Paul's Birth Story

Warning- this is a very LONG post. Remember that before you commit to reading :-)

Before I get started, a couple of disclaimers:
1) I am trying not to hold back any details, since I know several of my friends are expecting their first babies or thinking about it, and want all the gory details. If the term "mucus plug" grosses you out, do not read on.

2) Micah and I planned for and were able to have a natural, non-medicated birth. Please don't think this means that I am anti-epidural or anti-modern medicine. This was simply the right choice for our family, and everyone has to decide what is best for them. I am so very glad we prepared for natural childbirth, because as you will see, everything happened so fast, they wouldn't have had time to give me an epidural if I wanted one. For that reason, I encourage everyone to at least do some reading or look into natural childbirth techniques, so that you are not caught completely off guard if no pain relief is possible. If you are interested in learning more about natural childbirth, be careful, I will talk you ear off about it. It was the best choice we could have made. I also highly recommend the Bradley method classes. They worked very well for us.

Here it is folks....

The birth of Paul Gideon Shaw.

I was 5 days overdue and getting a tad anxious. The night before, we ate burritos at Moe’s and I felt pretty sick to my stomach that evening. I assumed that it was because the Moe’s didn’t agree with me. I slept OK that night, but woke up several times with a little nausea and stomach cramps.

In the morning, I woke up and went to the bathroom at 6:30am. I had apparently just passed my mucous plug. For a couple weeks before that, I had noticed a little bit of mucus now and then and thought it might be parts of my plug. This was WAY different. It was a HUGE gelatinous chunk, and dark red. My stomach hurt a little bit, and I decided that I felt pretty cruddy in general, so I was not going to go into work. As Micah got ready to leave for school, I felt what I thought might be a contraction at 7:17. Micah got me a white board and marker to write down times if I had any more.

Micah left to go to school because he had an 8:00 quiz. I told him to call me after the quiz was over and I’d let him know how I felt. I called LaReese (our doula) and let her know that I had passed my plug and may be having contractions, but would call her back if anything else happened. I still thought that this was probably pre-labor or false labor and wanted to take a walk to see, but decided that since I was by myself, I should just walk around the house. I made myself a little breakfast (1 scrambled egg) and drank some water. I had a few more “minor” contractions (they have question marks by them) and I was able to walk through them with no problem. Pretty quickly, things went from “This might be labor?” to “Oh my goodness, I am in LABOR!”

Even though the early contractions were easier pain-wise, I had a harder time dealing with them because I was alone at the house. I called LaReese back to let her know that this was it. Micah called me at 8:15, and I told him to come home quickly. I also asked him to stop at the store and get applesauce and bread for toast, since I thought we had a long road ahead of us and wanted something easy to eat. Micah got home around 8:40 and by that point I was feeling really bad, the contractions were coming very quickly, and I was NOT hungry anymore. Micah called LaReese again to confirm she was on her way over, and let her know that things were progressing very quickly. With Micah by my side, I was handling the contractions much better. I was starting to get nauseous, so Micah got a bucket for me, and unfortunately I had to use it… a LOT. It seemed to me like the contractions were coming very close together, but with Micah and LaReese talking me through each one, they seemed to pass fairly quickly, and I was handling them ok.

Micah and LaReese kept reminding me to drink water or juice between contractions to stay hydrated and keep my strength up. I ended up having several more pukey episodes so I know that I was getting dehydrated.

I had originally thought that we would labor at home for a good long while, because I knew I would be more comfortable at my home than in a hospital bed, and didn’t want to get to the hospital too quickly. However, with how fast things were coming, we both decided it was better to head to the hospital than to risk having a baby on Riverwatch Parkway! I had 4 contractions on the way to the hospital (those of you who don’t know, we live about 10 minutes away) and they were probably the worst ones because I was laying in the back of a car. We made it from the parking deck at University to Triage with about 3 contractions along the way. We had just walked into the triage area and Micah pushed the nurse call button since there was no one around. I suddenly felt a contraction coming on and immediately dropped to my hands and knees and started breathing through it. My nurse Sherry later told us that she will never forget that image of me on the floor when she walked in, she said she had never seen that before!

The check in process was a little difficult because they had to ask us a TON of questions, and here I was trying to make it through these contractions with almost no break in between. Micah was able to answer most of them, luckily. I am so glad that LaReese was with us, because she could help me with some of the contractions while Micah was playing 20 questions.

They checked me and said I was 5cm with a bulging bag of water. I asked later, and the time was around 11:30. We finally got to a room and they monitored the baby for a while (my doctor required me to be monitored for 20min every hour.) Its funny looking back, but there were a lot of things my doctor and I worked out for my birth plan that would ensure I had the freedom to get up, move around, etc. This would have been fantastic if I had a long labor. As it was, I was not interested one bit in getting out of that bed! So my requests for intermittent monitoring, no IV, and the freedom to drink to stay hydrated didn’t matter as much.

We had been in the room for what felt like 10 minutes (I asked later, and it was around 1pm) and my body suddenly had the overwhelming urge to push. Its hard to explain, but I felt like my body was taking over control and I couldn’t stop it. LaReese helped me with some breathing exercises to keep from pushing, and the nurse checked me… 8cm, water still intact. I got up to use the bathroom at that point and while I was in there, that “urge” came again and despite my best efforts, it felt like my body pushed out a miniature baby. Turns out, that was my water breaking. Not at ALL what I had expected it to feel like. Seriously, it felt like I pushed out a water balloon. When I got back to the bed, they said I was 9cm, and to turn over on my other side because my cervix had a lip on it. This was around 1:30pm. Micah told me later that the nurses looked at each other, very worried, and were talking about how my doctor was still down the hall delivering another baby, and she had better hurry up!! Dr. Bartley walked in the room around 2pm and immediately told me to push!

Pushing was another experience that was unlike what I had expected. Several people who have successfully had natural births told me that pushing felt good to them, because they could push through the pain. I guess my experience was just different. Don’t get me wrong, contractions are not fun, but I felt like I handled them pretty well because Micah was helping me through each one. We had practiced so many relaxation techniques with our Bradley classes, that as long as I heard Micah’s voice, I could relax all of my muscles, which absolutely makes the pain a LOT less. When I tensed up (for example, when trying NOT to push) is when they hurt like a *&^*(*^^%^. To me, pushing was so much harder because I could not relax, but had to tense every muscle in my body and push! Also, I was having a hard time feeling when I was having a contraction. All I could feel was this EXTREME pressure in my butt, and that was it. The doctor tried to give me the freedom to push when I felt like I needed to, but after missing 2 contractions without even noticing it, they decided to tell me when to push. And when I say “Tell”, I mean a room full of people YELLING at me to push “Harder! Harder! Harder” I think that emotionally, this was the most difficult part of labor for me, because of all the yelling, and feeling like I wasn’t doing it good enough. The nurses asked if I would like to look in a mirror so that I could see my progress. I immediately said NO! because I thought it would discourage me if it wasn’t progressing very fast. Every couple of pushes, I would ask them if we were making progress, and take their word for it.

Between contractions during pushing

After what seemed like an eternity, I gave one final push which was followed by my doctor yelling “Stop pushing!” I looked up and there was Dr. Bartley, holding my son!!! The whole experience happened so quickly, that it was kind of surreal. Suddenly they were putting this tiny little person on my chest and wiping him off. Micah cut the umbilical cord, and there we were, parents of this tiny thing.

I tried to stay focused on Paul for the next little while, they let him stay with me while I was getting cleaned up, and let me tell you... if there was any part of labor that I felt like I needed an epidural for, THAT was it. I had a few stitches, which wasn’t too terrible, but then Dr. Bartley said that she had to remove some clots, and that felt like someone was ripping me apart. OUCH!!

All in all, it was the best labor and birth experience we could have hoped for. Everything happened very quickly, and Paul was healthy and I had no severe complications.

After the birth, I felt like I had run a marathon and then hit by a car, but I guess that is what happens when you push a baby out of you! Micah joked that if people say labor is a marathon, I decided to knock it out in a 10K. HaHa! I’m recovering very well, all in all. Just trying to get used to my new “sleep” (or lack thereof) schedule.

Coming home from the hospital.

Being a Mommy is wonderful! Micah and I truly feel like a family with our little man.
If you have any specific questions for me about anything birth related, please call me, I would love to talk more about it.

And yes, I am posting this in the middle of the night while I'm waiting on Paul to decide to fall back asleep after nursing. He likes to stay awake and look around for a good while after he eats, and if I try to lay him down right away he wails. We'll see how all of that works out. I have been reassured by lots of people (and books) that you cannot spoil a newborn, and that bad sleep habits don't form for a couple months, so we're just staying in survival mode right now, and worrying about a schedule and all of that later. :-)