I know there are women who love being pregnant. I am not one of them.
I love the miracle of pregnancy. With my past experiences in mind, I was profoundly grateful to be pregnant and carry this tiny person to term. I am in awe at what my body can do.
But.
I am so relieved to give birth, I cannot even put it into words. Delivery brings deliverance.
At 32 weeks, I had a growth ultrasound to see how Baby Boy was doing. He looked fantastic. So fantastic that all his anatomy measurements showed him at 37 weeks and gave him an estimated weight of 5 lbs, 11 oz. Everyone has a story about how wrong those guesses were, to one extreme or another. I was inclined to think they were accurate. For weeks, I had had an extremely difficult time getting comfortable. I felt like his feet were up inside my ribs and I would have gladly removed my liver and several of my ribs to get relief. My reflux (even with medicine) was so uncomfortable that unless I slept almost sitting up, I would wake up choking on my stomach acid. (Yeah, that was fun!) I felt like he must be a bigger baby to cause such discomfort that early on. Fortunately sometime around 37 weeks, he dropped enough to give me a little more breathing room. But I had painful, but irregular contractions from about 35 weeks on. I was desperate for deliverance.
My doctors decided to induce me at 39 weeks, due to the baby's size. What a blessing.
On April 12th, at about 3pm, Cory and I checked into the hospital. We were scheduled for an ultrasound for doctors to confirm the baby's size. They were concerned that if he had grown too much they would need to do a c-section. (I never really considered that I would go with this option, regardless of what they saw or found, but that is what they were checking on.)
We had a sweet and adorable technician, who spent lots of time getting cute pictures of the baby and taking thorough measurements.
The ultrasound tech told us about how good she was at estimating babies weights and sizes. She thought he would be around 9 lbs and 3 or 4 oz. She said she would rather overestimate than under, so she said the smallest she thought he would be was the high 8 lbs. She also commented over and over about how much amniotic fluid I had. Since that wasn't too large, we all felt good about proceeding as planned.
After the ultrasound, I was moved to a labor and delivery room. By now it was about dinner time. I met my nurse, had my vitals checked and settled in. I had been having regular contractions, which had increased since they stripped my membranes after the ultrasound. They were going to break my water soon and let things get really get moving. It looked like I would just be able to labor on my own, without pitocin. But things never go as planned and apparently many other women went into labor about that time. My nurse was called away to attend a c-section, while Cory and I waited. And waited. And waited. Finally around 11 pm the doctor came to check on us and fill us in. Things were still crazy, every room was filled, with more women waiting. Because I delivered at a place that specializes in high risk pregnancies, many women coming in needed lots of care. I was grateful to just have a normal pregnancy, even though that meant I was at the bottom of the totem pole. By this time I had been fasting except for clear liquids for over 12 hours. (One of the hazards of an induction...) I was famished. That sweet doctor knew it was going to be a while before they got to me, so she put in the order that I could eat and I got a wonderful, huge slice of greasy, delicious pizza.
It was a long, restless uncomfortable night for both Cory and I, who were not sleeping very much and definitely not comfortably. Finally, finally around 4 am our nurse came back and we were really going to make some progress. Shortly thereafter they broke my water, which was one of the single most painful parts of the whole process. I nearly broke Cory's hand in the process. Let me just say, that when the u/s tech said there was a lot of amniotic fluid, she wasn't kidding. There was fluid and fluid and more fluid. All. Day. Long.
After my epidural, which was the mildest one I've ever had, we just waited. Because my contractions from earlier had become irregular and were not increasing in intensity, I ended up having pitocin to really get things going. As they increased the dosage, my contractions became more intense and regular, until they eventually turned the pitocin off and let my body do the rest.
But it was still slow going. My poor children at home, waiting for their brother to be born, were in a tizzy. They couldn't believe how long it was taking. Frankly, neither could Cory and I. Around 5:00, Cory left to go get a bite of dinner. He had been gone about 5 minutes when I felt the contractions become significantly more intense and began feeling a lot of pressure, so I sent him a text that he needed to hurry and get the food and then get back. About that time the nurse came in and said she's seen the jump in contractions and it looked like it was time to push. So I texted Cory again and told him to get back. It was pushing time!
It took about 30 minutes of pushing, the longest amount of time since Elise. The contractions had been quite painful at the end, even with the epidural. The pushing was a relief. I could feel much more of what was happening, as well. At 5:47 pm, our sweet baby boy made his entrance into the world. True to his ultrasound images, he was born with his hands beside his head. One hand and arm came out at the same time as his head. They immediately laid him on my chest and he began crying.
That moment when a baby is born, that moment you lay eyes on your baby for the very first time...there are no words. I wish I could capture that feeling in a bottle. It is pure joy. Pure love. Pure happiness. Pure, pure, pure. He was beautiful. Perfect. Amazing.
He was crying as I stroked his little face and talked to him and cooed softly to him. It took no time at all for him to settle down. I think a baby's entrance into the world must be a little jarring and I have to think he wondered where he was. And then he heard his Mommy's voice. The one he already knew so well. And somehow he knew it was okay.
He laid there and snuggled for a while until he had to be weighed. We knew as soon as he was born that he was no 9 lb baby. The fat rolls I'd been promised weren't there. And sure enough, he weighed in at 7 lbs. 14 oz. and measured 21 inches long. Seven beautiful pounds. He did not appreciate being taken from me and got even more upset when he peed on himself as he was being weighed. I can't say I blame him there. :)
1 rays of sunshine:
Beautiful! I love birth stories! :)
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