Birth Story: part 1

Not sure when I'll get to type up part two, but.... here we go.

Spoiler alert: I got the epidural. 

Monday October 13 we went to the Dr and they checked me and I wasn't any more dilated than I'd been the week before. I didn't take that so well and went home and cried and was reallllllly overreactingly sad. I really didn't want to be in labor over the Jewish holidays later that week and I was so sick of being pregnant and wanted to meet this guy already! So I napped on and off the rest of that day and I forget what else we did but we fell asleep for the night really late (because of it was the Jewish holiday of Sukkos there's "Simchas Beis hashoeva" music and partying on our street late into the night).

PS is it just me or are those cervical exams excruciatingly painful for everyone??

On Tuesday morning I woke up around 11 and my back reallllly hurt. Got up but went to lay down again pretty much immediately and played on my phone. After a little bit (around 12:30) I finally realized that the pain was coming in waves. One of my 9 million pregnancy apps had a contraction timer so I decided to try that out just for kicks to see if there was any pattern. 

Shocker-- there was. I didn't tell E right away.... I probably didn't believe it was really happening since the day before there had been absolutely nothing happening at the Dr appt. But they were lasting anywhere between 30 and 60 seconds (mostly in the 40s) and about 3-10 minutes apart (mostly 3-6) which seemed reallllly often (the doctor's rule had been 5-1-1, 5 minutes apart, lasting 1 minute each, for over 1 hour), but they weren't crazy painful or strong. I was walking and talking and laughing through most of them.

I have a whatsapp chat going with a couple of close friends who each have 3 kids (story of my life!) and I mentioned it to them and they were like "helloooo you're in early labor!! Wahoo!" They eventually suggested that we try walking up and down our building's stairs to move things along, so we tried that but it kind of slowed things down so we left and walked to do a few errands in nearby shops and E suggested we get me some protein for in case this was real labor starting. So we walked down the street and split a roast beef sandwich and a chicken avocado wrap in the restaurant's sukkah. 

While we were in the sukkah, E got a call from work telling him he'd gotten accepted to transfer to a new unit that's opening up at his hospital and that they needed him to come in asap to fill out some paperwork. So for some reason he stands up to leave the sukkah to have this conversation but doesn't get outside fast enough before, in the exact middle of the super crowded sukkah, he very loudly says that he'd love to go take care of that, but that his wife is currently in labor as we speak. Classic. All of the English speakers (there were a LOT of Israelis) in the sukkah turned and looked at me, haha.

Whew. So then we slowly walked home and they were getting a little worse by the time we got upstairs so E decided to call the doctor and just give him a heads up and find out at what point we should go to the hospital since things were kind of all over the place timing-wise. 

Aaaand the Dr said to head there right to and just get checked out and see how things were going dilation-wise. So then we were like chickens with our heads chopped off, running around trying to make a small hospital bag of just essentials since we were totally sure we'd be sent home and didn't want to lug the whole suitcase we'd packed. Called both of our parents to give them a heads up but told them not to start coming until we'd gotten checked at the hospital bc it was probably a false alarm or something. Right. 

Briefly considered taking the subway to get more walking in, to increase our chances of something happening, but by the time we got to the bottom of the stairs (after bumping into pretty much every neighbor in our building and our downstairs neighbors telling us that their daughter's birthday was that night..) I knew I couldn't do that much walking and figured that with my luck, my water would break on the subway lol. Called a cab and it was a lady driver which for some reason freaked me out, and she kind of picked up what was going on and apologized for practically every bump in the road. 

Here we are waiting for the cab:

Got to the hospital and called the doctor like he'd told us to and he said he'd be there at 8:30 and to walk around until then (it was 8 at the time). So I literally walked in circles around an empty information desk while E kept track of my contractions and kept my whatsapp friends chat updated haha. Then a good friend called E to hang out bc he was in our neighborhood, and E tells him where we are. That friend and his wife had bought us a car seat so he was planning on dropping it off at our apartment....

Thennn we went upstairs at 8:30 and no one was expecting us and the doctor wasn't there and everyone kind of treated us like we were crazy and overreacting because I was walking and talking and laughing through (most of) the contractions still. But they put us in the triage room and started monitoring me and also the baby's heart rate and, surprise, I was having real contractions. 

At that point E let our parents know that they could start coming, and our friend decided he should bring us the car seat and our real hospital suitcase.

The contractions started getting worse and worse and the first time they checked my dilation I was 4cm and about an hour later I was 7cm. The doctor said asked if I wanted an epidural and I kind of panicked. He explained that things were going textbook well for me already, with continuous contractions, dilating quickly, etc, and that his prediction was that the epidural wouldn't slow things down for me. He also said he only has a 6% c-section rate and that in his experience, a calm mommy is a mommy who doesn't get a c-section. I realized that I really was sort of shutting down during contractions and getting realllly tired (this was like 12 hrs after we'd woken up and the contractions had started) so we decided to go for it. As we were waiting for the anesthetist, our friend got there with our stuff and E ran down to the lobby to get the stuff which was a little scary but he made it back just in time. 

The epidural definitely hurt and was kind of scary but I think it was worth it. It took away a big chunk of the pain for the next couple of hours. Towards the end, everything reallllllllllllly flipping hurt but idk if the epidural actually stopped working or if it was actually taking the edge off of how bad it could have been. 

At some point our nurses changed and the new one came in for the first time to check my monitors and introduce herself. She asked me to sit up for a second and as I did that, I thought I felt my water break (wasn't 100% sure if it was that or if I'd, uh, urinated). She checked and it had, but there was meconium with it. Apparently when babies poop in there they can inhale it as they're being born which is vaguely dangerous, so whenever there's meconium in the broken water, they have a pediatrician present at the birth and don't do immediate skin-to-skin but instead do a quick 90-second check on the baby and then give it to the mother. That all sounded a little disappointing but reasonable. 

A little while later, a labor and delivery room finally opened up (it was a very busy baby night) and they wheeled my bed there.....

To be continued! I know! Sorry!