But for now, our birth story...
Monday, July 13th around 11am I began to have contractions. Fairly manageable cramping. They progressed throughout the day and by late afternoon we were into full on 'coping' mode, with Warren helping me through them the way we learned at baby class. The one thing that threw us for a loop though, was that we were told you go to the hospital when contractions are 1 minute long and 5 minutes apart consistently for an hour. And you shouldn't be able to walk or talk through them. Well, my contractions were consistently 40 to 60 seconds long, and coming every 2 and a half minutes. What the f*$%? I certainly had to 'breathe' through them, but I just kept thinking "these should be more painful before heading to the hospital".
Ultimately we decided to be safe and head over - the 2:30 seconds apart was freaking us out.
Cut to us in the hospital parking lot. At this point contractions are painful enough that when they come we needed to stop so I could lean on Warren and breaths/moan through them.
Warren: Do you want to ride in a wheelchair?
Amanda: Um...I don't know. Seems a little over-dramatic at this point.
Warren: Well there's one right there.
Amanda: Okay.
Then Warren proceeded to fumble with the foot rest parts, then the wheels were locked so he fumbled with those, then the bumpy ride 6 feet to the elevator doors and we decided it wasn't worth it. We couldn't help but laugh at our ridiculousness in that moment.
After being checked, turned out we were only 2 cm dilated (ps- having contractions on my back on that horrible 'bed' was awful!). We were told we had at least 6 hours ahead of us, maybe even 20 hours. So the doctor offered us 2 choices - go home as is, or go home with a shot of morphine in my butt. This shocked us. We never expected to have to make the 'drug' decision at this point. We had only ever talked about epidural and all that. So she left us to make our decision. We were told the morphine would help me through the contractions through the long night ahead. I was in a lot of pain, and the thought of another sleepless 20 hours BEFORE the hard work of pushing started, and the choice was clear. And thank God we did. I certainly wasn't able to sleep through them, but it certainly helped. I could breathe/moan through as I lay in bed most of the night. Then, the real shit hit the fan, around 2am ish. The only way I could get through those contractions was to scream at the top of my lungs. After a bit of discussion (!!!) we decided that yes, it was time to go back to the hospital, even though we were still doubtful (which in retrospect also makes us laugh).
So we called up Warren's parents who were on call to come look after the dogs. I think they are both traumatized by having to listen to me labour through those contractions. I'm sure it sounded like I was dying or being tortured to death. But I couldn't control it. That was what I did. I screamed bloody murder.
Cut to Warren & Amanda in the hospital parking lot. This time, we used a wheelchair. It was seriously a scene out of a movie. Husband, pushing pregnant wife down the halls as fast as he can. Pregnant wife is screaming bloody murder the entire time. When we got to the delivery unit you could see nurses' heads popping out from every door and then madly rushing around to deal with this screaming woman in labour.
When we got to the triage room the nurse asked if my waters had broke. I said no, but that I felt a lot of 'wet' when we had left the house, so maybe they had. She told me to drop my pants. I dropped them, and there on the floor where my yoga pants & undies, covered in BLOOD. No one reassured me that this was normal. No one said anything. They just told me to get on the bed so they could check me.
Nurse: You are 8 centimeters. Do you know what that means?
Amanda: (right after screaming through a contraction) It means I need an epidural!!!!!
Nurse: Oh honey, but you've made it this far!
At this point I wanted to rip her head off.
Nurse: Well, why don't we try laughing gas first?
This reminded me that I had indeed wanted to try laughing gas first, before an epidural, so somehow, somewhere in the fog of pain I agreed to this.
I was quickly whisked away into the delivery room, where I pretty much started pushing immediately. It took me a while to get the hang of it. I struggled with the 'no breathing, no yelling while pushing' rule. Every time a contraction came I would scream ' Now! Now! NOW!' and Warren would grab one foot, and a nurse the other. At one point the nurse said she saw something 'white' in there, but wasn't sure what it was. "It might be the cord" she said. So she got a second opinion. Turns out it was my bag of waters! I had been pushing and my water hadn't broken yet. So the nurse ruptured them.
The 'scary' parts were when the nurses said he had pooped in me (a possible sign of distress), when his heart rate continued to go really low during contractions, and when the nurses realised the doctor wasn't on site. So yes...nurses delivered our baby, because the resident OB didn't make in time either. She showed up to deliver the placenta though, which turned out to be much more painful than I expected. If you're curious to see what delivering a placenta feels like, take a look at my face in this picture:
(Editor's note: Warren did not purposefully take a photo of me in pain...the OB just happen to push down on my abdomen at the exact moment he took the photo of us...)
I still can't believe I survived child birth. I will never forget the feeling of Rhys' body passing through me into world.
PS - I DID wear my 'beads of strength' during labour. Thanks Ladies!
