Has it really been this long? I guess this is what happens when you have baby number four. What an amazing experience this last year has been! I really can't imagine life before our little Emberly Rose. Here's a little snapshot of our sweet baby.
The Birth
I had been in "early labor" for about a month. Contractions that kept me up and feeling like the baby was getting ready to come. I would have put up with it for longer, but on May 15th I started feeling strange. I went in to the hospital and my blood pressure was through the roof. Because of that they ended up keeping me. And so the waiting began. The admitted me because they couldn't let me go with my blood pressure so high, but I still wasn't kicking into active labor.
By the next morning I was still only at a 3 and still not progressing. I asked the midwife if I couldn't just go home and they said that no, I had to stay because of my blood pressure. And this is when I began to start feeling bad. I wish that I had had a doula or someone with me that could have banished these feelings. I thought that because I had a midwife rather than a doctor that I would be "safe" from being pushed into medications, but that wasn't true. I began to feel like I had to hurry up and have my baby because by just sitting there I was wasting everyone's time. I was using up a birthing room and I felt like all the staff had this expectation that I should be doing something besides just sitting there and walking the halls. So I gave in and acquiesced to pictocin. I was on that all day of the 16th and all night. The morning of the 17th I was hardly at a four. They finally took me off of the pictocin, but it was pumping through me. I began to think, "If I don't have this baby soon, they are going to tell me that there is a problem. They are going to give me more medications and then eventually c-section." This probably wasn't all the way true, but I was totally freaking out at this point. Again, if I had had a doula there to help ease my fears I wouldn't have been in such a hurry.
By 2pm I allowed them to break my water, even though I was only at a 4.5 and my baby at a -2. I told them they had about 45 minutes and my baby would be here. They laughed and said that they would check on me in 2 hours. The second that midwife left the room the real contractions started. I delivered the baby at 3:15, not quite an hour from when she had left. I managed the pain on my own in a way that I was happy with, with exception of the last 5 minutes. The fact was, I had so much pictocin in my system that my baby just came to fast. The pain was so intense that there was a moment when I felt that I might not actually make it. Thankfully, that was a fast 5 minutes and the baby came safely out. She was all wrapped up in the cord, and we believe that was the reason that she had been taking so long to descend on her own.
Parts of me wish that I could go back and redo the birth the way that I wanted it done. But I can't. She arrived the way she did and I don't love her any less for it. I wish that I could have had the natural birth that I wanted, but it what it is and I'm still happy about the job that I did. Labor does a strange thing to women. We feel like it should be a certain way and feel badly when it doesn't go the way we envision. I'm not about to fall into that trap. Emberly Rose arrived on May 17th, 2013 at 3:15pm. 8lbs and 6oz, 20" long and she is wonderful!
No comments:
Post a Comment