The Gory Details

Look. I realize there are plenty of people who don't want to hear the details so if you are one of those, stop reading. Enough people do so here is where I will write it. I will save my reasons as to why I go natural for another post. Maybe. My bum can't handle sitting here that long.

My "due date" was April 7th but I was not holding my breath. I did tell my usual midwife I did not want to have a big baby but I did want to go natural. She did not think he was going to be big so she let me go on as normal. Simeon was 9lbs and I thought that was too big. When she checked me the Friday before I was still pretty high and nothing was happening. I was not surprised. Roger's mom, Robyn, came in on Wednesday April 8th. Not only is she fabulous with the kids and managing my home, she is a great doula and is trained in pregnancy massage and all that stuff. I finished all I wanted to do the day before she got here so I would be ready to have this baby.

I decided that if this baby was ready and only needed a nudge, I would nudge him with castor oil on Thurday morning. Roger was not totally swamped that day and it would nice to have a good night sleep and know I would not have to fight traffic to get to the hospital. The castor oil did nothing so I decided to let him come when he wanted.

Thursday night Roger was helping a friend with some electrical work and the kids were in bed. Robyn was giving me a massage on the couch when Roger walked in (9:30pm) and said he was only there for a minute. As he walked to the garage to get something I thought the castor oil kicked in for a second because my pants were quickly being filled without my consent. It only took a second to realize that I also felt a popping feeling and I jumped up, grabbed a blanket and ran to the toilet. I will leave that business with saying that I had TONS of amniotic fluid gushing the whole time. When Roger walked in from the garage I told him he better get some sleep. I called my friend Heidi at a baby shower for a friend and let her know she was sleeping over. It was fun to hear the hoopla in the background when the anouncement was made.

I sent Robyn to bed too, finished packing my junk for the hospital and decided to sleep until the contractiosn started. The time from when my water broke until the baby was born was 3 hrs with Rory and 5 hrs with Simeon so I was not expecting it to take long. I laid down and my contractions started at 10:30 pm were a 45sec long and 5-7 min apart. I tried to sleep through them but could not so I thought I would move around to get them going. Oddly, moving around made them stop so I laid back down. They started up again. I moved around and they stopped. I laid down and they started again. I decided it would be nice to get set up at the hospital and get monitored before they really started. I knew I was not in active labor but oh well. I was only at the hospital for 15min with Rory and 1hr with Simeon. At 2am I woke up Roger and Robyn and we took off.

I arrived at 4cm and thought that was great. I told the nurse I did not want an IV or saline loc and they were totally cool with it. I just had to sign a consent form. I was hooked up to the monitor and I knew my contractions had stopped. The next 8hrs I barely had any contractions which was annoying but we were totally relaxed. I slept I walked I slept I walked. At 10am my midwife checked me and I was at 6cm but still really high. Even with all the gushing I still had some bag intact so she broke that and left for her clinic. We thought she was crazy for leaving since I go so fast but she said Roger could catch the baby.

Oddly, (many things were odd) I found that the pressure from being hooked up to the monitor made my contractions consistant and strong and when I took it off they went away again so I stayed on them. I was able to work through some strong contractions by myself and then with help. They were coming every 2 min and were totally workable. We were really relaxed. Roger and I had a little contraction dance that made it to where I did not even feel them.


The baby's nurse came in and told me she would do all the assesments of the baby with him on me and I thought that was really cool. I liked her.

The nurse after an hour and a half checked me and much to my horror and sadness I was still at 6cm. I got really sad. My legs were tired so I climbed into bad and started transition for the next hour. Roger was doing counterpressure one way and Robyn was pushing in another direction. We worked through that until I felt the contractions change. My midwife checked me at 1240 and said I was complete but still high. They got the room ready and I started to push.
Rory came in 2 pushes and Simeon in 5. When I realized this baby was not going to come so quick I got really really really sad and scared. I pushed for 2 1/2 hours with Josh and did not want to go through that again. I tried not pushing through every contraction but that made me stiffen up and I gave up control on my body in a bad way. The next part happened sooo fast in my mind but the whole pushing part took 30 min so I don't know how fast things really went. My midwife asked for help because she knew this baby was really big. The baby's nurse asked for help too so all of a sudden there were tons of women in the room. One even pushed my mother in law out of the way and jumped up on the bed and started pushing really hard on my pubic bone. Roger yelled at her to get off because he could not believe she was doing that to me. She backed off for a second untill my midwife had her do it again.

Here is the picture in my mind. I was laying down with nurses holding up my lower half and others holding my legs a certain way and one was pushing on my pubic bone. My midwife was on the bed telling me to push as hard as I could even though I was not having a contraction. Roger said she was pulling with all her might on the baby's head and someone was behind her pulling on her. I pushed with that giant yell that women do in movies holding onto handles on the back of the bed. I pushed a few more times and he came out.

I did not open my eyes for a good ten minutes from shock of what just happened nor was my baby brought to me. This was the first time I needed stitches but things were not too bad down there. Apparently my baby had shoulder dystocia (shoulder was stuck up high) which is fairly serious and not good for the baby or me. The baby's arm shoulder could have been broken and he was not using it. Because he was big he had really low blood sugar. He was also breathing at twice the rate as he should. He looked like this for a couple hours.


Because he was breathing so fast he could not nurse but he needed some food in him fast. Roger had to give a bottle. Normally I would have protested but I trusted this nurse enough to know she would not have not wanted it unless is was necessary. He was very close to going to Newborn ICU


He was a champ and after a couple hours was doing tons better and after 24 hours we were able to go home.

All in all I was very pleased with my midwife(I had actually never met her before) my nurses and the hospital. I did not have to put up a fight to have a relaxed environment for all the time I was there until the complication came. The nurses for the rest of it were awesome too and let me sleep all night without bugging us with only the baby nurse getting his vitals and blood suger once. I had something in my room to block the noise so I rested better than usual.

Labor was not bad. Pushing. . .was.