I had a pretty busy day on Tuesday, March 8th. I had lunch with a friend, acupuncture, chiropractor, a nice walk at Hemlock Bluffs, made fajitas and watched a funny movie. Got to sleep a little late, around 12:30 and woke again a little before 2:00 am. I awoke with an urgent need to rush to the bathroom. I sat down and my water broke, I was also having a painful contraction. Well, after that things moved pretty quickly. I called the doctor's office after having pretty regular contractions at 5 minutes apart. You are supposed to call when the water breaks or when the contractions are 5 minutes apart for 2 hours. They said to come to the hospital but no need to rush. I put my contacts in and we took quick showers and grabbed our stuff and headed to the hospital.
By the time we checked in, the contractions were more painful and seemed really close together. I got into a room pretty quickly and the nurse came in after a few minutes and was surprised at my state. She said "wow, you are huffing and puffing in here, I thought you weren't sure if your water had broken or not." Through my now very painful contractions she went through her check in procedure. First checking to see how much I was dilated. I was already at 7-8 centimeters. Then she asked me all kinds of questions like what was I allergic to and all kinds of things. They started the IV and the antibiotics. They hooked me up to the contraction and fetal monitor. At some point I asked about the process to get an epidural. Ha, things were moving way too fast for that. I guess after about an hour I felt like I had to push. She said, no it's not time yet. But she checked me and found that I was 9.5 centimeters dilated. The midwife finally got there and declared that I was fully dilated plus 2. So, my urge to push made sense :). Oh man, the fun continues from contractions to pushing. Nicolas said it was only about a half hour or 45 minutes of pushing but it felt like forever! I started tearing and they had to do an episiotomy as well. They couldn't find the heartbeat on the fetal monitor and said the baby was not in a great position so they told me to push and get him out. Then I had to figure out how to push! Whatever I was doing was not very effective so we changed positions and they coached me through making them more effective. Finally, we started getting somewhere and baby was coming out! He was born Wednesday morning, March 9th at 5:19 am. They put him in my arms almost immediately and I thought wow, he's so amazing! He's so cute and I can't believe he's out now and he's ours!
The whole labor only took about 3.5 hours but I was still exhausted during the pushing. What an experience. Even though it was planned to not have one, I would have done an epidural if the labor was longer. In the end, I'm glad how it worked out without it but couldn't have imagined the pain before hand. Nicolas was fantastic. I really felt his support during the entire labor. He rubbed and put pressure on my lower back during the contractions and then fed me ice chips and brought cool washcloths for my forehead.
Here is little Luc getting weighed soon after birth,.
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