The one with all the Pushing

Once Upon A Time, there was a girl (me) who was supposed to have a baby....here's how that went: (with apologies in advance for the changing of tenses throughout)

October 28, 2004

6:20 pm...My water breaks.
It actually goes "pop" before fluid gushes out...luckily I was on the toilet at the time, so there was no mess to clean up. I call the lovely Cinnamon to drive me to the hospital. Then I call Aaron and tell him to meet me at the hospital because it is go time, baby! Then I call staff duty to let them know that I am in labor and they need to extract my husband from the field and send him to the hospital. Then I call the hospital and let them know I'm on my way. After that I call my mom, who says "hallelujah" that my water broke.
By the time I had done all that, Cinnamon was at the door. She loaded my stuff into the car, and we were off! At this point I'm not contracting at all.

6:50 pm...At the gate to get on to Post.
Cinnamon tells the guard checking our identification to hurry up because we're having a baby. He responds with "are you serious?!", makes sure that our faces match the faces on the id cards and sends us through. As we're headed down the road, there's an MP coming the other way...who turns on his lights and wants to pull us over. He saunters up to the car and Cinnamon informs him that we're going to the hospital b/c I am in labor and he can write her a ticket there. He tells us to "drive safely" and then gets in his car, pulls ahead of us, turns on the lights AND sirens and waves for us to follow him. We get to go through a red light and Cinnamon's day is made.

7:10pm...at the hospital.
They check to make sure that my water actually broke (which is no surprise, considering I was starting to feel like Chicken Little), and to see what my cervix was up to. No change in the cervix, but the amniotic sac had definitely ruptured so I was admitted and put in Room 3. I get hooked up to all of the external monitors, and the contractions start rolling in. Painful like the ones from the previous Sunday, but not unbearable.

7:30ish...Aaron arrives...
All stinky and unshowered from the field. He gets to shower and change, and then Cinnamon leaves us. :( The nurses and resident doctor check my cervix again, declare no change yet. The contractions start to get worse....eventually they're so bad that I'm cursing up a storm at the end of each one.

11:20...Enter the nurse anesthetist!
And it's epidural time! It's unbelievable how well that thing works--and for those of you who believe in doing without--I applaud you, but your way is not my way. I can finally relax enough to sleep in between the vital sign checks that occur every half hour. And the occasional cervix checks...my cervix decided to efface before dilating...the effacement took about 2 hours and then it was dilation all the way.

October 29, 2004
5:00 am...cervix check....
We were declared ready to push! The baby was at a plus one station (at plus four they're out), I was dilated and ready to go....The nurses called the on-call Doctor who said to hold back on the pushing until she was actually in the hospital...so I wait, and the epidural starts to thin out. Not so much that I'm in pain, but enough that I can tell what my contractions are doing--when they happen, how long they are.

6:05am...PUSH!
I push. And I push and I push some more. The baby makes it to plus two station and stalls....the on-call doctor comes and checks me out to see what's going on. The baby is looking sideways (at my right hip) while trying to descend through the birth canal. Everytime I push, he swings his head a little in the right direction, but always manages to get back to where he was by the next contraction.

8:00am...assistance...
At this point the epidural is useless. I've pushed the button, it doesn't help. All I want is to push this baby out-out-out. Every time I have a contraction, my ears start ringing and all I can do is bear down. At this point I'm so tired I can only push to a six or seven count. The on call doctor is right there and declares that this baby isn't moving, despite all the pushing. She has an 8:30 OB-GYN clinic appointment because as of 7:30 she is no longer the on-call doctor. The new on-call doctor shows up, declares "prep her!" and all the various delivery tools are unveiled on their carts:
shiny silver instruments against a sterile blue backdrop.
The new doctor tells me they're going to attempt to help with the delivery using a vacuum. I only get three tries before our only option becomes a c-section. I push like a marathon runner with the finish line in sight. The baby does not budge. I remember hearing the words "inadequate pelvis" and signing the release form, all the while thinking "somebody please get this baby out of me and make the pain stop". The anesthesiologist comes in and switches from an epidural to a surgical block while the doctor stiches up the tear I suffered as a result of the vacuum....(I'm curious as to how bad it was, but I'm too chicken to look).
The surgical block was lovely--I was so tired all I wanted to do was drop off to sleep, but I WAS NOT going to miss the birth of our baby. They wheeled me back to the operating room and prepped me while Aaron put on his scrubs. Then Aaron came in and sat beside me while they started the procedure. I could feel tugging and hear the clanging of metal instruments (which I later deduced to be forceps), then someone pushed down at the base of my rib cage (popping a rib back into place). I felt a huge release of pressure, and then I heard our baby cry for the first time.
And I cried--I couldn't believe that he was actually here (hands down, one of my top ten favorite sounds, ever). A few minutes later, a nurse came around and asked Aaron if he wanted to go take a look. He went around the drape and I heard him laughing while the nurse said to the baby "are you peeing on me again?"
Then Aaron's standing next to me holding this tiny little pale person in his arms. He was so lovely! I guess not having to travel through the birth canal saved him from looking like a boxer at the end of a losing fight, but I hadn't expected him to be so lovely!
After I was stiched back up and wheeled back into the room, they gave me morphine for the pain...so the rest of that afternoon comes and goes in pockets. I remember watching Aaron hold little Adrian like he'd done it all his life and realizing that (like the hallmark cards I had mocked many times over) I had never been so in love before.
Adrian arrived at 9:49 a.m. He weighed 8 pounds, 6 ounces and was 21 inches long. His head was 13 3/4 inches around--which was apparently too big for me.
So that's how that happened. You'll notice I left out all the parts having to do with catheters (if you get an epidural, you get a catheter), funny bodily noises, and the gory details of recovery. The recovery story will be chronicled over the next few weeks, I'm sure.
In the meantime, I promise that pictures are forthcoming....