A week ago Monday, I woke up sick. I felt awful. It was the grease-bomb of an Arby's sandwich and potato wedges I'd eaten for dinner the night before, I was sure. Maybe that horseradish-as-means-to-induce-labor idea wasn't so great. I spent the whole day on the couch, or rolling around on my exer-ball, cursing my back pain and running to the bathroom every five seconds.
By my 9:45 a.m. Tuesday doctor's appointments, I'd decided: This better be labor, or I'm going to go insane. When the nurse called us from the waiting room she looked at my face and said, "Are you having a contraction?"
I said, "I certainly hope so."
The problem was, they weren't what I'd been promised. No steadily increasing waves of pain, no 90-seconds counts. No timing from the beginning of one to the beginning of the next. No feeling my abdomen get tighter while my body worked on opening up my cervix. All I knew was that my back hurt excrutiatingly bad and it didn't end.
The doctor recommended I go home and sit in the tub for a while, then maybe go to the hospital later in the day if I felt ready. I was 3 cm dilated, so she said "Maybe the baby will come today."
On the drive home, we ditched that plan completely and went straight to the hospital. An hour after my doctor's check, I was 4 cm. But my doctor was in a delivery, and didn't want to admit me quite yet. So we spent an hour walking the hallways, waiting. Because they wouldn't officially admit me, I couldn't yet use all the birthing stuff we'd learned about in class and planned on: No labor ball, no spa therapy tub. Just walking the hallways, waiting.
When I was finally admitted to my labor-delivery room, I was 5 cm and moving around came off the table. Because my stomach had become so swollen, they couldn't keep the baby's heart on the monitor and he had to have a scalp prob put on. Which meant they had to break my water, which my doctor assured me was "bulging" and that this would "speed things up a little."
Considering I didn't even really know for sure I was in labor a mere three hours prior, I didn't know that "speeding things up" sounded like such a great idea. But we did it anyway.
And then it happened: As the 40 weeks of amniotic fluid came gushing out, I completely lost my mind. The nurse offered me something to "take the edge off," and through strained breaths I managed, "Epidural." In the meantime, I had curled around the bar of the bed, gripping it with everything in me and pushing my head against the railings. It was unfathomable.
Less than an hour later, I told TJ I needed to push. "You're only a 5-6 still," the nurse said. "It's too soon." Bullshit. She checked me again about 20 minutes after that and I was a 9. "Oh! I'm going to get Dr. Raj!"
The epidural guy never made it. Instead, my arsenal of helpers -- my mom and Tara -- walked in to what they thought would still be somewhat early labor to "We're pushing!" And we did. For a solid hour.
And then he was here.
The stress and speed of the delivery resulted in little Clark having some meconium in his lungs, and after a split second on my chest, he was whisked over to his own special table in the room, where a cadre of nurses wiped and suctioned. As he cried, I looked at TJ, and he cried too. After a few minutes, a very calm nurse (God bless her composure), informed me that my perfect baby boy was having a little trouble getting his breathing going and needed to go down to NICU for a while. But he was fine, she said. Just fine. And I was trying to deliver a placenta and being stitched up from the 2nd degree tear and was in a state of shock. TJ and my baby disappeared downstairs, and I laid there.
I'd done it. It was over.
After about an hour, TJ returned with my 9 pound, 3 ounce, 22-inch long son. He was rosy pink (instead of blue, which my mother said he was when he was born). And he was wonderful.
9 days later, he's still wonderful. A beautiful, amazingly sweet dispositioned little guy who looks exactly like his daddy and breaks my heart every time he looks at me.
And ya know, I'm glad we managed to deliver naturally, which was our goal, even if it was the single worst thing to ever happen to me in probably my whole life. And at least now I know two things 100 percent for sure:
1. No class in the world could have prepared me for that labor, which defied every single thing we had read, studied and prepared for.
2. Next time I'm getting the epidural.
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