours in the tub at home (like I had any concept of time) and was getting really miserable. Turns out after filling our tub only once, we had no more hot water, so my mom was on stove duty and brought multiple hot water refills that helped oh so very much. I rechecked my cervix and it was 6-7 cm and we decided to call the midwife and head to the hospital. Oma stayed home but mom and Shan piled in the car and we headed to the hospital. On the way to the hospital, Shan called his mom and she planned to join us at the hospital. God's grace for me was lighter contractions while in the car or I would have died during that 20 min drive to the hospital. I was quite nauseated and just as we exited the highway, I puked 3 times (quite lovely). We had a bucket though so only the street saw the mess...
We went in through the ER and they were quick to get me to the admissions lady. Her perfume was overbearing and it took everything in me to not make a comment about the offense to someone in labor...crazy me. Of course in my state, I was required to sign paperwork saying I'd pay for anything not covered and then in between I was wandering the halls with my contractions. It felt like we waited hours for someone from labor and delivery to come get me, but Shan said it was about 5 minutes. They wheeled me up to the 14th floor of St. Joseph Hospital and had a room waiting for me. My midwife, Susan was there and one of my very favorite labor and delivery nurses, Jessica. She ran a strip of the baby's heartbeat which looked good and Susan asked what I wanted. I told her, "check my cervix, break my bag of water and let me get in the tub." So that we did. There was light meconium and I was 7cm. So in the tub I went around midnight on 12/28. I labored there until I was fully dilated.
How do I describe the experience of labor? I laid in bed the other night thinking about the two types of pain I experienced: contraction pain and pushing pain. Contraction pain felt like waves in the ocean. Some were intense but bearable, and others felt so intense that I would die before they ended. It was a squeezing like an intertube around my entire abdomen and back and when they peaked the pain and pressure was almost more than I could handle. Touch from Shan didn't help (both holding my hand and pressure on my back), moving from side to side, to my hands and knees, upright or lying in the tub did nothing except frustrate me because there was no relief. Then the contraction would subside and just as I caught my breath, another would start and the process would begin again. We refilled the water time and again and it was so hot that in between contractions Shan would drape ice cold rags on my face and neck and feed my ice. Shan and I tried to do the breathing techniques with labor but for me the grunting/vocalizing with contractions somehow helped me cope better than careful breathing. I caught myself on multiple occasions feeling so overwhelmed by the pain that I thought I couldn't breathe or go on. At one point I called out to Susan and told her that I needed medication. She of course, didn't give me any but sat with me and talked me through the contractions. She offered to check my cervix and said I had a small rim of cervix left and to try some pushes in the tub if I wanted to. This was exciting and extremely scary all at once as that meant the next phase of pain was about to begin...pushing.
So I tried to push in the tub and felt very inept. It felt good to be doing something but it hurt to push so I didn't want to. I did little pushes and grunts that probably didn't accomplish much other than give me a little confidence that I could do this. I was done in the tub after pushing for a bit but I was SOOO afraid of getting into bed. So we moved to the toilet and I started more aggressive pushing there. It felt like a bowling ball pushing down my vagina and my rectum, not pleasant. I did find, though, that with pushing it felt like my contractions weren't as long or overwhelming. After pushing on the toilet for about 30 minutes, we moved to the bed but I was so afraid to be on my back that I pushed on hands and knees. Now at this point, I'm tired, I know I need to push better and yet the burning pain was so intense I didn't want to push. At one point while pushing, I was convinced her head was right there and I was almost done. The midwife tried to encourage me but saying how much head she could see. It was about the size of an egg and you better believe I was discouraged rather than encouraged. So then a corner was turned. My pushing gained strength even though it felt like I would push my entire colon out onto the bed. And though it burned and hurt worse than anything I've ever experienced, it did shorten the pain of the contractions and made me feel like we were getting closer to being done. It felt like I pushed for 17 days, but I pushed for a little more than an hour. The pushing and the pain was so intense, I screamed after pushing a few times. I embarassed myself feeling like everyone in the hospital could hear, but it was the only relief I could give myself after the intensity of pushing was over.
Because of the meconium, the newborn team had to be in the room (neonatal nurse practitioner and 2 nursery nurses). Because of my experience as a midwife, I knew two things that would let me know I really was almost done: the newborn team would be in the room and ready AND the midwife would have the birthing table uncovered and her gloves on. It seemed like forever before those two pieces were in place, but then they were in place and Susan said a couple more pushes and she'd be here. I can't begin to explain the feeling of that head crowning. It was an intense pressure and burning and yet it didn't feel remarkably different from the pressure and pain I had felt before the head emerged. I think there was a rush of adrenaline or relief or both as she crowned because it just happened and I heard Susan say, "OK stop pushing she's here," while she suctioned her nose and mouth before delivering the shoulders. I pushed again to get the rest of her body out (much easier than the head, by the way) and there she was with a strong cry.
I sat there on my knees for a moment to catch my breath and realized, "I'm done. She's here!" The midwife handed me my daughter through my legs and I turned over onto my back holding my slimy, hairy, gorgeous daughter. Nothing could prepare me for that moment as Shan and I beheld this treasure that we'd waited so long to see and touch. She screamed her head off while we examined her earlobes, fingers and toes making sure everything was there. She came out a little crooked so had a goose-egg on the top left of her head. The midwife waited for the cord to stop pulsating and then Shan cut the cord. The newborn team wasn't needed since she cried after delivery, so they left and we were left to love on our baby.
I had a small tear on my left labia that Susan repaired but I had an intact perineum (impossible from my perspective) as I'd convinced myself that my colon lay on the table along with the baby...The placenta delivered a little later and was surprisingly more painful than I expected (seeing as it had no bony parts to present) but Susan said you'll feel the relief after it comes out and indeed I did. They had to mash on my tummy multiple times to ensure my uterus was contracting and the bleeding was stopping, extremely painful I might add. But I didn't mind. I was too distracted cooing over Reagan with Shan. And then, like 9 mos of waiting hadn't happened and like hours of pain hadn't happened I sat in bed holding my baby, finished with my first pregnancy, labor and birth. It didn't feel real and Shan and I just looked at each other like, "OK here goes..."
She was an Applin through and through: She had her dad's hair and nose and cheeks. She was covered in hair on her back and shoulders an even ears. She really was breathtaking. I admitted to Shan that I hadn't spent much time wondering what she'd look like or who's features she'd have. I was just excited to see her! After months of waiting and weeks of angst re: would she come while my mom was here, she was here and we celebrated the birth of Reagan Mary Applin at 0451 on 12/28/10. She weighed 8lbs even, was 20 inches long with apgars of 9 and 10. They never assign an apgar of 10, so I felt very special and told the nursery nurse this. We attempted breastfeeding and she latched right on, so another Applin characteristic was observed: a love for eating! We stayed in the room for an hour or so and then moved downstairs to the postpartum room.
Looking back at labor, here are some things that amazed me:
1. It really does just start from nothing and you have no control over it.
2. There is no way to prepare for the pain or to predict how you'll be in labor
3. There is no pain like the pain of labor and pushing. Thank God he made us to forget the pain. Even sitting here now, I'm having a hard time recalling truly how miserable I was.
4. There is no greater joy than holding a slimy miracle and feeling the sense of accomplishment after the marathon experience of labor and birth.
5. God created women's bodies to do this, to handle the pain and to produce offspring. This still blows me away!
