Sorry this took so long. I started writing it the week we got out of the hospital.
It was a dark and stormy night…No, I lied. Actually, it was a beautiful Friday morning. At least that’s what I think. I woke up and starting having contractions right after breakfast, so I did as I’d been trained: lie down and relax, drink water, and walk around if they continued. They continued, but I didn’t want to walk. Instead, we brought out my phone because there’s an app for counting contractions. My husband timed while I dealt with the contractions, which really weren’t awful, just annoying at this point. Everything pointed to Wombat arriving some time Friday or early Saturday.
Since it was Friday, I had to go in for a Non-Stress Test (NST) any way, so my sister and I went to the Birth Place with my husband staying behind so he could work around the house a little more (he nested more than I did). Once at the hospital, I showed the RN my contraction app, which she loved, while she hooked me up. They monitored me for about an hour, it’s only supposed to be 20 minutes, then let me go as my contractions weren’t timing out perfectly. When I was walking out the door, she told me to go home and enjoy my husband…wink wink.
Once home, the contractions really backed off, so we; my sister, husband, and I; finished cleaning the house then went to see Cowboys vs. Aliens because who doesn’t love cowboys fighting aliens AND seeing Daniel Craig? Yummy! Evidently, Wombat enjoys watching Daniel Craig too because I started having more regular contractions during the movie, so we went home and watched Casino Royale, the one with Daniel Craig. The contractions kept getting stronger and closer together. We all thought we were going to the hospital any minute. My husband took a nap; my sister and I stayed up to count the contractions in hopes that we’d go to the hospital soon. We shouldn’t have watched a cheese-tastic, bad romantic comedy because the contractions fell off. I called the night.
The next morning the contractions started again with the same possible false hope of getting stronger and closer together. I was not amused. I wanted to sleep and eat and relax because there’s no way that this was the real thing. I’d had Braxton-Hicks contractions for weeks, everything was false excitement, yet this time it was not a drill. Finally, at 7ish, we were off like a herd of turtles to the hospital.
Contractions and riding in a car do not go together. They, in fact, are mortal enemies.
After a brutal ride on back country roads and a non-bumpy interstate, we arrived at the hospital, changed into our Team Wombat bright green t-shirts, and walked into the hospital. They put us into a triage room, the one I frequented the most during my NSTs, to hook me up to the NST machine (also known as electronic fetal monitoring). It was all familiar to me. However, my husband seemed a little nervous when I think back on it.
Our RN came in to introduce herself, which pleased both my husband and sister as they weren’t happy with the first RN to come in as she immediately started talking about me getting an epidural. Anyway, our RN read our birth plan, took a copy with her, and followed it without question (I love her!)
After being in the triage room for three hours, I was admitted. My RN guided us to our room, which turned out to be the room I wanted. It overlooked a horse field. Once all our stuff was moved to our room, I quickly got in the Jacuzzi tub. Unfortunately, I would not allow anyone to turn on the jets. There, I stayed for a while and yelled at anyone who tried to splash me with water. Once I got out, my husband wanted me to try the birthing ball, but it pretty flat, so I just got into bed. During this whole time, my husband and sister were using an acupressure point on my lower back to ease the pain; my husband easily pushed really hard with one hand while my sister, using her entire body weight, really didn’t push hard enough and I may have yelled at her. Between the two of them pushing on my back, I actually got a bruise which stayed around for several weeks. They laughed about it silently behind my back just as they did when I yelled at one of them. It was their way of getting through this extremely long labor.
So there I laid in bed for several more hours with the contractions getting stronger until they just fell off. Our doctor said that he’d normally administer pitocin at this point, so my husband should use one of our natural stimulation methods, which thus far had done nothing to induce labor; however, it worked once I was in labor and I was back to having contractions shortly going into transition.
Transition is where things get tough and most women ask for meds; I was no different and started begging my husband for meds. He told me that I would have to ask for them myself while my sister would tell me every time I said I was done that I was “done with that contraction.” Honestly, they were really getting on my nerves and I may have yelled at them several (many) times during the next two hours. Oh, the meds they offered where either an epidural or nubane. Nubane was given to me when I delivered Moose; it does jack, so I don’t recommend it and recommend, instead, just staying the course of no meds.
Finally, I started pushing, but didn’t put a lot of effort into pushing because I didn’t realize that I was pushing Wombat. Yeah, that doesn’t make sense, but I’d been in labor for a really long time at this point. Anyway, I pushed for two hours according to my husband. At first, I barely pushed, then I screamed more than I pushed until my RN told me that I was wasting my energy, so I got angry and pushed with anger. Wombat really started moving then with our doctor actually commenting several times on how strong I was to my husband.
Since my husband was catching, our doctor got him down there and my RN stepped into his place holding my leg. Our doctor gave him this quick lesson on how to help me not tear, work the shoulder out, and some other stuff. During this time, I was only allowed little pushes, kind of hard to do when my body wanted Wombat out. Finally, I was told to push, so I did. Then I head the magic words “one more big push and the head will be out,” so I gave a big push…and Wombat’s head popped out along with the rest of Wombat.
Yeah, I pushed so hard I pushed out a whole baby.
My husband caught Wombat before Wombat fell off the bed, put Wombat on me to nurse just like he’d been trained, and I laid eyes on our Wombat. Our beautiful Wombat. We were covered with a blanket as I asked my husband “what did we have?” He forgot to look in the excitement, so he lifted the blankets and said “it’s a girl I think,” to which my sister replied “yes, that’s a girl.” While all this was happening, my sister said “the head doesn’t look funny at all,” because most babies have funny shaped heads, especially when the mom pushed for so long.
My husband came around to look at Wombat and I, so I asked him “honey, how did we do this? How did we do this?” His reply: “I think we learned about it in Sex Ed.”
So in conclusion, it was a great, but really long birth with a Coach and Assistant Coach who were amazing (our doctor, who is a man, said that “if I ever have to give birth, I want you two as my coaches.”), and Daniel Craig induces labor, but cheesy romantic comedies do not.
Edited to add: Forgot, my water never broke. Our doctor, when I stalled, actually broke my water. I'd been taught that this was a bad thing to do as it won't start labor, but I was already in labor, so it did help to restart everything along with my husband doing natural induction stimulation. Our doctor commented about my bag of waters being very tough because it'd gone through some thing or some thing like that.
And as a reward for reading all that, here's a picture of Miss Wombat herself:
