SURPRISE, SURPRISE!

• My birth experience...
• Friday night, April 10th...I was technically 35 weeks and 5 days (original due date: May 10th)... Jared was getting ready for bed because he has to get up at 2 am for work. So I let Percy out around 8 and all of a sudden my water broke. I wasn't sure if I just peed, because it's not like the movies, where it was a water balloon gush. I made it to the bathroom and let it drip in the toilet. There was a little bit of the mucus with blood. I called my Dr's office and it went to the on call Dr at the hospital. She told me to come in just in case. At the hospital they did a swab test and sent it to the lab to see if it was my amniotic fluid and it was. Uh oh, it just got real...So I was admitted. The nurse asked me if I could feel that contraction but I expected contractions to be low like period cramps. So this whole time when I was contracting I thought it was him pushing his foot or butt near my ribs. They gave me about an hour once I got into the room to see how I progressed on my own. I didn't, so they started pitocin.
• I was lucky enough to get a nurse who was training a nursing student... yaye me. She stuck me 3 times trying to get my IV in. She also got to check my cervix- very painful. She had to stick her two fingers in so deep. And I was only 2cm. They don't start an epidural until 4. So they upped the pitocin about every 20 mins. So that made the contractions come faster and closer. So that was painful thing number 2. They gave me some kind of pain meds in my IV. I don't know what it was but it made me loopy. I could tell when I was trying to talk to Jared and his mom that it didn't sound right coming out. It helped me rest though!
• I think that bc I got the pain meds it helped my epidural not hurt going in. Before the epidural my graph showed the contractions going to 65-70% and after I couldn't feel the ones going all the way to 100%. Rhonda was very surprised that I couldn't feel anything.
• The epidural was great and all until... it runs out! It releases every so often, but if you start feeling the pain you can press a button to release a concentrated amount more quickly. I didn't press it every 10 mins. But I did want to make sure I wasn't going to feel anything. So I pressed it every so often. Well of course when he was coming out it was gone! I even asked the nurse if it ran out, would I be able to get more- and she said yes. The only problem is, it went to 0 as he is making is way down, so it was a little to late! AHHH. As some of you know, I am a BIG baby! I do not have a high pain tolerance at all, but I knew there was only 1 way he was coming out so I was crying in pain. Total labor= a little over 17 hours, total time pushing= 2 hours. Brooks Andrew Bartlam arrived at 1:45 on April 11th! The best and worst day of my life! lol
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• Then I had to birth the placenta, which the dr said that it may hurt, but compared to pushing Brooks out, I felt like the placenta just slid right out. Next, the nurse began contracting my uterus. That hurt too!
• So then the dr started the stitches...which I could feel because my epidural was no more. So they injected me with more meds- which also meant I had to get another catheter because I couldn't move my legs. Oh the modesty that is lost after delivering a child!
• Unfortunately I was only able to hold him for a few minutes, because he was making grunting noises. They wheeled him off to the special care nursery, which became our "home" for the next 2 weeks. I'll write another post on our experience there.
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