Having Faith

Ah yes, so many lovely plays on words with our new little one's name.

So much is running through my brain.  I'm sure this will be broken up into several sections as baby duty calls.  I can hear her starting to rustle even now.

First, the birth story.  After my last freaked out post about inducing, I ended up....getting induced!  Actually, I thought about it all week and eventually decided that not only was it going to be okay once I got over my disappointment of a pitocin-free birth, but at 42 weeks, on a holiday week, it would make way more sense to have the baby at the first part of the week when I could be fairly sure that the hospital would be fully staffed (and I could be home for Thanksgiving).  So when I had my appointment on Monday and the doctor told me his recommendation was to induce starting that night, after a brief discussion with Josh, we agreed.  My doctor had still said that he would do whatever I wanted, and if I changed my mind to call him.  I love that he was so willing to work with me on that.

So Monday I reported as planned at 5pm to the L&D.  Doctor was in the middle of another delivery so I had to wait to see him until 7-ish.  The plan was to insert something called cervadil onto my cervix which would start to soften/ripen that puppy.  Frequently it will trip you into labor, but not always.  If I didn't go into labor overnight, we would start pitocin (and an epidural!) in the morning.  I was still basically shut up tight - 1 cm dilated, virtually no effacement, etc.

After about two hours with the cervadil I was having regular contractions five minutes apart.  From 10pm until 3am those contractions grew closer and closer together so that when the nurse came in to check on me I was having them basically one on top of another with only seconds of relief in between.  In short, I spent a miserable night awake in my room thinking that any second I was going to have that baby.  She checked my cervix and it had Not dilated at ALL.  Talk about a major disappointment.  After being so miserable for 8 hours, I was sure I could not handle a day full of more of these contractions.  The nurse removed the cervadil paper thing and told me I might consider taking a shower or whatever before Doctor Wright showed up.  He had talked about coming in about 5:30.  It was about 4:15am by the time I was able to hop in the shower.  Time sure moves slow in hospitals when you are waiting for nurses to help you.

Taking the cervadil out caused my contractions to back off quite a bit, so I was able to relax in the shower.  At one point I raised my arms to wash my hair and felt a weird popping sensation in my belly - like maybe I'd pulled a muscle.  But after trying to raise my arms again, I determined no muscle had been pulled.  I had a few contractions in the shower and decided I'd get out.  After drying off I felt water run between my legs.  Odd.  I thought I'd dried off pretty thoroughly.  I stepped out of the shower and felt another trickle.  Josh had helped me into my hospital gown at this point .  After one more trickle I told him to grab the nurse, because I think my water broke.  He left.  I sat down on a pile of towels on a chair.  I shifted when the nurse opened the door to my little shower room and felt a huge gush of fluid flow onto the floor so I was able to say quite confidently that my water broke!  First time breaking on it's own, so that was exciting for me.  I scurried across the hall and climbed into bed.  The nurse checked me at this point, and I was 4-5 cm dilated and partially effaced!

Once I was in bed I immediately started to feel dizzy and cold - that feeling I get when I'm near passing out.  THAT made me nervous and I started hyperventilating.  Things moved very fast from here.  It's probably about 4:30am at this point.  Josh got me a cool cloth for my forehead.  The nurse started explaining that I was hyperventilating and walked me through my breathing while she hooked me up to the IV and monitors again.  And then the contractions started.  Wow.  They were doozies.  I have now had six babies and I have never felt anything so powerful in my entire life.  I turned into some sort of crazy woman trying to get into a position where I felt I could manage those contractions.  After that first one I demanded an epidural immediately.  The nurse assured me that there was an anesthesiologist in the hospital and they would page her.  Then I had another contraction, and another.  I asked where the anesthesiologist was.  No reply.  In the back of my head I knew at that point that I wasn't getting an epidural.

These wildly intense contractions had me on my knees hanging onto the traction bar over my head and leaning against Josh for support.  I told the nurse she should call my doctor.  She replied that they were going to in just a minute.  I had  wires wrapped all around me and they were preventing me from moving freely, but a new contraction would come before I could get them untangled.  After another contraction or two, I demand that they call the doctor immediately.  I have no idea when they actually did call him.  Pretty much my next contraction after that I rolled on my side and felt the need to push, which I did just a little to try it out.  Ahhhhh - amazing how great that feels after contractions.  I told the nurse, "I'm pushing".  She told me to get on my back so she could check the baby.  I did.  And the baby was already crowning.  She told me, "we are going to have a baby right now.  But it's okay.  I've delivered lots of babies".  Squeezing Josh's hand, I pushed on my next contraction.  Faith's little head popped out.  She had the cord around her neck once, which isn't really a big deal, but it was also wrapped under her arm and they couldn't take it off.  I had to breathe and not push through a contraction, which was incredibly difficult, while they clamped the cord so they could cut it and remove it.  Josh kept saying, "don't push, don't push" which was good because without the constant reminder I would have gone with what seemed natural.  Anyway, a third half-push and that baby just flew out of me.  It really felt like I hardly had to do anything.  And there she was and the nurses and Josh were exclaiming how beautiful she was.  

I think the doctor entered the room about 5 minutes later.  ;-)  But he took over from there and got me cleaned up and placenta delivered and all that fun stuff.

This was without a doubt, the fastest, craziest delivery of all of mine.  The doctor confirmed that it was not just  my imagination that those contractions were wildly powerful.  He said when the body contracts that much in such a short period of time, it's bound to be out of control.  Super glad that my water didn't break at home - I would have been lucky to have made it to the hospital.

So that was the way Faith made her entrance into the world.  Born at 4:48am, she weighed in at 7 lb, 5 oz, 19 inches long.