Lucy’s Birth Story: Part II

Click here to read Part I.

Having sent my mom home because “nothing was going to happen,” we decided to go on a walk before going to bed. The walk didn’t do anything to make my contractions more frequent and Daniel encouraged me to try to sleep so I wouldn’t get too exhausted (I had, after all, been up most of the past two nights with contractions.) After settling in bed, my contractions stayed just as erratic as before: 25 minutes, 10 minutes, 18 minutes, etc. However, they started to strengthen significantly. By 12:30am the pain was starting to overwhelm me, but the contractions STILL weren’t regular. Between 12:30 and 1:30 they were:

11 minutes

6 minutes

12 minutes

16 minutes

13 minutes

11 minutes

The contractions were SO STRONG and taking my breath away. I started to get overheated during each one and then so cold afterwards that I was shaking involuntarily. At 1:30 I woke Daniel up and started to cry.

“I don’t think I can do this! They aren’t close enough together so I’m not even in active labor yet but they hurt so bad! If they’re going to get even worse, I don’t think I can do this. I’m so tired! DO SOMETHING!”

Now, my husband is amazing in situations when I’m being hysterical. He calmly asked me what I would like him to do and I decided that I wanted to go to the hospital and either get something to help me sleep for a few hours so I wouldn’t be so tired, or have them speed things up so that I could move into active labor and have a baby.

When we stood up to pack the bags in the car I started having some back-to-back contractions…”We need to leave….NOW,” I said.

Fortunately, the hospital is right up the road and we arrived at around 2:10am. As soon as I stepped out of the car, I started vomiting in the parking lot. “Am I transitioning?” I wondered. “What’s happening?”

We checked in and got set up in triage where the tech set up a monitor on Lucy’s heartbeat and one to measure my contractions. I was right in the middle of a super painful contraction (partly due to having to be in bed and hooked up to monitors) when the tech was trying to get the monitors set up. “I’m in the middle of a contraction,” I told her through gritted teeth. She continued poking and prodding me which is just SO PAINFUL and I snapped. “Get off of me! CAN’T YOU JUST WAIT TIL THIS IS OVER?!!!!” She backed off. Then I felt bad but…REALLY? Don’t mess with a contracting woman!

After being on the monitor for 30 min and wishing I could get off the bed into a labor and delivery room, a nurse came in. “It doesn’t look like you’re contracting at all,” she said. “WHAT?!” I responded as a contraction rushed over me and I disappeared into pain for a good minute and 40 seconds. “Hmmm. This is not hooked up right,” the nurse said. She watched the monitor as I had a couple more contractions and checked me for dilation: 5.5 cm.

“Alright. We’ll get you to a room and we’ve called your midwife.”

We got to the room at about 3:15am. Our nurse Jacqueline was precious and sweet and they tried to get me an IV of penicillin ASAP because I had tested GBS positive. The penicillin STUNG as it went in but, I was distracted enough by the whomping contractions that I didn’t pay much mind to it. My midwife, Erin, arrived at 3:40. I did most of my laboring in a rocking chair hunched over into the contractions or standing and holding onto Daniel. After I’d had my IV and labored a few more minutes, my mom arrived with her bags of doula comfort aids at around 4:20am. Erin checked me and I was at 8.5 cm. They hooked me up to the fetal heartbeat monitor during a contraction to check on Lucy. She was doing great. Erin said, “I have to check on a patient in triage, I’ll be right back.” I decided I wanted to pee between contractions so I stood up to walk a few feet to the bathroom. I had a doozy of a contraction as soon as I stood up and another one as I walked towards the bathroom. I tried to pee really fast because contractions on the toilet hurt SO BAD and as soon as I stood up I had another one. Daniel was holding me up so I could try to relax through the contraction. I looked up at him and (he tells me) my eyes got wide. “SHE’S COMING,” I said.

Stay tuned for Part III!