details

Anna's birth...for the books.

On Wednesday, 2 days before my due date, I saw my doctor and she stripped my membranes. I told her that my to-do list was as crossed off as it was going to get and I was ready to have this baby. Still, we scheduled a non-stress test and a c-section just in case mother nature didn't cooperate. I googled "how to induce labor naturally" and pushed on those pressure points. But I was not optimistic. Janet changed her plane ticket from Thursday to Sunday so she could be here closer to when the baby came.

Wednesday night was the much anticipated (at our house, anyway) Duke-UNC game. Ryan had been warned that watching this game came second to the birth of our child, should they coincide, but we were both happy to see the Blue Devils pull off a great win. Ryan had been sick with fever and chills and not sleeping well so after the game I told him to take an Ambien and get some rest. "What if you go into labor tonight, who will drive you to the hospital?" he said. "I really don't think I am going to go into labor tonight. Take the Ambien." "I don't think any of us know when you are going into labor." He didn't take it.

Around 11:30 I went up to bed. All day long I had been cramping more, but I thought it was probably from having my membranes stripped. A friend called and I asked her what contractions felt like, because these were a little different. "How far apart are they?" she asked. I had no idea. So I started timing (yeah, there's an app for that), and they were pretty consistently 10 min apart. I was pretty sure that this was labor, but not totally convinced and not sure how long it would be before we should go into the hospital. And then my water broke. I called Janet (at 1:50 AM) and told her to not change her ticket (too late). I woke up Ryan and called a friend who had graciously offered to stay with Ella when the time came. At this point my contractions were getting closer, 3-4 minutes apart. We grabbed the go bag and went to the hospital. I checked in and got my epidural fairly quickly. It was perfect--I could move all around but I didn't have any pain.

For the next 10 hours or so things were pretty calm. We mostly slept and waited. I was calm and happy. I had gone into labor on my own, I could hear the baby's heart beat continuously, and I wasn't having a c-section.

Around 11:00 am I began to have some pain, a "hot spot" as my nurse called it. I didn't want to mess with my perfect epidural, so I waited to see how bad it would get before I pushed the pain med button. But it was getting worse and spreading I redosed the epidural, waiting for relief. Nothing. The anesthesiologist came in and redosed me again. Still nothing. At this point I was dilated to a 10 and the contractions were really strong. The anesthesiologist came back (it had been about an hour by now) and checked my epidural. "Oh, I see what the problem is. Your catheter fell out. This only happens 1/500 times..." Given how far along I was he gave me a spinal. There went my perfect epidural. I had no pain, but I could not feel a thing and could not move. The doctor came in shortly after that and we started pushing. It was frustrating because I couldn't feel anything and had a hard time pushing. But 40 minutes later....we had our little Anna.

I am amazed at how much better I feel this time around. Night and day. Anna is a sweetheart and I am loving everything about her (except the nighttime wakenings--could do without those. Can't have it all.)