Induction
Sunday, July 14th (Ten days before due date)
At 38.5 weeks pregnant, I was feeling normal with no signs of labor starting anytime soon. I had what I thought might be my first "real" (aka painful) contractions a few days before while Charlie and I were walking home from the store, but they faded away and I didn't get my hopes up. On Sunday morning around 10 am I woke up and felt myself leaking a little bit down there. This was normal albeit uncomfortable so I hopped up to go to the bathroom. On my short trip across the hall I realized this was NOT normal and liquid started gushing out of me. After falling into a puddle on the bathroom floor I exclaimed to Charlie, "My water just broke!"
He sleepily leaned on the bathroom doorway, "What does this mean?"
"It means I'm going to go into labor soon!"
We excitedly called Loren, our midwife, who told me that my labor should start within 24 hours, and to rest and eat lots while we waited for contractions to start, so we did just that for the next few hours. Charlie was scheduled to lead worship at church that night, so by the time the evening rolled around and nothing had happened, he went ahead with his plans. I met up with him later after walking nearly two miles trying to get things going. My mom came up later that night, and she was hopeful that my contractions would pick up in the middle of the night. I didn't feel any different though, and I didn't have a lot of faith that they would.
Monday, July 15th
The next morning when still nothing had happened, we went into the birth center so Loren could try some natural methods of induction. She did a really good membrane sweep (one of the most painful things I've ever experienced) and wrote me a prescription for some natural herbs for me to take that induce labor. At 2pm we picked up the herbs and walked around our neighborhood for nearly an hour, we also tried some nipple stimulation using my breast pump. After taking the herbs regularly for five hours and no contractions, our final step was to try castor oil. Loren originally said if I had not started labor that night that we should go into the hospital, but she gave us until 8am the next morning instead. That night we went to bed with our hopes dwindling.
Labor Begins
Tuesday, July 16th
Tuesday morning was solemn. All of our hopes, planning, and preparation for a natural birth at the birth center was about to be all for nothing. I had to call Loren at 8am to check in. We were all up early and packing for the hospital and getting ourselves ready. I was in the bathroom, probably finishing up my makeup or something, when I felt a cramp. I checked my phone, it was 7:59am. I told my mom and Charlie, but I really didn't want to get anyone's hopes up. I could already see the light and joy back on Charlie's face though. I had a few more over the next 20 minutes, so I called Loren and told her I thought they were starting. She was also relieved, and told me to keep in touch throughout the day.
We decided to go down to Golden Gardens and walk to keep the momentum going.
My mom snapped a photo of us as we started our walk.
We walked for probably an hour, my contractions were definitely consistent but for the most part I could talk through them. We went home for a little while to regroup, then headed to the Northgate Mall to meet up with our friends Sean and Kara and keep walking.
We settled in for a few hours at the birth center, and my contractions spaced out a bit.
Charlie and I got into the birthing tub, which felt nice. After getting out Loren checked my cervix. I told her I didn't want to know how dilated I was because I didn't want to feel discouraged if it wasn't very much. She told Charlie though, and I quickly changed my mind and wanted to know. He was hesitant, but told me I was at 4cm. We spent the rest of the night working through contractions in various positions. I really favored sitting on the birthing ball and leaning onto the bed. Lying down on my side was the worst and most painful position. At my 38 week appointment she thought Finnegan was probably posterior (facing my belly instead of my spine) so we tried some positions to encourage him to turn. Because he was posterior I started having back labor, the pain was worse in my back than in my uterus with each contraction. Eventually Charlie had to push on my back, hips, and butt through every contraction.
Over the next few hours they became more painful and I became a lot more worn down. I began to feel like I had the flu, I was tired and felt weak, I had the chills and just felt awful all over. Loren checked me twice more, the second time around 3am and she suggested we try to walk around and lunge/squat a little bit. I felt so discouraged when she said that, I felt like I could hardly make it through them sitting down, and now she wanted me to work harder. I held onto Charlie and tried to walk and quickly burst into tears. I began sobbing and he just held me and we slowly walked out into the lobby of the birth center and back. He told me that if I didn't progress after this that we would probably have to go to the hospital, that this was our last chance.
When we came back into the room I had to sit back down. I told Loren that I couldn't keep doing this if I wasn't progressing. She told me that I still hadn't progressed passed 5cm. At this point I had been in labor for 20 hours. She said she thought it would be wise for me to transfer to the hospital and get an epidural, that it might help relax my pelvis and Finn might drop down more (since his head was still a couple inches above my cervix). She assured us that things like an epidural and pitocin were more appropriate tools at this point and they could really help me. Charlie, my mom, and I took a few minutes to talk about it and we all agreed that we should go.
Wednesday, July 17th
We arrived at Group Health around 5am and were immediately placed in a birthing suite. Within two hours I had an epidural. At this point both Charlie and I felt defeated, discouraged, and scared. While I was relieved to have a break from the pain, I felt like we were dangerously on the edge. Here I had been with my water broken for three days, and in labor for almost 24 hours, and it still seemed that Finn was not ready to come out. I am glad though, that out of all the hospitals I was able to go to Group Health. The midwives and nurses there were wonderful. They read over our birth plan and listened to what was most important to us. They told us they were already huge advocates for skin to skin, and all of our other requests would be met without hesitation.
After letting my epidural set in for about an hour, my contractions had weakened, which is normal. They started me out with the lowest dose of pitocin, as we told them we would like to take that as slow as possible. They increased it in small amounts until my contractions were regular and close together. They let us rest for a while and did not seem in a very big hurry to push my labor along, which was fine with us. By that afternoon I had only dilated to 7cm. Lynda, our new midwife, suggested that we break my second bag of waters as a last resort to get Finn down onto my cervix. She also inserted a uterine catheter to measure the strength of my contractions, to see if they were even strong enough to push him out. She said if this didn't work, that he was likely too big for me to deliver him vaginally. After seeing that my contractions weren't indeed strong enough, they increased my pitocin again for a few hours. At this point I thought we were heading for a C-Section. This was our last resort, and I just didn't have the hope anymore.
At 5pm she came back to check me again, and she said I was fully dilated. Once again I saw joy light up Charlie's face. I was in a very weird place though. After laboring naturally for so long, having the drugs was such a strange and foreign thing. I didn't feel like I was doing anything, I was just laying there, and the drugs were delivering my baby. They came back in a little while and asked me if I was ready to push. I didn't really feel any different, it was just the strangest thing to think I was just going to open up my legs and push a baby out.
But nonetheless we started pushing. Everyone was very encouraging and kept telling me I was doing a great job, and that Finn would be here in no time. But then Finn's heart rate started increasing, so they started giving me oxygen in between contractions. Then the thing that we had avoided all this time finally happened, I got a fever which meant I had developed an infection from my water being broken for so long. They informed us that this meant Finn would have to go to the special nursery after delivery and would need to be observed for 48 hours. All of this was being told to me while I was pushing and was very overwhelming and upsetting. At this point I just shut down. I was angry and disappointed and I didn't want to talk to anyone. Soon the obstetrician came in and the room was filled with people. They told me they wanted to try a vacuum since Finn was having a hard time getting under my pubic bone. Because of the fever and his increasing heart rate, they wanted to get him out quicker. I felt like everything was so out of my control, I didn't know how we finally ended up in this place, but I knew we just had to do what we had to do. The whole experience was so different from what I had always imagined. Here I was, numb, being given contractions by a drug, with a man pulling my baby out via a cord, and a team of doctors there to take him away after he was born. After some more pushing and a lot of pulling on the doctors part, Finn was finally born. He was crying so they placed him on my chest for a minute. I looked into his beautiful dark eyes and told him what a good job he was doing at crying. After they cleaned him and bundled him up they brought him back and I held him for a few minutes. He laid there so quietly and just stared at me as I talked to him. Charlie came to my side and started talking to him and Finn looked at him too. But then they took him upstairs. And after I was finished getting stitched up for what felt like twenty minutes, suddenly the room was empty and I was alone.
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It is really hard for me to go on writing past this point. At the time, I thought I was fine. I was upset that I didn't get to be with Finn and Charlie, but after nearly two days of everything going wrong and constantly changing, by that time I had forgotten what I expected the hours after his birth to be like. After not sleeping for that long either, I think I was surviving off of a lot of adrenaline and other hormones, which was not really allowing me to feel a lot of emotions. It's only now that I look back and feel a lot of grief and sadness that I didn't get to be with Finn for six hours after he was born.
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Thursday, July 18
It took me a long time to feel okay enough to go up to the nursery to see Finn after delivery. After letting my epidural wear off, I had such a bad headache that it took me hours just to be able to sit up in bed. Once I finally tried standing I nearly fainted, then the second time my blood pressure was too high. I wasn't able to go to the bathroom (like, I couldn't feel the sensation). All of these things made me have to stay in my room longer. Finally around midnight I had had enough. I stood up and lied to my nurse and told her I felt fine, even though I felt faint. Finally she and Charlie wheeled me up to the nursery, where I finally got to hold Finn and feed him for the first time. I was so tired that I honestly don't remember much about that night, I imagine we stayed up there for a few hours, then went back down to my room to sleep. After about 3 or 4 hours of sleep they called us back up to feed Finn.
The next two days were a blur. We spent most of the day in the nursery with Finn and then would try to go back to our room to sleep occasionally. Looking back, I was having a lot of anxiety about leaving him alone, and therefore I didn't sleep probably more than 8 hours total over the three days we were in the hospital. I was so frustrated because everyone (the nurses, doctors, my family) kept telling me I needed to rest, but Finn was so fussy and wanted to nurse so often. On top of that was the stress of not knowing if he was okay or not. They ran blood tests on him each morning because of little complications here and there. He was hooked up to so many machines with wires that were going off constantly. He also had a really hard time latching on and staying awake during feedings which made him constantly fussy. I had so much leftover fluid in me (my feet and legs were so swollen that I could barely bend them at the knee) that my milk delayed in coming in.
Finally released from the hospital on Saturday, July 20th
All of these things made the following weeks so hard. It took me a long time to feel physically okay. I couldn't sleep for ten days. You know that feeling when you almost get in a car accident and your body releases a burst of adrenaline and your heart starts racing? I felt that all day, everyday, for ten days. It was one of the scariest things I have ever gone through in my life. It messed with me to the point where I wouldn't even try to sleep anymore, because laying down and not falling asleep scared me. I panicked. I feared I would never sleep again and I wouldn't be able to take care of Finnegan and we would both die.
Hormones y'all. No joke.
I prayed constantly and eventually God answered my prayers. Even after I physically started feeling better, it was still a long road mentally and emotionally. But I can say happily after 3.5 months, I am my normal happy self :)
