John Paul's Grand Entrance: A Birth Story (Part II)

If you missed it, you can catch up on Part I here. And a repeat of the warning: I love all things birth story, and so I'm not holding back on the details. A post with significantly less talk about anatomy and bodily fluids is in the work, I promise!

Sorry to leave you hanging like that... just think of it as heightening the emotion of the story! We were sent home to wait indefinitely, and you had to sit around waiting indefinitely for the rest of the story (because I'm sure you were just sitting and waiting... not!).

We arrived home from the hospital around 11pm feeling absolutely discouraged and exhausted. A whole day of (what I thought was) labor, and a whopping 2 cm to show for it. Not cool, JP. That guilt that I mentioned earlier over sending Michael and Liam away for the day (and now night!) for what was apparently nothing flared right back up. We went to bed (so weird to be sleeping in our own house and not have any kids to listen for... it would have been kind of nice under other circumstances), and I slept fitfully for a few hours. I started having contractions again, but I don't know which contractions were real and which ones I was dreaming; they all kind of blurred together. It seemed like some of the contractions were getting stronger, but I tried to ignore them and refused to get my hopes up. Around 4am I got up to go to the bathroom and was alarmed at the amount of blood that I found. I decided we needed to go back to the hospital to be checked again, because suddenly I realized I hadn't felt my usually very active baby move in a while (the fact that I had been at least partially asleep and not paying attention to his movements didn't register at that point). I woke Alex up and explained why I wanted to go back to the hospital, and we got dressed and headed back out. The whole time I was trying to mentally prepare myself for finding out something was wrong and needing an emergency C-section as soon as we arrived (and later Alex admitted that he was doing the same).

Back into the ER entrance, still not looking like I'm in labor, back upstairs to L&D, same unsympathetic nurse!, back into awful little triage cubicle. As soon as we were left alone for me to change into my hospital gown I made Alex get out the holy water and pray for me and JP.  When the nurse came back I explained about the bleeding and movement, but when I was hooked up to the monitor his heart rate was just fine, and I hadn't bled any more since getting up to go to the bathroom half an hour ago. So total overreaction on those fronts (thank you, Lord), but! I was 4 cm! I almost cried again from sheer relief--I really was in labor and they were going to let me stay this time! I was so thrilled that I almost didn't care we were going to have Nurse Heartless for the next 3.5 hours until shift change.

Things just kept getting better and better--a new nurse showed up to move us to our room (after I had quickly scarfed down a granola bar in the privacy of our cubicle, against hospital policy) and she was absolutely perfect. As soon as we told her we were planning on a natural birth she started offering us everything we had asked for on our (as yet unpacked) birth plan--intermittent monitoring, a birth ball, total freedom of movement as soon as my antibiotic IV was done, etc. We only saw her a few more times, because she gave us all the privacy we wanted and just checked in every half hour for some quick monitoring. But we totally lucked out a second time at shift change and got another awesome, completely supportive nurse (okay, not luck at all--I had been praying for weeks for nurses that would be a good match for us).

And then it got... boring. There we were, settled into our spacious L&D room (seriously, this hospital has a very nice L&D ward!). Contractions were about 5 minutes apart (and didn't pick up until the end) and uncomfortable, but completely manageable. I moved around from sitting cross-legged on the bed, to walking around, to sitting in the bathroom, to sitting on the birth ball leaning on the raised bed, and back and forth and around again. I ate a lot of red popsicles and ice chips (the only "sustenance" approved by the hospital for a woman in labor), and had a protein bar and drank plenty of water and Gatorade when the nurse wasn't looking.

After several hours of this I told Alex to lie down and try to take a nap. We had both had a long day yesterday, a short night, and now what looked to be another long day. I was feeling pretty energized from the adrenaline and being in my little labor zone, but I knew I would need a lot more from Alex when things picked up, and I didn't want him to be as completely worn out as he was after Michael's birth. I promised to wake him up if I needed him. He got a nice little nap, and I sat on the bed and played Bejeweled on my phone between contractions. I was seriously tempted to get out my computer and write the birth story up to that point, but I didn't. I should have--then I would be done with it by now!

Contractions started to get more intense, and shortly after Alex woke up the nurse suggested a warm bath. One of the things I was looking forward to most before going into labor with Michael was the tub with jets in the L&D room (different hospital, le sigh), but I lasted for one contraction in the tub before deciding it was even less comfortable than lying in bed. I decided to give it another try, and this time around it actually helped a lot. I sat sideways in the tub with my legs crossed and my arms up on the side. Alex brought in a chair and sat facing me. I rested my head on my arms with my eyes closed and I think I stayed like that for over an hour--grabbing Alex's hand and breathing through contractions, then dozing in between (while he tried to beat my high scores in Bejeweled). It was probably the best part of labor, but finally I wasn't comfortable any more and it was back to my circuit of bed, ball, toilet, walking, etc.

I think this brings us up to around 11am. During all of this I was progressing fairly steadily but slowly. I think I was around 7 dilated after the bath--good, but not good enough (for me). The nurse offered several times to have the doctor break my water to try to speed things up, but we decided to wait on that because I wasn't ready to kick the intensity up that quickly with no guarantee of results.

Intensity was working its way up on its own. An hour or so later I was only 8 cm dilated starting to feel like I couldn't do this and just wanted to quit (as if that were any option). I didn't say anything (at least I don't think I did), but I hoped my feelings of giving up meant I was in transition... and then I figured that if I could think clearly enough to think that I was in transition that probably meant I wasn't. I was also starting to feel a little pushy (that's 3 out of 3 for feeling the irresistible urge to push before I get the green light--thanks a lot, body).

We finally decided to let the doctor break my water, and ohmygoodness, I thought I remembered the difference in intensity between contractions with bag of waters intact and contractions after breaking of said bag, but this was SERIOUS. It was like my body finally decided, "Hey! Maybe this baby should come out sometime, like, soon." Every contraction was a fight to not push. No position was comfortable. With both Michael and Liam I spent a majority of labor lying on my left side. Not this time! Lying down had been less comfortable than other positions up until this point; now it was just plain torture. And lie on my back to get checked and risk having a contraction in that worst possible position? No thank you! But I kept asking the nurse to check me and enduring the contractions lying down every 15 or 20 minutes because I kept thinking I had to be at 10 cm by now. Nope. I worked my way up to 9, and finally up to 10, but my cervix still wasn't 100% effaced.

Apparently, I have a very stubborn cervix (thanks again, body). Finally, a little after 1pm, I was pronounced fully effaced and ready to push. I was in the process of rolling onto my side to sit up when a contraction hit, and the nurse suggested  a practice push. Really, practice? I've done this twice before in the last 38 months--do I really need to practice? So I pushed once once on my side, and the nurse said it wasn't really doing anything. Thanks, I didn't want to push on my side this time anyway. The OB came in as the nurse was setting everything up and Alex was helping me sit up. As she got settled at the foot of the bed she said "Okay, let's get you situated. I don't think this will be a small one!" Seriously? Is that really necessary to mention at this point?!

She told me to lie down (um, no thank you!) but a contraction started and I pushed. I was reclining more than I had wanted to be, but at this point it didn't matter--I just had to push. I ignored the doctor and nurse counting and telling me not to make any sound, and pretty much pushed the way I wanted to push. All of a sudden I heard "Stop! Ashley, he's right here! Wait!" What? Right here? Sure enough, pushing through that one contraction was just about all it took. One more push for the shoulders and JP (finally!) made his grand entrance.

I immediately asked if we could delay cutting the cord, and I was reaching down waiting for the doctor to hand him to me, but the doctor and nurse were busy discussing said cord (just hand me my baby, people!). The first thing I heard after he was born was "Wow, you're lucky!" Not a reassuring thing to hear. Turns out he had a true knot in his cord, right next to his body. Thankfully it hadn't been pulled tight and he was just fine. It was so close they couldn't clamp between his body and the knot right away.

So glad we didn't know about that ahead of time.

Finally they handed me my baby! And by some miracle I didn't tear, despite the ridiculously quick delivery.

JP started nursing right away (and has hardly stopped since--at his 2 week appointment he was almost a pound over his birth weight). Everything was wonderful except the nurse's over-zealous uterine "massage." Despite pitocin to help slow down the bleeding after I delivered the placenta (which was actually uncomfortable this time), the nurse also kneaded my stomach so hard that I yelled louder than I had during labor and just about dropped JP and punched her. She repeated this three times before finally leaving me alone (she had been just about perfect up to that point).

John Paul was a healthy 8 lbs 7 oz, 21.5" long. We enjoyed some nursing and bonding before he was whisked away to the incubator on the other side of the room for measuring, bath, etc. That took longer than expected because the nurse was training a paramedic, but that was fine. Like Liam, JP was "large for gestational age" so the hospital required testing blood sugar levels every 2 hours for the first 12 hours. And just like Liam his levels were fine all the way through.

And there you have it. The beginning of the adventures of the third Crane boy. More thoughts and pictures on our new normal coming up... eventually :)