So it all began on Saturday July 4th in the afternoon. I started feeling really nauseous and then had some awful pain in my lower back on the left side. This pain lasted for a few hours and the nausea lasted even longer. I spent the evening in bed after the pain subsided a bit. I woke up at 9 pm and felt much better and was even able to eat something. My midwife, Kathryn, who I had called earlier in the day, said that the baby was probably moving around and was pushing on my back. She thought it was a sign that my body was getting ready to have the baby.
I felt fine all day Sunday July 5th and when I went to the bathroom around 6:30pm I noticed that my underwear was all wet. It wasn’t so wet that it was running down my leg so I wasn’t sure whether this meant that my water broke. I called Kathryn and she said it was possible my water was either leaking or had broken and to put a pad on and see what happened. The pad stayed moist but was not really soaked like before so I didn’t think much of it. I went to sleep and woke up at 3:00am. This time when I went to the bathroom blood came out, which I assumed to be the bloody show from the mucous plug. I called my mom and she said that my body was getting ready for labor. She was ready to jump in the car and drive down from CT, but I told her it probably made sense for her to wait and I would go to see the midwife in the morning to get checked out. Then the pain in my lower back on the left side returned and the only thing that made it feel slightly better was to kneel on the ground and lay on the birth ball. The pain would go away and then come back every 15-30 minutes. The nausea had returned also. I woke up my husband Chris around 4 am and told him that I wasn’t feeling well and that I thought this might be it. I decided to take a shower and that made me feel a little better. I called my mom again at 5am and told her she might just want to get in the car and come down. Then, in between Chris pushing on my back when the pains would start, we finished packing the hospital bag with all the “last minute items.” He took a shower and around 7 am I called Kathryn again. She said I could stay at home for as long as I was comfortable and then to come into the hospital when I was ready. I endured the back pain for another hour and then decided that if we didn’t go to the hospital soon that I wasn’t going to be able to sit for the car ride in between the back pains. So at 8 am we drove to the hospital and went to labor and delivery. We didn’t get checked in and in a room until after 9 am, all the while I was having this horrible back pain. I assumed these were contractions, but this was nothing like I had expected, as I didn’t think I would feel back pain, and just on one side.
Once I settled into the labor room, Kathryn came in and wanted to give me an IV. I hadn’t been able to eat or drink anything because I was nauseous, so I was pretty dehydrated. I said that I wanted to try and re-hydrate by mouth so I tried to drink some cranberry juice, but ended up throwing it back up, along with my dinner from the night before, so we decided that I really did need an IV to get some fluids into me. I really didn’t want an IV since it made it harder to move around and harder to get on my hands and knees, which was the position that felt the best. Kathryn checked me and I was only 1 cm dilated but my cervix was 100% effaced and paper thin. She also ran a test and determined that my water had broken, which meant that they didn’t want to keep checking me because of risk of infection. So until about 1pm, Kathryn and Chris took turns putting counter-pressure on my back every few minutes when I had a contraction. Chris was wonderful and spent time looking through the Birth Partner book for ideas on how to help the baby turn since he was in the OP position, which is why I was having such awful back pain. We tried a bunch of different positions to help get the baby to move, but I spent most of the day in the bed on my left side. Kathryn had to go to clinic at 1 pm but about the time she left, my mom arrived. Then she and Chris took turns putting counter pressure on my back. All day long, I felt like I needed to urinate, but every time I sat on the toilet only blood came out. I took a couple of showers and had the hot water spray my back, which felt better for a little while, but it was still hard to maneuver with the IV. Kathryn came back in at around 5:30 pm and I was still having the same contractions, probably about one every minute or so, which lasted about 30 seconds - 1 minute. I asked if there was something we could do about my inability to urinate and she inserted a catheter and got some urine out. Apparently the baby’s head was right on my bladder which was preventing me from going. I felt a little better after that.
Sometime around 7 pm my other midwife Margie came in and checked me and I was 8-9 centimeters. She said we should get ready to have this baby tonight. My contractions continued and around 8 pm Margie said that the baby was on another bag of water and asked if I wanted her to break it, which would speed up the labor. At this point, I was so exhausted and unable to make decisions. I just looked at my mom and Margie and I think my mom said go ahead so she did. I felt the warm water come gushing out and then the contractions started coming even faster. I started pushing – first lying down, then on my knees and then with the squatting bar. I tried pushing sitting on the toilet, standing up, and in the shower. I tried pushing in almost every position possible. After two hours of pushing, Margie checked me again and the baby still hadn’t moved down in the pelvis – he was in the same place he was 2 hours prior. Margie then brought in the attending physician on call, Dr. P, to take a look and he was of the same opinion that the baby hadn’t moved. The baby’s heart beat had been monitored all day, once an hour, and since he didn’t seem to be in any distress, I pushed for another hour. At about 11pm, Margie and Dr. P came back in and checked me again and the baby hadn’t moved at all. It was at this point that they clipped an internal monitor to the baby’s head and started talking to me about a c-section. I told Dr. P that was the last thing I wanted. He said he understood, but that he didn’t think the baby was going to come down in the pelvis, even though by this time, the baby had rotated and was in the OA position. He said that they needed to give me an epidural to prepare for the c-section. My mom suggested that I “labor down” after the epidural for another hour, which I guess means to give me a break from the contractions and see if I am then able to push the baby out. There seemed to be some assent to that suggestion, but it never really happened. Things started moving really fast. The anesthesiologist, Dr. R., came in and everyone had to leave the room except for the nurse, MaryAnn. She held me while the doctors tried to insert the needle in between contractions. I was afraid I was going to have a contraction while they were inserting it and that I was going to move and that they would hit my spine. Somehow they got it in, even though I had a contraction while they were doing it. I guess I hadn’t read up that much on epidurals since I wasn’t planning on getting one. After they inserted it, I was confused as to why I was still feeling the contractions. The doctors said I had to wait for the drug to get into my system, which was going to take about 10 minutes.
Soon I started to feel tingling in my feet and legs. Dr. R. poked me with a sharp piece of plastic until I couldn’t feel the sharpness. It was weird to be numb and lying there in the bed after 20 hours of painful labor. Shortly thereafter I was whisked into the OR (still in the tank top I had been wearing all day) and the drape was put up in front of me. I had to put my arms out on a metal table and I felt like I was on a cross. They stuck oxygen in my nose and I think gave me more drugs. They kept asking me if I felt nauseous, but I didn’t. I could feel them touching me, but it wasn’t painful. I heard them trying to put in the catheter and learned later that they couldn’t do it without moving the baby’s head. When they moved him, his heart rate dropped considerably so they started the surgery a lot faster than they intended. Someone let Chris and my mom in and they sat beside my head. The birth itself didn’t take long and once I heard the little cries, I knew he was ok. Evan Kane T was born at 11:44 pm on July 6th, weighing 8 lbs, 3oz and measuring 21 inches long. They cleaned him up a little and Chris and my mom took turns going over to be with him. Chris had to leave the OR a couple of times to wipe his eyes from tears of joy. Then they brought little Evan over so I could see him – he was perfect and I was so elated. They sewed me up for what seemed like forever and then I was brought back to the labor & delivery room where I waited for my new baby boy. They brought him in and I breastfed him and then they took him up to the nursery to clean him up and run some tests. Chris went with him and came back a little while later. They decided that I was well enough to be released to the postpartum floor so they called for transport. After waiting over an hour, at 5 am, transport finally came to bring me upstairs. After I got to my room, they brought my baby back to me. And so began my new life as a mother….
I am thankful that I had such a wonderful labor & delivery team – my husband, my mom, Margie, Kathryn and all the nurses and doctors. I am also glad that I spent so many months doing yoga – thank you Leslie for helping me to prepare my mind and body. The Expecting the Best childbirth classes also really prepared me for the 20 hours of labor and helped me get into different positions and cope with the back labor – thank you Maura and Leslie.