not exactly a birth story

For one thing, there will be no mention of my cervix. 

I'll just give you the general gist of Golden's birth. It'll be a "birth gist."

I woke up in the middle of the night with contractions, as you do. At some point in the early morning hours I got up and realized there was NO WAY I was going to go to the hospital and give birth when there were dirty dishes in the sink and the toilet needed scrubbed. So I went on a cleaning tear. Like straight up, on my hands and knees scrubbing the kitchen floor. I felt a little insane.Then we woke the kids up and Jamie made pancakes. I was a little impatient with that and Jamie was trying to shove pancakes down my throat. Not interested. We dropped the kids off at my sister's and headed to the hospital. On the way there, our brother-in-law Mark called to chit-chat about some things. About 10 minutes into the conversation, Jamie said, "Well I better let you go, Abby's in labor and we're almost at the hospital." Mark was like, "Why are you even talking to me?" It was funny. Had to be there.

At the hospital we found out I was at a 6, which  was awesome. I was hoping to give birth without an epidural or drugs and getting to 6 had been relatively easy, so I felt confident that I could do it. My only real preparation for natural birth was reading the Hypnobirthing book. (I really should've taken the class but we didn't have enough time with Jamie's schedule.) I spent the next six or so hours in labor and the contractions were very manageable with good breathing and relaxation.

By about 4:00 or so I was only at an 8 and they told me the baby was posterior (facing the wrong way) and needed to turn his head around to deliver. Every contraction he would turn halfway and then go back. Then the midwife suggested Pitocin because I wasn't progressing past 8 and it would help him turn as well. Well this combination of events got me all sorts of stressed and scared and I lost my zen. Every contraction started hurting about a billion times worse and I would arch my back and grip the bed handle and cry out, "Heeeeeeelp meeeeeee!" It got pitiful real fast. I started begging for the good stuff. The midwife and nurses and Jamie all said, "Well now, you know you wanted to do this naturally. How about one more contraction and we'll see if he turns and then we'll think about an epidural." The contraction came and he didn't turn and I got that awful feeling of, I'm in horrible horrible pain and there is not one thing I can do about it right now and it will probably continue for hours more. More contractions, more epidural begging, etc. At long last, they called the anesthesiologist in and he gave me a spinal block, which is just like an epidural but lasts only about an hour and half. I cried the sweetest tears of relief when the spinal block began to work immediately. They put me on the Pit and within the half hour our Goldie boy was born! The midwife pulled him out and covered him from everyone else until he was on my chest and I could shout out, "It's a boy!!" I cried. Jamie cried. Golden cried and cried. I need not tell you, it was wonderful.

It's still hard to believe we have another kid. This beautiful, warm, fuzzy, milky creature is mine. He is terribly colicky but with my wonderful mother here for almost two whole months and my emotional state the most normal it has ever been postpartum, it's manageable. And he makes up for it by staring into my eyes for ridiculously long stretches and cooing like it's his job. I love him.

 

And that turned into a real birth story, didn't it?