my labor story
I've finally gotten back on the computer! I am tired, but happy. Life is going really well with my little cutie. Anyway, I will share my labor story with you. It is lengthy...
I woke up Aug. 29th with mild contractions. I had two the previous morning right as I woke up and then nothing the rest of the day, so I didn't get too worked up. They were quite spaced out, so I kept telling myself they would probably go away (I was also convinced I was going to go overdue, so my mind told me it would turn out to be nothing). Well, they stayed mild but kept coming irregularly. I took a bath at noon and thought my mucous plug was coming out (had a few tiny strings of reddish mucous floating in the water). So, I looked "losing your mucous plug" up on the internet and found out that labor could still be a few weeks away, so I continued to talk myself out of the fact that I was in labor. In fact, I kept telling myself all day that this wasn't it.
Finally, late in the afternoon, I put on my hypnobirthing CDs of relaxing music and started to get my body relaxed just in case. Shortly after, I called my husband and told him to come home. It was an erie evening. There were extremely high winds pounding the house. I was laying on my bed trying to relax, and it was just strange thinking my life may be about to change forever and I have no idea what is about to happen to my body - all while in the background the wind is whistling and whipping against our house. I think there must be something to what the nurse at the hospital told me - that when the barometric pressure changes, when the weather changes, an abnormally high number of women rush to the hospital in labor.
So my husband gets home, but we wait to go to the hospital until 7 pm. I was trying to relax and time my contractions at the same time, which is not so easy. At the hospital I was checked and turned out to be only 2 cm dilated. By 12:30 am I was only 3 cm. My husband and I were both so exhausted that they told us we could go home if we wanted. They also offered me a shot of morphine to help me get some sleep. I accepted. We went home and the morphine made me groggy, but didn't put me to sleep. The contractions kept me awake, but I dozed a little in between. I got up to pee a few hours later and was shocked by what I saw in the toilet - my mucous plug! Well, if you haven't seen it, I insist on describing it to you: it looked like a huge bloody "snot" the size of 2 golf balls. That made me nervous and feel the urgency to get back to the hospital.
So we arrived back at 5:30 am. They checked me and I was dilated to 8 cm! I must tell you the rest of the morning was a blur. I kept myself snuggled up in my pillows I brought from home, listening to my hypnobirthing CD, and my husband's relaxation prompts. I did not look at the clock at all, and I kept my eyes closed most of the time. My contractions were bearable due to staying so relaxed. But I must admit at the end, I would have taken a little shot of something. However, I didn't. After maybe 30-45 min. of pushing (not sure since I avoided the clock), my baby was born at 10:40 am. Seriously, the neatest part was feeling him come out of me. It felt like he swam out of me, and I immediately exclaimed "It's a fish!" It was amazing. I loved holding my slimey little baby against my chest. A few days later, I told my husband, while I was staring at my sleeping baby and crying because I love him so much, that I would go through his labor and birth all over again just so I could feel him come out of me and hold him again for the first time. That feeling was so indescribable!
