Birth Story

So here goes - In the peak of my pregnant frustration I went in for an appointment with my doc to have a stress test done on the baby to make sure she was still comfortable in there and to check on my 'progress' if any.

Dr Kobelin talked to us first about the options for induction and then gave me the internal exam. The exam she gave me was a bit more 'vigorous' if you know what I mean. When the exam was over, I noticed a warm trickling of fluid and I asked, 'am I bleeding' she said no - you broke your water. She was just about to say that she could feel the amniotic sac starting to come thru my 2cm dilated cervix anyway and that I would most likely go into labor very soon. So anyway she said there was no reason not to help labor along by going to the hospital and getting some pitocin. She did give me the choice of going home to see if labor would start but I was like, no I want my baby out! After changing into a pair of depends (to catch the trickling fluid) we were on our way to the Beth Israel.

They decided to watch me for a few hours to see if contractions would start but nothing more than menstral like cramping was registering on the monitor. So I was started on the pitocin at 3pm. I was a pretty annoying patient asking all sort of questions about the dose, the plan for increasing it etc. I sort of felt bad for the nurse, but that is just my nature, I like to be fully informed.

So real contractions started pretty soon after the pitocin went in, and the nurse would turn up the dose every 15-20 min. When I started to feel real contractions I started pleading with her to just leave the pitocin as is.. cause well I didn't want more pain, but she said powerful contractions is what I needed. At about 5pm I started to tell her I could feel something pushing towards my bowels like I needed to 'go' and she decided to check me stating that she would be really suprised if I had made any progress. When she checked I was 3-3.5 cm dialated and she declared me officially 'in labor' and said lets get you that epidural.

Tighe went downstairs at this point to have a sandwich as they do not allow him in the room for the epidural placement. A good looking young anesthesia doc came in to do the deed and about 10 min later it was in. I had almost no pain with the placement and I can't say enough about how great the epidural was. My only side effect was some low blood pressure that made me feel pretty light headed, that and they make you drink this nasty antacid before hand that tastes like drinking salt water.

Every thing went quickly from there, they checked again at 7pm and I was ~5cm, and when I started complaining that I felt enough pressure to push at 9pm they checked again and I was ~7cm. After that they gave me some more epidural medicine so that I could more easily fight the urge to push. By 10pm I was fully dilated and saying that I was really ready this time to push. It was amazing, I was not in pain, I could still feel my legs, feet everything, but I had this profound urge to start working to get the baby out.

I started pushing at 10 and by 11:28 Abigail was out. What a weird feeling to have the baby inside you one minute and her whole mass outside the next. I can't describe it but it was odd - and great feeling at the same time. I had to have a small episiotomy but that is really the only complaint I have. All in all I think my childbirth experience was completely do-able and I'd not be afraid to have to do it again. Abby was cleaned up and brought over to us and in that moment I was like woh - I'm a mom :-), cool!

Here's some photos of the day, and some more recent pictures of Abby.