Labor & Delivery

My Labor Story:

At 32 weeks I began having braxton hicks contractions everyday, somedays quite a few, and others not as much.

On Sunday night, June 13th, I started feeling pretty sick, and just not right. The next morning I was officially 36 weeks along, and I still didn't feel good. I spent most of the day trying to sleep it off. By the time my mom got home from work she had decided she was going to take me into labor and delivery "just to check." I was being stubborn and did not want to go! But then after going to the restroom, I had a weird feeling that my water might be leaking, so I agreed to go.

Once we got there the nurse and doctor did tests to determine if my water had broken, all four test came back iffy, but since they were not 100% positive they decided to just wait and see what happened. As they had been preforming tests, the contractions monitor began showing I was having regular contractions every 2-3 minutes. My doctor decided to have them keep me and observe me overnight.

For the next 17 days the contractions never let up. Sometimes they were only 5-6 minutes apart, but basically I lived off of loratabs and lots of walks. I was dilating and effacing just VERY slowly.

July 1st I went in for a doctors appointment, I was 38 weeks and 3 days along. She had told me that if I had still not had the baby she would strip my membranes, and hopefully that would be enough to put me into active labor. I guess it was my lucky day because within 3 hours of leaving her office I was back at L&D. Even if I wasn't having the baby that day I needed some serious pain meds because my contractions had gotten TONS worse.

I was dilated a little more then a 3, I was told if over an hour I changed at all they would admit me to have the baby. If not, it was up to my doctor what we would do. Well at 4 o'clock I was the same, and I just knew they were going to send me home, I really wanted to cry. But thankfully I have an amazing doctor who told the nurse my contractions were regular enough, she was going to admit me, break my water and let me have this baby!!! Me and my mom both started crying because we were so relieved to finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.

We walked around for a while and waited for the doctor to come in and break my water, she broke it at about 6:10. I was dilated to a 4.

I kept telling myself I wasn't in enough pain to need an epidural, really who wants a huge needle stuck in their back!? I only lasted an hour before I as BEGGING for one, seriously how could my contractions have gotten any worse? I do not know, if nothing else they were just longer and I could hardly breathe through them.

At 7 I got an epidural and I am so very glad I did. I could no longer feel any pain, just pressure, which was fine by me. I was dilated to a 5, so about a cm an hour. At 830 I was a 6. We were telling our family it would be a while, I even bet that Braxten would be born on July 2nd. I was totally prepared to have a few more hours to just relax, the baby had other plans. I had been feeling more pressure then I had but really didn't think anything of it.

At 9:20 my nurse checked me, looked at me and said "You're completely done. Rest for a half hour or so and we will start pushing." I was shocked. After she walked out of the room I turned to my mom and said "I don't think I want to do this, I don't want to actually push him out." Well umm TOO LATE! I remember saying that several more times in the next hour! I started having a crazy panic attack, all sorts of crazy thoughts going through my head. Totally psyching myself out.

At around 9:50 or so my nurse helped me with "practice pushes". I sucked at pushing. But eventually the baby was right there and the doctor was called. I love my doctor she was so calm and patient with me.

My contractions had slowed down to about every 3 or 4 minutes, so pushing took a little longer then I would have liked. Like I said I sucked at it, everytime we would start counting to 10 I would get to 7 and start saying "I can't do this, I can't do it." I was exhausted, my whole neck ached, I was scared to death and seriously wanted to stop. Well you can't just stop in the middle of pushing a baby out.

At 11:00 I started bawling, and saying incoherent things about stopping and not being able to do this, thankfully I was very close to being done.

Last Belly Pictures: 

Braxten was born at 11:03 pm. When Braxten was pulled out it was the craziest feeling ever. All of a sudden I was just empty, although I wasn't really thinking about that. All I was thinking about was the screaming, gorgeous baby who I had just given birth to. I couldn't believe he was finally here! We had done it.

They placed him in my arms as they tried to wipe him off a little bit. His eyes were open and he just kept looking at me and crying like "Really mom? I liked it in there, couldn't I have stayed?" He was so gorgeous, I could not stop sobbing. I kept kissing him and saying "Shh shh its okay, I love you, I love you."

They took him to a table to measure him and wipe him better, his apgar score was 9/10.

I got him back when he was all wrapped up, one of the nurses was standing there though and mentioned how he was breathing a little fast. One of his nostrils was smashed so maybe his lungs weren't expanding enough and he wasn't getting quite enough air. They told me they were taking him to be put on a bi pap "just for an hour." Which turned into 4 days...but thats another story.

First Pictures of Baby: