Life, at the first.

This is Griffin's birth story. I want to start at the beginning and write down as much of this as I remember.  Some of it may be too much information, or vastly uninteresting, but every mother should write her baby’s birth story, and I’ve been putting Griffin’s off for about a year now.  I’m not sure why; I just keep thinking that I will get around to it when I have time.  I have time now, and I’m sure I’ll want to read it again before the next baby comes, and Griffin may be interested in hearing it someday.  Here goes:

My pregnancy was pretty amazing for the most part.  I hardly had any nausea, and I felt pretty good in my own skin most of the time.  I think the fact that I worked full time until I was a week late helped, because I was up and getting around.  The month before Griffin was due I was getting checked each week at the doctor’s office.  Dr. Jones would check, and tell me that I was 1 centimeter, and hadn’t progressed.  Apparently my uterus is tipped funny, so even though Doc said that would not affect the birth in any way, it made it EXTREMELY painful to get checked.  Because of this, Dr. Jones didn’t really try very hard to find out how many centimeters I was until it looked like I was going to go over the due date.  He would do a cursory check and tell me things were pretty much the same.  

The week of my due date, the doctor said he needed to “really check” this time, to see how things were going.  After me almost jumping off the table and much crying, he told me, “You’re three!!!”  He said I was really lucky that he was able to find that out today, because if I was still at a one, he was going to schedule a C section.  I’m still not sure why things had to be quite so dire, but I guess that was the plan.  I told him that under no circumstances did I want a C section, and that we needed to make sure I had this baby the normal way.  He said, “Ok, and I’m not going to induce you unless you go 10 days over.”  We scheduled an induction date for February 8^th.  

Here’s a side note that I find kind of funny:  when Griffin was 5 days overdue, I got called into court for one of my cases on a Friday, which is supposed to be my day off – I was also supposed to be done working, but I figured that I felt pretty good, so why not go to court?  I remember that the judge asked me to come stand beside my client to report progress, and I stood there for what felt like two hours while she asked questions and talked.  It was like she didn’t even notice that I was standing there like a tomato perched on toothpicks, ready to explode…lovely image.  Finally she noticed me, and asked when I was due.  I said, “5 days ago.”  She said, “You’re probably tired of standing there then, huh?” and I told her I was just hoping not to go into labor at court, ha.

On February 7^th, the day before I was supposed to be induced, I woke up at around 1:30 in the morning feeling a pretty intense kind of pressure.  I had never had any Braxton hicks contractions, so I didn’t really know what contractions were supposed to feel like – I was pretty sure this wasn’t it.  I remember finally waking Tyler up around 6:30 and telling him that I thought maybe I was in labor, but maybe not.  I never really felt any pains, just a lot of pressure.  I called my aunt Lori, who is a labor and delivery nurse with about 20 years of experience.  She lives in Cedar City, and had offered to come help me with the delivery.  She told me to call her when things got started, or else she’d just come when I was induced.  I called her around 8 or 9 am to ask her what she thought I should do, and she told me to call the doctor’s office and find out what they wanted.  She said she was pretty sure they’d want me to go to the hospital and be checked.  

I started to freak out because I didn’t want to be one of those ladies that goes into the hospital because of a million false alarms (never mind that I was already 8 days overdue – pregnant brains don’t think of such things, I guess.), and I was bustling around making sure I had everything I needed for the hospital.  We called the doctor’s office, and sure enough – they wanted me to go to mother/baby at the hospital and get checked.  By this time the pressure was coming in waves, and I felt little cramps now and then, but for some reason I still didn’t really think it was labor.  Go figure.

Tyler had been planning to go into work that Monday morning, so he wanted to make a few calls and get some things done because he would be taking the week after the baby was born off.  I was getting antsy and it was getting pretty uncomfortable (the pressure, not really the cramps – they were not bad), so I kept telling him to hurry up.  He made me wait a pretty long time, considering that I WAS in labor.

We decided to go get a few last minute things from Wal Mart, because we realized we had nothing fun to watch at the hospital, so we bought the second season of Chuck.  We also stopped at Roxbury and got me a smoothie, because I was starving and I knew they wouldn’t let me eat very much if I was in labor.  I guess at that point, maybe somewhere in my mind I knew I was having a baby.

We got to the hospital at around 11:00 and went up to mother/baby, and they took me into a triage room.  The nurse was an older lady and really nice.  She said they didn’t have too much going on, so today was a good day to come in.  She checked me (ouch) and said I was at a 5……half way there!!!!!!!!!!!!  She told me they wanted to admit me, but that if I wanted to wait and have Dr. Jones deliver my baby, we could try to wait for my induction day and see how I do.  Dr. Jones wasn’t on call until the next day, but she didn’t think I would last that long.  She was shocked that I wasn’t in more pain.  By that point the little cramps were more regular, but they still weren’t bothering me much.  I knew that my mom had gone really fast with me, so I didn’t want to chance waiting if I was already at a 5.  

A friend told me long ago that when I go to the hospital to have a baby, I am supposed to say, “Hello.  My name is Jacklyn.  I would like my epidural please.”  That is what I did.  They took me to a delivery room at around 12:45 and put my IV in right away.  I think that was the most painful part, and then the anesthesiologist came in and prepped me for the epidural.  I actually got the epidural around 1:30 p.m.  I was SO freaked out, because I had heard all these horror stories about it, and in my prenatal class the nurse showed us the needle, and that thing was HUGE – It looks like a drill.  She had explained that they put a tiny needle in first, and it has a numbing agent in it, so that’s what I tried to think about.  All of a sudden, the anesthesiologist said, “Done.  You can lay back.”  I was like, what?????  I didn’t really feel anything.  The epidural was the best thing that ever happened to me, seriously.  

I started to go numb pretty fast, but it was amazing – I could still feel my legs and feet.  They were tingly, but I could move them and feel them and everything.  I was a bit worried that the, um, shall we say launch zone, would feel it too, but it didn’t!  Whenever the doctor or nurses would check me, I didn’t feel a thing.  At one point while waiting I could kinda feel a little pain on my left side, but the anesthesiologist came back in and fixed it.  This is my story and thus my own opinion, but I don’t understand why people wouldn’t get an epidural.  I guess it is super trendy now to “go natural” and be able to feel everything, and people say it makes you more able to be present in your experience, but I was pretty present.  I don’t feel like I missed out on anything…except that I didn’t even have to feel one bad contraction J.  I reached 7 centimeters at about 2:00 p.m., and they put in a catheter.  By 4:00 the baby’s head had dropped, but I was still at a 7.

I remember Dr. Lind (whom I had never met) come in at 5:15 p.m. and tell me that he would be delivering my baby.  He is a giant and his pants were like three inches from his shoes, but he seemed nice, and the nurses said good things about him.  He broke my water, and I felt a little sick.  By this time we had been waiting a few hours and my aunt had come.  She was amazing.  She could adjust my machines, and tell me what was happening, and she rubbed my feet, which I could feel because of my amazing epidural.  Another nurse checked me around 6:00 p.m., and said everything was going well.  She gave me an extra puff of epidural.  I had rested a bit and felt less sick.

Things progressed slower after I got my epidural (who cares, naysayers?  I couldn’t feel it), and so they started talking about pitocin.  Dr. Lind came in at 7:40 p.m., checked me (said I was at an 8), and He told me that Griffin was posterior.  If he didn’t turn, we may need to do a C section.  That was freaky.  He placed an internal monitor in for the baby.  

We could tell that my assigned nurse was a little miffed to be upstaged by another nurse with more experience, but boy did she redeem herself.  I think her name was Michelle.  Michelle said she had learned this old midwife trick to turn babies in the womb, and asked if she could try it on me.  I was willing to try just about anything.  All she did was turn me on my right side, and put my left leg up in a side stirrup slightly in front of and over my right leg.  We waited a little while, and with the monitor over my belly we could hear the baby inside start to move.  It sounded like he was swimming and sure enough – he had turned.

So far I hadn’t been given anything to get labor going, and I was doing it on my own.  I wanted to wait and let my body do its thing.  Around 9:05 pm, the doctor said I was 10 centimeters, 100 percent effaced, and baby’s head was at +2 station.  It was time to push.  It was so surreal, and I remember feeling inadequate – like what if I couldn’t do it right or things went crazy and I had to have a C section?  I was really afraid of that.

Tyler held one of my legs and the nurse’s intern (who was also pregnant, and had told me quite pointedly that she was going “natural”) held the other.  I remember that Lori was next to my head.  I started to feel this INSANE urge to push.  No one had to tell me when to push – I told them.  The urge to push and pressure were the most intense thing I have ever felt.  So I was pushing…Lori would count to ten for me and encourage me to go longer and harder if I could.  I am pretty proud of myself – I was a good pusher.  

This is when the pressure of the whole situation started getting to Tyler, and he got strange.  He started making all these jokes and laughing a lot, and I remember telling him that I was going to kick him out of the room if he didn’t stop laughing at me.  Honestly, I just tried to ignore him and focus on Lori, who was actually encouraging me and yelling at me to push.  Then I started to listen to Tyler, because he started saying amazing things.  He could see what was happening, and he told me that he could see the head.  He started saying things like, “Oh my gosh Honey, you’re doing so good.”  “I can see his hair.  He has hair!  Dark hair!”

At some point the doctor came in, and he told me that when he told me to stop pushing, I needed to stop, even though it would feel like I needed to push.  I knew what this was all about even though he didn’t tell me.  It was the episiotomy.  I didn’t feel it, but the sound of the cutting was something that both Tyler and I wish we could forget.  After that, I think I pushed one or two more times.  All in all, I had pushed for about an hour and twenty minutes, and then there he was.  

Everything from here on gets pretty hazy and surreal, but I remember locking eyes with a little purple person, and hearing him cry.  He was just crying, holding his hands with his fingers all splayed out and he was gorgeous.  I instantly knew that he was for me, and I realized right away that he looked like me.  This was a big deal because in my family we don’t bear much resemblance to one another, and having no father or brothers, I had no clue what my baby would look like.  It was amazing to see my big cheeks and mouth on someone else.  On my someone.

All of a sudden he was on my chest and I was crying, and he settled down and got quieter.  I wish I had more words in me for that moment, but there are no words.  There was just feeling, and knowing.  I knew that when my baby was born, I was changed forever – I truly became a mother in that moment.

His Apgar score was 8.5, because he took a little while to pink up, but once he did, he was really pink – everywhere except for his feet, which stayed purple for awhile.  About his feet:  He had 10 toes.  One of the first questions that I asked was how many toes he had, because in one of the ultrasounds it looked like he had 6 on one foot.  Tyler was excited about that and thought it would be cool, but I worried that maybe he wouldn’t want 11 toes.  Luckily, he has 10.  The nurses took him over to the little table by the bed and started to work with him and clean him up.  After they took Griffin over to the table, I remember turning to Tyler and saying, “I think I could do this again.”  

For those of you who have actually read this far, there is a LOT more to the birth story.  I've only told the first half.  The second half is a lot more graphic and pain-filled, because I had a postpartum hemorrhage, not once but twice.  I haven't decided yet if I am willing to blog about it for all to see.  If you have a burning desire to hear the rest of the story, let me know.

Our little miracle man :)