vincent makes his way into the world

disclaimer: this is going to be TMI, i am going to use gross words like cervix and vagina and placenta…all that stuff, so if you are squeamish you will probably not want to read this.

august 28th came and went without even a hint of labor and i was kinda sad because i knew that meant i would have to be induced. i made the mistake of reading about inductions when i was doing my researching and of course i had scared myself into thinking they were all horrible and i would end up with a c-section and pain and all that awful stuff that i was scared to death of.

on the 29th we finished packing everything we needed for the hospital, took a long nap and cuddled up. then went to a nice resturant for our last dinner as not-parents.

at sometime after 10pm we loaded up the car, made sure we were ready and headed up to the birth place. its a little over an hour and a half to get there so we had a long ride to sit and think about what was about to happen.

they were waiting on us when we arrived and in a couple of minutes i was in a hospital gown and getting settled into my room. the best thing about the place we chose is that everything happens in one room. i never had to go anywhere. it was like a hotel with babies.

my first moment of fear came from the iv. they didn’t actually hook me up to a bag but they did have to put the tube in so they could hook me up to one if it became needed. this was the first time i’d ever had an IV and since i hate needles and even looking at those things on other people freaks me out, i was pretty scared to get one. the nurses were kind and ben held me while they did it. it stung and i hated it… ben told me that if i stopped paying attention to it, it would stop hurting but it never did. i am a wuss. how was i ever going to get though having this baby?

they laid me in the hospital bed and did all their preparatory checks. blood pressure cuff (i hate those too) temperature check, drew some blood from the IV, cervix check. that was disappointing.. they said it was only a 2. it was a 2.5 almost a 3 when i had my last pre-natal appointment. so now on top of scared, i was discouraged. i’d hoped my progress would have been better so i would not have to have anything but the gel.

the gel stuff was weird and slightly uncomfortable but it only took a moment for them to put it where it needed to go. then i was stuck in the bed because i had to be monitored for an hour. i laid there and watched tv with ben on the sleeper couch near me wishing i could curl up with him for comfort. he was sadly too big to get in the hospital bed with me so we both just pouted and waited.

eventually ben fell asleep and i dozed on and off. they let me off the monitor and said they would be back at about 4am to do the gel again. i wasn’t feeling anything i would consider a contraction but they told me the little period like pains i was feeling counted so i was hopeful from that at least.

at 4 they came in and checked my cervix again. i’d only dilated to a 3 by that time. more gel and more monitoring. i let ben sleep though that and he ended up farting in his sleep while the nurses did their thing. laughing while someone has their fingers shoved up against your cervix is NOT COMFORTABLE.

i fell asleep for a while after this and was woken by the nurse removing my monitor and asking me to try and go pee. she said i was contracting every 2 minutes give or take and showed me the little graph thing on the screen.

that was cool cause hey… i thought contractions were supposed to hurt? i just felt like i was on my period! she said that was common with some people and i felt a little more encouraged. i had a potty break and fell asleep to some stupid cartoon on cartoon network.

nurses kept waking me up to monitor me and that was annoying. i wanted to sleep through this period pain crap and wait on my doctor to get there. more blood pressure cuff, more monitors, more talking about pitocin.

at 7 something that morning, my doctor arrived. he checked me again and there was no progress. still 3cm. i was unhappy, i knew this meant i’d have to get pitocin and then i started to stress out. i woke up ben, they prepared to break my water.

having your water broken is weird. i did not like it at all. i mean i guess there’s no real way to make it enjoyable when they are putting a plastic hook in your hooha but you know.. that was not fun. then i felt like i’d peed myself and stuff started to hurt. ben sat next to me and rubbed my back, and made me feel less scared cause i knew once the hurt started, it was going to get scary. i thought the doctor would wait and let the water breaking do its thing before starting me on pitocin but he went ahead and got the nurse to ready it. at that same moment my friend shaylin from highschool arrived. she brought me an adorable knitted star blanket for vincent and i think she felt super awkward cause there i was all ball of nerves on that bed and they’d just broken my water. she left quickly and the pain really started to get to me. i knew if this was only the beginning that i could not take what was coming later. but i did not want that epidural. i asked what my options were for pain relief, the nurse told me about a narcotic they could give me called nubaine. she said it would not numb me, just take the edge off and make me a little “loopy”. i could deal with loopy. she said it had a 2 hour life span. first hour i would feel pretty goofy, second hour it would start to wear off.

they injected it into my iv while they were hooking me up to the pitocin. both of these things hit me like a truck. the pitocin was on a slow drip set to increase over time but it didn’t take long to affect me. my contractions started to get stronger. i could definitely feel them now. the nubaine took hold and my whole world kinda tilted to the right. we were watching spongebob squarepants on tv when this happened and i thought “great, my first time on a narcotic, and i am going to have a bad trip because this is on the tv…” but then i was just… very chatty and very stupid, and very much still in pain but i was able to deal with it because i wasn’t stressing out over the pain. i think this drug was a good choice because i’m pretty sure if i had tried to tough it out i would have ended up having a serious melt down, and that would not have helped things at all.

i was told that this painful part of things could take hours, and that i should breathe and ride out the contractions. i asked to have another shot of that nubaine stuff if it wore off before i had to push and they said they could do that. i held ben’s hand and got him to do some deep pressure massage things which i’d learned over the years helps me deal with sensory issues associated with pain. he just had to make me pay attention to pain somewhere else and i would stop putting all my attention on the contractions. unfortunately i think ben was afraid he was hurting me so he wasn’t rubbing me hard enough on the back or leg to really do much good.

ben’s mom and step dad arrived and sat with us for a little while. i told her stuff hurt and she said she could tell cause i was making noises, i didn’t even realize i was doing that. i also think i told her i was stoned off my ass.

then in walked this saint of a lady who was a massage therapist. i’d forgotten this birth center had those and i think i may have told her she was sent from heaven lol. the drugs were definitely working on me. she was honestly a big help. with ben holding my hand and telling me he loved me, and her rubbing pressure points in my feet, i was able to ride out more contractions. i took from my research. i didn’t scream or really get loud. i just moaned. i kinda sounded like i was having an orgasm to be honest. but i didn’t care at that point. ben’s mom and step dad left the room for a bit so i could calm myself and enjoy the massage.

i told the massage therapist that i felt like i needed to poop. i knew that was the sign that i needed to push but they thought maybe i really needed to poop because it had only been an hour, surely i wasn’t ready to push yet! the nurse came in and checked my cervix. i was dilated to an 8! i went from 3cm to 8cm in AN HOUR. they told me to try very hard not to push because 8 was close but not enough and they didn’t want me to hurt myself. i had read up on all this stuff (thank you people who write birth stories, your wisdom helped me though this stuff) and so i knew not to try and push but my body was just screaming “OMG YOU NEED TO POOP” i dunno if my body was saying that because it was stoned or just stupid. i had the massage therapist rub my back instead of my feet and we waited for the doctor to show up. he checked me again, agreed that it was only 8 and i said the feeling is really too strong. he then told me there was a chance i could push and the cervix would move out of the way, they did something that i cannot remember and he told me yes i could push. they turned off the tv, which was good because otherwise i was going to give birth to spongebob, i got ben to bring me my ipod and i played my birth playlist.

it was like something out of a movie. i soundtrack everything, and so i had soundtracked this playlist to help me though the scary part of birth. i had expected it to be longer though so we didn’t get though half the songs.

pushing out a baby is the weirdest thing i think i have ever felt in my life. i had always assumed i would feel it in my vagina, that it would hurt down there and i would feel pain and pressure in my pelvis and stuff like that. well yes the pelvis stuff kinda happened, BUT most of the feeling was in my butt. they kept telling me to push like i was going to have a bowel movement and yeah i felt like i was going to have one. cursing my knowledge of birth stuff from all my research i knew i might poop on the table, and i pleaded with myself to please give birth to a baby and not the stromboli i had for dinner earlier.

before this birthing stuff, ben and i had always said, we didn’t want to see stuff down there, and in fact ben wanted no part in the birthing stuff. not that he didn’t want to be a part of things he just didn’t like all the gross stuff and honestly i didn’t blame him. but here i was with my legs picked up in the air by a doctor, a nurse, and a massage therapist, and ben on the other side holding my head, helping me bare down, holding my left ankle up. i knew he could see way more than he was planning on but at the time i honestly didn’t care.

i could feel my belly getting kinda squishy instead of being the hard bump it had been for a while now, and that was kinda weird too. i felt like i was being squeezed like a tube of tooth paste. at one point i let out a fart in the middle of a push, and in my stoned stupor i stopped holding my breath and apologized for farting on the doctor. if i could have laughed i would have but there was a head coming out of my vagina and they told me to stop worrying and push. it took maybe 8 pushes for me to get him down and to get his head out. my ipod was playing hallelujah sang by jeff buckley and in my head i am thinking “holy shit i am good at this soundtrack to life stuff because this is the PERFECT song to have a baby to!”

i heard the doctor say “little pushes” and i tried to do little pushes cause i knew if i went crazy with pushing i’d end up ripping things but my body said “hah! screw this! this baby is coming out!” and i told the doctor i was sorry again because i just kept right on pushing without having any real control over it. they told ben to look, and they told me to look, we were both like “i don’t wanna!” but they insisted and we did and holy crap, there was a gooey little person coming out of me…and then BAM it was over. no more huge pains, no more poop feeling. serious relief. it was euphoric. of course i still had to birth the placenta, which sucked but at least the baby that in my mind was gigantic was finally out. and i hadn’t crapped all over the doctor.

vincent was born at 10:56 am, 7lbs 8oz, 17 and 3/4ths inches long. HE pooped on his way out (ironically since i was the one worried about pooping…) and had to be rushed to the little table for suction so i didn’t get to hold him on my tummy or anything for more than the second they spent rubbing the gross stuff off of him. it was a few minutes before i heard him cry and i actually started to get really worried because after all the stuff that happened with my nephew last week, i was ready for the worst.

the doctor stitched up the one tear i had. (i was never told how bad they were though i’m guessing it wasn’t a 4th degree one since i’m not really in any pain now… but i’m still kinda terrified to look down there.) i finally heard vincent cry and ben walked over there and back to me to tell me he was ok. i drifted in and out of consciousness at this point so i honestly don’t recall all that happened. i know the doctor was sewing me up and i told him i could feel the needle pokes, it was actually him numbing the area. i told him the song playing on my ipod was sang by charles manson (home is where you’re happy, which is on the LIE album but i honestly didn’t need to tell him that was charles manson) and he just kinda laughed, i was totally stoned out of my mind on endorphins and coming down off of the nubaine. ben says i asked the doctor if i should just whip out a boob and pop him on to feed him and the doctor laughed and said the “boobpopologist” would be here shortly to show me how. at some point a girl introduced herself as ben’s cousin wendy. she worked as a nurse in the hospital. i thought how odd that i was meeting ben’s family with my hooha all hanging out in the open like that. but she’s a nurse and i’m sure she’d seen plenty of that.

and then there was a baby placed in my arms and i was fighting the stoned brain now because dammit here was my baby and i was still all stupid feeling.

i felt like crying, and dancing, and taking a nap all at the same time. this little wiggly person who had been punching various parts of my internal organs for months was now wiggling around in front of me. i could eat carbs! i could sleep on my stomach! i didn’t have to push anymore! my brain processed about 80 different selfish things in the span of two seconds and i’m kinda glad i was still trying to come down off of that narcotic because that probably would have caused me system overload right there.

they cleaned up my bed with me in it, which was pretty impressive. tucked me in under blankets, and i was able to receive visitors. ben’s mom and step dad came back in. they talked to me and i just sat there saying “i can’t believe i just did that…” they couldn’t believe it either.. they hadn’t expected me to go that fast. NO ONE had expected me to go that fast. the doctor even said he was impressed because i didn’t scream or make much of a fuss and out of 5 women in labor at the same time i was, i was the second to deliver that morning. and for being a first time mom that was apparently an epic achievement.

the lactation consultant came in and explained briefly how to get vincent to latch on, and here i thought it was going to be a challenge. i wasn’t sure how i would do at breastfeeding. strangely enough though, it wasn’t very hard for me. he didn’t care much for my right boob but he really liked the left. he fed for a little while and i felt like i had just won the high score at life.

i posted pictures on social networks of me holding the baby, and one of ben holding the baby, watched the grats pour in and promptly passed out with vincent in the bassinet thing next to me.

and that was that. our first night was hard, we had to learn all those little cues that babies give… i tried to room in with him but i was exhausted and weak so i ended up letting the nursery take him. the second night we kept him in the room and i was able to deal with him a lot better. lots of feeding, lots of cuddles, lots of diaper changes. one thing that annoyed me, i listened when people said i should not worry about bringing diapers and wipes cause they would provide them. well yeah the diapers were there and they were the awesome ones i wanted to use BUT the wipes i could not touch because they were aloe vera wipes and i am allergic! we’d bought some non-aloe wipes for home but we left them at home to save space in the diaper bag. i had to use wet paper towels and washcloths to wipe his butt. not horrible but it was just kinda irritating to deal with that stupid allergy of mine.

now we’re home and vincent is a sleep fighter. he wants to stay up and be held constantly and then just screams his little head off when he realizes he’s falling asleep. he’s passed out now finally but its been kinda rough. ben is amazing and hasn’t gotten irritated or left me alone to deal with it at all. he gives me breaks and keeps checking on me to make sure i’m not getting upset or frustrated. mostly i just hate hearing vincent cry because it makes me want to cry. hopefully this will pass quickly and we’ll be onward to the adorable cute portion of baby life soon enough.