The labor story...

The really short version: Dylan's doing great & has recovered like a champ…I, however, feel like someone has raped every orifice with a baseball bat.

The long version:

I got up several times throughout the night thinking I needed to poop but nothing doing - so I kept going back to bed. My very polite son waited until 6:45 to get me up for good. At that point I began to suspect contractions. I got in the shower and started getting ready (whether or not labor was beginning, I had an appointment with the chiropractor scheduled for 8:30). I let Gerald sleep until his alarm went off and calmly informed him that I thought I might be in labor when he came into the bathroom to start getting ready for work. At that point my contractions were coming about every 4 minutes.

At 8:00, I finally called the midwives and told them that I might be in labor...that I was contracting every 4 minutes but they weren't as painful as I'd expected and they weren't full belly - I only felt them below the belly button. The midwife told me to get in the bathtub for a half an hour then lay down for a half an hour and then call them back. (They wanted to see if the contractions would stop – aka if it was false labor).

So I sent G to work and told him I'd call him if and when I needed a ride to the hospital. Then I got in the bathtub and proceeded to paint my fingernails. The bath slowed my contractions down a bit to about every 6 minutes (and made them MUCH easier to bear)...so I began to get discouraged and went to lie down as instructed. After the second contraction I quickly determined that lying down was a NO-GO. There was no FREAKING way I could contract without being able to stand/walk through them. So I called the midwife back early to inform her that I would be skipping out on the second portion of our entertainment. She asked if I was still comfortable at home and I told her yes, so she told me to walk around and keep myself busy and to call her again in another hour. So I did a load of laundry, tried to eat some breakfast (quickly determined that eating was a bad plan since every contraction made me feel like I was gonna lose the cookies I'd just eaten) and just generally tried to distract myself.

I was doing very well through the contractions as long as I held on to the bathroom sink and circled my hips while trying to remember to breathe deeply. But by 9:30 I couldn't time the contractions myself anymore because they kept coming faster - it felt like they were coming right on top of each other. At that point I called G and asked him to come home. Then I called my mom to let her know that this might be "it." While talking to her the contractions slowed up a little bit again. When G got home and started packing the car I realized that I hadn't told him I needed him to come home to time the contractions...he thought we were headed to the hospital straight away. Once I explained, he went to make himself a cup of coffee and settled in for the wait.

After initial difficulties he finally figured out what he was supposed to be timing & tracked my contractions at about 2.5 to 3.5 minutes apart. At that point I figured out that I was late calling the hospital back & had to kick mom off the phone. Called the hospital again around 10:15 but the midwives weren't picking up the phone. So I just labored some more. At about 10:45ish the midwife called ME and asked how far apart my contractions were. I told her 2.5-3.5 minutes and she told me I’d better come in. So we started getting ourselves ready to leave. Before we left I had to finish my hair & make-up, then I made G take our last set o’ belly pictures. Here’re the last shots of lil’ Schnegg on the inside – at 40 weeks 4 days.

We finally made our way to the car around 11:15. At that point I was dreading the drive since I’d figured out that I didn’t labor well sitting down. Nothing for it, I was just gonna have to grin and bear it (well, maybe not the grinning part).

All in all, I labored at home for about 4.5 hours with no problems. Then came the car ride from hell...The 20 minutes it took to get to the hospital consisted of 2 MAJOR contractions that each lasted about 5 of the longest minutes of my life. G informed me that lil' Schnegg's first word was going to be "f@ck."

We finally got to the hospital and they sent me straight up - do not check in, do not collect $200 - get the hell out of my lobby and go find the midwives...(I think I scared the hell out of the receptionist with my hip swivels and my sweating). They got me into a room & I just held on to the foot of the bed and rocked (and loudly moaned) my way through the contractions – the car ride had brought ‘em to a new level and they were coming about every 2 minutes. Of course, the bathtub wasn’t available since another woman was already laboring in there. (Dylan ended up being the 3rd boy born that day – out of 5 total…needless to say, the 2 delivery rooms were definitely put to good use that day.)

The midwife told me I had to lay down so she could hook up the NST to monitor the baby’s heartbeat and my contractions but assured me it was only for a half an hour…at which point I nearly started crying and said, “a HALF AN HOUR?!?” (If you’ll remember, the contractions were nearly unbearable when lying down, so a half an hour with contractions every 2 minutes might as well have been freaking forever.) They also checked me and determined that I was only about 1.5 centimeters dilated, so we all settled in for the long haul.

Half an hour later they moved me to the delivery room so I got to stand through my contractions again...10 minutes later they told me I had to lay down because the NST machine wasn't getting a reading while I was standing...that's the point when I told them to get me the EFFING epidural if they were going to make me lay down again. 30 minutes later the OB checked me out and I was already at 7cm. (Yes, I progressed 6 cms in about 1.5 hours). Since I was already so far progressed the OB and the midwife tried to talk me into skipping the epidural – told me that I was “borderline” for the epi…As I was STILL lying down, I gave them the evil eye and told them to get me the freaking anesthetic.

About 30 minutes later they got me set up with the epi and life appeared to be calming down (I had been scaring/embarrassing the crap outta G with my not-so-quiet laying-down contractions). G was VERY impressed with the anesthesia – he determined that it was so good it even relaxed him. J Once they had that puppy installed, and I’d stopped doing my loud moaning/yoga yelling G said, "Okay, so Barbara had an epidural with Vanessa. THIS is the kind of labor I remember, NOT what you were going through before."

By this point I'd already been fully dilated for a while, we were just waiting for Dylan to come down - with every contraction he'd come down into my pelvis and then pop right back out when the contraction ended. So we were just waiting. Anyway, since I was chillin' with my narcotics, I sent G to go get something to eat.

He left and about 5 minutes later the NST went wonky. Dylan's heartbeat started going crazy. The machine was showing 87 one minute and 233 the next. The midwife turned white & called for the OB - saying, "I have a suspect NST send him over." She tried moving the Doppler several times but the readings stayed crazy. So I got an oxygen mask & she called again saying, "The OB needs to get here RIGHT NOW." At this point I'm freaking out...the OB shows up a couple minutes later and they're all just staring at the NST like it's got tomorrow's lottery ticket numbers on it. That's what G arrived back to...

We all sat and watched the NST for about 10 minutes and the OB started informing us of the "worst case scenarios" - primarily that we were very likely looking at a c-section. They decided we'd try suction/forceps but that'd take place in the OP 'cuz if it didn't work we were going straight to a c-section. So they prepped me for a c-section and rolled me down. (They even had to remove the nail polish from the middle finger of each hand so they could get a better reading of my blood/oxygen…so much for my brand new manicure.) They got me into the OP & G went to change/scrub up. When G entered the OP he saw me on a table surrounded by 7 people, 3 of which were pushing down on my belly while the OB was pulling with forceps & I was screaming with the effort to push. I'm not sure he's ever gonna recover. In any case, 3 "community pushes" and one MASSIVE snip later - Dylan entered the world.

G started bawling as soon as he heard Dylan crying - just laid his head down on the table and sobbed. Dylan definitely had some "battle scarring" from his encounters with the suction cup and the forceps - he came out with a black eye and a very Gorbachev-esque bruise on his forehead, but otherwise showed no negative effects from the trauma at all. Once Dylan popped out they figured out what the problem was: he was "sunny-side up" which meant he couldn't properly turn into my pelvis. That combined with the various implements used to get him out to give him one very FUNKILY shaped head but that's was already back to normal after 2 days or so.

He recovered much more quickly than I have, actually. I acquired the loveliest set of hemorrhoids which combine nicely with an episiotomy & a damn-near broken tailbone to create the afore-mentioned raped-with-baseball-bat effect. (The tailbone pain is apparently a result of the sunny-side up position and I can expect that pain to continue for a couple/six weeks...sweet). To sum it up...I was impressed with the labor experience, I actually expected it to be worse (my contractions never did turn into fully-belly things - they were always just below the belly-button). HOWEVER, I was not prepared for the after-effects. I’m not sure I’ll ever sit down comfortably again. (Amazingly enough the hemorrhoids are BY FAR the most painful). At least I finally found a 'roid ring that lets me sit semi-comfortably. They tell me the 'roids will go away again - I just haven't heard a timeline for that wonderful day in my future. Oh yeah, and I still look pregnant - at least 5 months...only now it's not so perkily cute & out front - now it hangs like great-grandpas jowls...totally unattractive.