If you haven’t yet read the intro to this series, you should do so before reading on for some context.
As almost any pregnant lady can confirm, you pee absurdly often when you are pregnant. Before I became pregnant, I prided myself on my ability to hold my bladder for ridiculously long periods of time (which, by the way, I can no longer do after giving birth to a baby). However, while pregnant (and particularly near the end), I couldn’t go more than 1-1.5 hours without making a trip to see my friend Loo (even during my so-called “sleeping” hours). This is entirely normal and I know every pregnant woman reading this post right now is sighing and nodding in agreement (and probably just took a bathroom break before continuing on to the second paragraph).
Not only do you have to pee frequently while pregnant, you also lose some bladder control as well. Here’s how this plays out: You laugh…there goes a few drops of pee. You cough…there goes a few drops of pee. You sneeze…there goes a few drops of pee. You stand up…there goes a few drops of pee. You just hope all four don’t happen in succession…there is a reason people joke about pregnant women using Depends. Again, an entirely normal and common experience shared by most pregnant women.
The reality of frequent urination and loss of bladder control were mere annoyances for most my pregnancy, until I got tag teamed. What do you get when you combine a small bladder, incontinence, and a dash (or five) of nausea? Let me tell you:
When I was five months pregnant, I decided to visit a few friends from college who lived 45 minutes away. Apparently I had already forgotten all about my previous long distance visit to my mom, and the result of that. I wasn’t feeling well that day as usual, but was becoming so frustrated with the reality of being home bound that I was determined to get out and go do something. Sean knew I wasn’t feeling well, so he insisted on driving me. I did ok on the drive there, but as Sean picked me up on our way back home, I knew it would not be a good trip. Within the first five minutes, I was an 11 on my nausea scale. (The scale ranges from 1-5). However, I didn’t want to pull over because it was late, I was tired, and I just wanted to get home (sound familiar??) Fortunately, with zero talking and 100% concentration, we made it home without having a repeat barf-all-over-the-car situation.
Sean pulled into our carport, and I immediately jumped out before the car had even stopped and began walking briskly towards our apartment to meet up with my bestie Loo. About halfway there, it became painfully clear I had absolutely no chance of making it. Mid-stride, up came my dinner, and with impeccable aim splashed all over my pants and shoes. Now if this is where the story ended, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But oh no, little grapefruit-sized Caleb had decided to take it up a notch this time. As my body cruelly purged my entire dinner from earlier that night, it forcefully pushed something else out as well – an entire full bladder of urine. No, none of this “few drops” business…the whole topped off tank. So there I was, standing in our apartment complex’s carport drenched in my own vomit and urine. Head hung in defeat, I stared down at the damage and paused for several moments. I remember slowly shaking my head and thinking: “wow. just…wow. Here I am a full-blown adult, standing on a public street, drenched in my worst…A-mazing. I really don’t think it can get much better than this.” At that point, Sean had caught up to me after finishing parking the car, and I slowly turned to him and profoundly announced in my best Forest Gump voice (not sure why) – “Sean…I peed my pants.” To which he replied: “yes…I can see that.” I turned back around towards our apartment, feet turned out, slightly squatting, and snickered as I waddled slowly the rest of the way home.
I sincerely wish I could tell you that this incident was the absolute pinnacle of my worst dignity-crushing pregnancy experiences, but alas (huge sigh), it is not.
If you haven’t yet read the intro to this series, you should do so before reading on for some context.
No, I did not misspell “morning” sickness – I just think the word mourning is a much more appropriate term after vomiting well over 50 times while pregnant. “Mourning” also fits much better because there is nothing exclusively “morning” about morning sickness. I was nauseous in the morning, afternoon, evening, wee hours of the night, and everything in between.
When we discovered I was pregnant, we wanted to announce the news in a creative way as most people like to do. As we generated ideas, Sean entertained the thought of telling people the following:
“Dear friends and family – As many of you know, Melissa has been feeling very sick lately. We went to the doctor last week and they ran some tests. A small growth was discovered in her abdomen and the Dr. believes it is rapidly increasing in size. It is probable that in the next several months, it will grow to be several pounds. It doesn’t need to be removed yet, but will need to be removed in the next 7.5 months or it could become very dangerous to her health. Please pray for us, because this growth is sapping her energy, stealing her best nutrients, making her vomit all the time, causing her to be emotionally unstable, and will completely drain our savings account as time goes on. In other words…we’re pregnant!”
We ultimately decided that kind of announcement was just mean, but throughout my pregnancy, Caleb truly had disturbing similarities to a parasite. After all, the definition of parasite is “an animal or plant that lives in or on another (the host) from which it obtains nourishment. The host is often harmed by it.” Yep, sounds about right.
Most women’s nausea/morning sickness wears off by the second trimester (fortunately), but mine lasted throughout the entire pregnancy…I was still vomiting the week Caleb was born. By the tenth week of my pregnancy, I had thrown up so many times I lost count. Early on, I was quite familiar with “vomiting marathons” as I liked to call them, in which I found myself barfing with almost no breaks in between. These marathons would typically leave my body extremely sore, because apparently upchucking uses every…last…muscle in your body – who knew?? During one such marathon, I actually threw my back out and could barely move because I had heaved so violently and so many times in one night. In fact, at the peak of the marathon insanity, I vomited eight times, yes – eight times, in less than four hours. I had had enough. At this point I was so dehydrated and weak that Sean considered taking me to the hospital. I called my Dr., and she immediately prescribed medication which I then took multiple times a day for the rest of my pregnancy (it was mind-blowingly helpful in ending the vomiting marathons, but still didn’t completely take away the nausea/end the vomiting). I really would have preferred to avoid medication like that, but reasoned it would have most likely been more harmful to Caleb if I had died of starvation/dehydration, ha!
I am trying to keep these blogs funny and light, but here’s where I’ll just be blunt – it was an exceptionally challenging season of life for me. I was scared to go out anywhere, for fear that I would just lose it and barf all over myself, other people, store floors, the car, etc. This fear led me to a life of severe isolation for nine months and made for an incredibly awful experience (there were times I didn’t even leave our apartment for five days straight). Even as I write and reflect back on this season of life now, tears come to my eyes because it was so miserable and depressing.
Fortunately, Cru allowed me to do a lot of work from home and my bosses were super flexible with me and my situation (though I was saddened I couldn’t do more hands-on ministry with the students). However, other normal, basic activities became a daily struggle. I couldn’t get through a shower without nearly losing my latest meal (for whatever reason, taking a shower always brought me to the point of incessant dry heaving…luckily I was always able to get out before it was too late). I couldn’t drive without getting queasy. I couldn’t be around people who wore perfume or used strong laundry detergent (I even had to switch out my own shampoo/conditioner for ones that had a less potent smell). It was difficult to go to other people’s homes/go to the store because I couldn’t handle new, different, and/or powerful smells. The few times I went shopping, I had to hold my breath as much as possible – every time I went to Target I was so embarrassed because I couldn’t keep myself from dry heaving every few minutes (garnering plenty of amused stares!) I couldn’t exercise or clean because both required more movement than my stomach could handle. I couldn’t cook because of the smell. I couldn’t even take “normal” medicine – I had to take a dissolving kind because I would immediately throw up anything needing to be swallowed with water. It was truly an ironic situation; in the course of growing a baby, I felt as useless and helpless as a baby myself. I was forced to rely on Sean (and others) in more ways than I ever had before – it was quite the humbling experience.
Ok, enough of the depressing talk…back to a story we can laugh about now. As you can imagine, the toilet was my best friend throughout my pregnancy. Between blowing chunks, constipation, and peeing constantly, I swear I saw more of the toilet than I saw of Sean. Unfortunately, I wasn’t always so lucky to have my good buddy by my side. Earlier on in my pregnancy (before I knew that driving more than 10 minutes in the car was a high-risk endeavor), Sean and I decided to visit my mom who lived 45 minutes south of us. The entire visit I felt nauseous and terrible, but that had become the norm for me. I became thirsty while there, and helped myself to a lemonade. Mistake #1. It came time to drive home, and as soon as we got on the freeway, that all-too-familiar feeling came over me, but I thought to myself: “I am tired and just want to get home…I can hold it back.” Mistake #2. Cognizant of how often I was vomiting, I had intended to grab some barf bags from my mom’s house before we left. However, as I was desperately holding the barf back, it dawned on me that I had left them on the kitchen table. Mistake #3.
As that horrifying realization swept over me, so did an ample amount of puke…all over the center console, myself, the seat, and the floor. Here’s where mistake #1 comes in – citrus drinks are simply not as good on the way out as they are on the way in…just so you know. My nose was on fire, my throat was on fire, and Sean could barely drive because the sounds and smells were causing him to retch himself. We rolled down the windows and for the next 40 minutes until we got home, Sean and I held our breath hoping neither would lose it and vomit again due to the putrid smell. I was hoping to remain somewhat attractive to my husband during pregnancy, but after marinating in my own throw up for 40 minutes with Sean by my side, I just let that hope die. By the time we pulled up to our apartment, I had the all-too-familiar urge again, and Sean didn’t even have time to park. I jumped out of the car, ran up the stairs to our apartment, and was never more relieved to see my best friend Loo waiting there for me 🙂
If you haven’t yet read the intro to this series, you should do so before reading on for some context.
Before continuing, I’d like to reemphasize that my pregnancy was particularly difficult. Every woman’s pregnancy is different; I am just sharing my personal experience. I thought I’d reiterate that point because my mom read my first two posts and is fearful that by my 10th post, all procreation will cease and the human race will die out 🙂 Moving along…
2. Appetite. Most people have heard the stereotype of pregnant women craving pickles in their ice cream. While it’s true some women crave strange combinations, my experience was a complete loss of appetite altogether during the first half of pregnancy – I actually lost weight during my first trimester. Even the smell of most foods/perfumes was enough to get me gagging. Poor Sean, the only food we ate for four months was muffins, pop ’ems, mac ‘n cheese, soup, and rice – a most random combination! I am seriously not exaggerating; we literally rotated between these five items and Sean couldn’t eat much else because I could not stand the smell. This one wasn’t as much a dignity crusher as just straight up frustrating and a little depressing :/
My appetite got better after the first four months (although I continued to experience severe nausea). At that point, I had an onset of very specific, intense cravings that required immediate satisfaction by sending Sean out on midnight runs to the grocery store (which was conveniently located across the street). On one such occasion, I became insatiably thirsty and craved milk. Sean knew the drill and fetched a gallon of milk – and I kid you not – I drank more than 3/4 of it in a matter of a few hours…it was truly remarkable. Other midnight runs included: hot cheetoes, cheese popcorn, funyuns, blueberry bagels/cream cheese, and cake batter ice cream. Obviously eating nutritious food was of top priority to me during my pregnancy. Oh and Sean very kindly gained some sympathy pounds for me…what a sacrificial husband 🙂 Which leads me right into the next subject…
3. Weight gain. Some of the worst (and most common) advice I received while pregnant was: “you should eat whatever you want, you deserve it!” Unfortunately, I took this advice to heart and at each meal/snacking session I emphatically thought to myself: “girl, you are awesome, you’ve earned this!” One particular night I felt especially fond of this deceitful slogan, and by the end of a two-hour TV show, I was appalled to realize I had just consumed an entire bag of funyuns, half a box of cheez-its, a pint of ice cream, three see’s candies, and a snickers. Even Takeru Kobayashi would have been impressed.
The lack of appetite during my first half of pregnancy had limited my weight gain, but let’s just say I more than made up for it during the second half. I had practically been starving the first half, so when I finally got my appetite back, my food intake rivaled that of Michael Phelps and his 12,000 calorie diet. I began eating in this manner partly because I had been deprived of most foods for four months, but also because my body was not responding well to being pregnant, and the reality of feeling like absolute crap 24-7 was leaving me depressed. So with habits like those mentioned in the previous paragraph, I averaged close to 10 lbs. per month (for a total of 45 lbs.)! When I went in for check-ups, my doctor didn’t seem concerned, so I continued to live it up.
What a mistake! News flash – you really don’t need that many extra calories for the baby while pregnant, and the extra weight doesn’t magically disappear once you give birth. You may think this is obvious (I should have too), but one of my less intelligent moments in life occurred six weeks after giving birth at my follow-up Dr.’s appointment. After facing the scale and feeling less than pleased with the result, I asked my doctor in all seriousness: “so, have I already lost all the pregnancy-specific weight I’m going to lose (extra fluids, blood volume, etc.)? like, is that really it??” She of course said yes, and I followed that up with my next brilliant question: “so you mean…I’m actually going to have to work to lose the rest of it???” She looked at me a little funny, again said yes, and I sat there frantically adding numbers in my head with the result leaving me slightly pale – haha! Luckily I’ve been able to lose all the weight (plus some due to nursing), but it took me four months of an agonizingly strict diet and exercise to accomplish. During my next pregnancy (Lord willing), I will most certainly eat very differently!
Even so, I promise you will never catch me in a two-piece bathing suit ever again. Bless his heart, my husband tries to convince me that the plethora of stretch marks I have acquired look like cool fire tattoos on my stomach, (legs, butt, name your body part), but no matter how hard I try, I just can’t seem to adopt that perspective. The best I can do is consider them well-earned battle scars 🙂 For the record though, I definitely would have developed stretch marks whether I had gained 20 or 60 lbs…it’s just another fun/typical side effect of pregnancy!
Other unfortunate aspects of gaining so much weight during pregnancy included finding myself at Kohl’s twice a week searching for the next clothing size up – even the stretchy maternity clothes were no match for my impressive weight gain marathon. Additionally, each time I asked Sean to help me put on/tie my shoes or hand me my drink while immobilized on my corner of the couch (while ironically watching episodes of the Biggest Loser), my pride was squashed just a little…bit…more.
These two challenges were not of the same “dignity crushing” magnitude as most the others, but I thought I’d give you a break after the last post about constipation 😉
If you haven’t yet read the intro to this series, you should do so first before reading on for some context.
Constipation is one of those less talked about, lovely side effects of pregnancy. Due to loss of appetite and nausea, I was very limited on the foods I could handle in the beginning of my pregnancy, so I wasn’t getting nearly as much fiber as I needed. Despite my best efforts to eat a LOT of fiber, going five days without a bowel movement was not unusual. Even with a fiber supplement, two fiber one bars per day, AND trying to eat foods high in fiber, I STILL found myself unbearably constipated for the entire 9 months.
About halfway through my pregnancy, my constipation reached its peak one night after I had gone without a bowel movement for a record breaking seven consecutive days. Sean was on campus that night with students, and I was at home retching on the couch in an incredible amount of pain – my inners felt like they wanted to explode but couldn’t. I finally reached the point of desperation and knew I had to embrace the unthinkable – yes, it is what you are thinking – my very last resort. There is nothing quite as dignity crushing as calling your husband to please come home from work early so he can run to the store and pick up a suppository…and proceed to insert it up your butt. Let’s just say, we got a little bit closer that night 🙂 After a few minutes I felt like I had to poop, and I hurried excitedly into the bathroom. I heard one small bloop, and realized it was just the suppository. Dejectedly, I called again for Sean to reinsert a fresh one, and this time I resolved to wait a little longer. If this doesn’t earn Sean best-husband-of-the-century award, I don’t know what will.
30 minutes elapsed and I was hit by a sudden, intense and overwhelming feeling that made it clear to me the suppository had worked. I had mere moments to respond, so I jumped up from the couch, ran towards the bathroom, and collided at full speed with the bathroom’s door frame which sent me back a good two feet. (Hey – don’t judge; I never could get used to my rapidly growing body). Realizing I had no time to react to the pain of body slamming myself into a wall, I made it to the toilet with no time to spare. I was literally milliseconds from pooping my pants. While this may have made a better story, I’d much prefer to keep my “pooping my pants” story count at 0.
For the remainder of the night (until about 4 am), I had an explosive case of the runs every half hour in which I, once again, found myself running off to the toilet. After the second uncomfortably close call, I determined it best to ditch my pants for the night. If there was previously any doubt as to the effectiveness of suppositories, I will gladly be their poster child.
My pregnancy with Caleb was really hard. It certainly could have been worse, but in my mind there’s no denying that the crappy-ness level of it was approximately an 8.257 out of 10. At my first appointment, the Dr. found an ovarian cyst bigger than my uterus during the ultrasound. This caused concern, because if the cyst were to grow, it could have ruptured and become a life-threatening scenario for both myself and Caleb. Fortunately, with many faithful friends and family in prayer for us, the cyst completely disappeared by my next ultrasound to the shock and amazement of my doctor. Though God miraculously healed my body (praise Him!), it was still a scary situation nonetheless, and from there on out, there seemed to be a continuous stream of challenges throughout my pregnancy.
I am grateful and feel very blessed for the life God gave us, but I don’t believe in sugar coating things and the honest truth is that I was miserable throughout my entire pregnancy (though I would obviously say it was well worth it). Similar to my lack of experiential knowledge going into Caleb’s birth, I also lacked experiential knowledge going into pregnancy. Very few of my friends took the dive into parenting before me, so I really hadn’t heard many stories and wasn’t sure what to expect. Looking back, I think I had a pretty idealistic, naive, and unrealistic expectation of what pregnancy would be like. Both my mother and mother-in-law had wonderful, easy pregnancies, so I just assumed mine would be just like theirs. I guess I just pictured myself as a glowing, joyful, walking among the clouds, cute, only gaining weight in the “right” places, rubbing-my-belly-in-public-all-the-time kind of pregnant woman (you know, how all the gagingly perfect pregnant celebrities look and act). Well, it didn’t take long for my fantasy to get obliterated (I’m talking maybe one week in). 4 Words: Longest. Nine. Months. Ever.
The good thing about adversity is we can learn from it and grow as a person. The even better thing about adversity is we can (sometimes) laugh about it later. And the only thing that’s even more fun than retrospectively laughing at your own adversity, is laughing at someone else’s. That’s why I decided to do a series on our blog entitled “10 Ways Pregnancy Crushed My Dignity.” In no particular order, here’s to crushing every romantic idea you ever had about pregnancy. Enjoy.
We realize this is 8 months after the fact, but better late than never right!? Before giving birth, we didn’t read many birth stories (not sure why, I guess they just weren’t in any books we read), but in retrospect we wish we had so we would have had a better idea as to what to expect (and not just medical facts or what they tell you in the birthing classes). It would have been nice to read more stories from different people’s perspectives (especially friends), and their particular experience of such a crazy and wonderful event, so we decided to write this out for our friends who will experience this one day or for those who are just simply interested (and for our own reading pleasure in the years to come). Oh and disclaimer, we’re really just kidding about the title of this post, but if the thought of reading the intimate details of a birth makes you want to poke your own eyes out, you should probably read no further.
About 8 days before Caleb was born (16 days before my due date), I began noticing various signs that I would be going into labor soon, so we had a good feeling Caleb would be born early. Then on April 25th (9 days before my due date), I woke up at 4 am with regular contractions. They weren’t incredibly strong but they were 3-5 minutes apart, so we went to the hospital as we were instructed to do when contractions reached that frequency. When we got to Long Beach Memorial, I was placed in a triage room and hooked up to the baby monitoring strap thing to measure my contractions and monitor Caleb’s heart rate. It was confirmed that my contractions were consistently close together, but I was only 2 cm dilated (you need to be 10 cm dilated before you are able to push). When they asked me how much pain I was in on a scale of 1-10, I said “2 or 3,” and they sort of laughed at me and said: “most women who come in and are admitted say 9 or 10.”
Because I wasn’t very dilated, they had me walk the halls for an hour to see if that would accelerate labor (they said they didn’t like to admit women who weren’t at least 4 or 5 cm dilated). The walking didn’t help, and I was subsequently sent back home with the instruction to come back when I was in “more pain.” We were a bit frustrated by this, because that seemed like such a vague instruction – we felt confused and worried that we wouldn’t really know when it was time to come back. They also told us that Caleb would be coming “soon”…and when we asked them to clarify what they meant by “soon,” they wouldn’t directly answer so we had no idea if that meant a few hours, or a few weeks. Really not what a super hormonal and highly uncomfortable pregnant woman wants to hear.
So we went back home at about 10 am and tried in vain to get some sleep (we were just too on edge). My contractions actually petered out throughout the day, so at 11:30 pm, we got ready for bed. Just as I was about to fall asleep at midnight, the contractions started up again. They were stronger than before, but now totally irregular. This continued until 2 am. We had no idea what we were supposed to do since we were under the impression we weren’t supposed to go to the hospital until the contractions were strong AND regular. Finally I was in so much pain I was groaning aloud, and I had Sean call the hospital to ask for advice. They told him we should come in. I was sure they said that to everyone who called to avoid liability, so I decided to wait longer.
At about 2:45 am I couldn’t take it anymore, and we decided to just go to the hospital despite the irregular contractions. I was brought once again to the “triage” area and hooked up to the monitoring device. By this time, my contractions were extremely painful and had become regular. I thought for sure I was 4 or 5 cm dilated, but when the nurse checked me I was only 3 cm dilated. The nurse communicated very little with me and said she had to go call my OB doctor before a decision whether or not to admit me could be made. Once she left, I literally burst out into tears. I was in SO much pain and was convinced they were going to send me back home. All I kept thinking was, “my contractions are now strong AND regular…how the heck am I going to know when to come back in?? I am going to have this baby in my apartment!!”
The nurse was gone for what seemed like eternity (probably more like an hour), and finally returned to check my monitor and give me the very unsatisfying news: “I’m still waiting to hear back from your doctor,” and left again within a couple minutes. Unfortunately the maternity ward was incredibly busy that day (April 26th), so I didn’t get much face time with the nurses to ask many questions or get much explained to me, which was frustrating and difficult. By this point my contractions were becoming so strong that I had literally reached a state of delusion. My vision was really blurry and I remember feeling like I was in a dream. Everything seemed to be moving reeeeaaaally slow and I had trouble processing what was happening. I’ll let Sean take over here because honestly, I can hardly remember what happened from about 4 am to 7:30 am.
Sean:
One of the most difficult parts of that morning was that the few bits of information we received seemed to be in contradiction. They would say, “wow, your contractions look ‘textbook’ and strong!”, but then they would check her and she was not dilating any further. So it seemed like a huge relief when they finally informed us at about 7 am that she would be admitted and they were locating the next available room. She had already been in labor for 7 hours, so I was hoping it would be just a few more minutes until they got her out of that cramped little temporary room. After another agonizing 45 minutes, I began to think they had forgotten us. At about that time, Melissa leaned over and clutched my hand, her eyes looking directly into mine yet focused 1000 yards behind me, and simply whispered “Help me.” I went to find out why we were still in the waiting room, and discovered that the nurses were having a shift change which was causing a delay in finding a room for us…our timing was just perfect I guess (plus every single birthing room was in use that day). When the new nurse came in, she started prepping Melissa for an I.V. Unfortunately the valve on that I.V. was faulty and when she stuck the needle into Melissa’s wrist, a voluminous stream of blood began draining onto the floor. The nurse hadn’t noticed, Melissa was on another planet, and I was in too much of a stupor to do anything but point and say “uuuuhhhhmmmm….uuhhhmmmmm….” as I watched a 1 foot diameter blood pool collect by the nurse’s foot. My last image of that little room was a shaking, yelling Melissa being loaded into a wheelchair while someone got on a radio and said, “bio hazard cleanup needed in room 9.”
Back to Melissa. It always seemed silly to me to have a birth plan (particularly with my first child) since I had no idea how the birth would go down (i.e. what it really feels like, if there would be complications, etc.), so before going to the hospital we printed out our “birth plan” which had one sentence on it: “Just get the baby out” – a joke for the nurses. Of course I educated myself on the options I would have/the obstacles I might face and what I *thought* I would want to do, but I made sure to keep an open mind and remain flexible so I would be prepared to handle anything that happened. Getting an epidural was one of the options I hadn’t made a decision on before going into labor. At 3 am when I first got to the hospital, I was still unsure if I wanted one, but by 7 am it was the fastest and easiest decision I’ve ever made in my life (and I’m terrible at making decisions). Ha!
I think there are a lot of strong opinions about epidurals out there, and mine is this: if I would normally get anesthesia for any other major medical event (pulling wisdom teeth, surgery, etc.) why would I NOT get it during the most painful experience of my life to date?? Currently, there is no empirical evidence to support the theory that it is harmful to the baby nor that it increases the chance of cesarean delivery, so it just doesn’t make sense to me to take such an opposed stance (however, I do agree that like any drug, there is always the chance of side effects). It also seems that the whole epidural issue can breed a weird sense of pride and competition like the female version of “how many weights can you lift? I bet I can lift more.” Additionally, the only women I personally know of who gave birth without an epidural had relatively short labors; all others opted for one. I WILL say this though – if you had a labor longer than 10 hours with no epidural, I will bow down and kiss your feet because that is just ridiculous. Anyway, I digress…my point is that I think you can get an epidural and still be considered a “good mom” 🙂
So after starting labor at midnight, I got an epidural at about 8 am. As the nurse was getting ready to move me from the triage room to the birthing room, she spent time making sure my hospital gown was completely covering me and I remember thinking to myself “I don’t $*%#@ care if you wheel me down this hall butt NAKED…just get me the epidural NOW!” LOL! Once in the birthing room it took them three tries to get me to round my back so they could administer the drugs. They asked me to arch forwards and I arched backwards. They asked me to go the opposite direction…I arched backwards again…I was slightly confused and out of it 🙂 The epidural took effect pretty quickly and it was a huge relief. I was finally able to relax and rest (in a very loose sense of the term). My mom and younger sister showed up at this point and it was great to have them there with us for support and distraction.
From 8 am on it was a slow but steady progression. I gradually dilated more and my doctor broke my water for me in the afternoon. (Contrary to popular belief, labor does NOT typically begin with the water breaking). It was painless, but pretty weird. There was a LOT more fluid than I thought there would be. There was a huge gush at first and it continued to leak over the next hour or so. Also, like I mentioned earlier, it was insanely busy in the maternity ward that day so I sat in soaked sheets for an hour before they were changed 🙁
Caleb kept falling asleep during labor (seriously???) which they could tell by his heart rate, so I had to wear an oxygen mask for most of labor (which I hated…it was so annoying, I kept asking if I could take it off). They also kept making me turn on my side to wake Caleb up, which was extremely painful and uncomfortable because of the severe pelvic pain I had developed in my third trimester of pregnancy. At one point (maybe around 3 pm), my epidural began wearing off rather quickly so I buzzed my nurse like she asked me to before pushing the button for more drugs to be released. She didn’t respond and it took 30 minutes for the nurse at the front desk to finally come back and assist me (she was the ONLY nurse available in the whole place at that point…ridiculous!) I actually really liked the nurse assigned to me, I just didn’t see much of her :/
By about 5:30 pm, I was feeling the urge to push and they stopped administering the epidural so that I would be able to feel the pushing contractions. It was exciting I had reached that point but I was also super exhausted. They had me push for 10 seconds in sets of 3, which I did for about an hour and 15 minutes (Caleb was born at 6:47 pm). Near the end of the pushing, I was so exhausted and worked up that I began hyperventilating. My nurse had to yell at me to stop because it would have caused problems if I continued. Thankfully, right as I was thinking “oh my gosh, I legitimately do not have the energy to push one more time,” Caleb popped out. Like literally, he popped out super fast. I see now why Dr.’s are somewhat paranoid about dropping the baby…once the head comes out they are like slimy little rockets! Haha!
Caleb ReeseBorn 4/26/11 at 6:47 pm
…And I got a 2nd degree perineal tear. Not gonna go into details, just look it up on google if you don’t know what I’m talking about and have the stomach for it 🙂 Apparently this is an incredibly common occurrence, which is a bummer. After the nurses did a few things with Caleb and my Dr. was stitching me up, they put Caleb on my chest for his first opportunity to nurse which he wanted absolutely no part of. I held Caleb for awhile and then Sean, my mom, and my sister got a turn to hold him. Then he was off to the nursery to get washed up and other random things I can’t remember now.
I’ve heard many people describe the first time they hold their child as this incredible moment that is breathtaking, spiritual, and somehow magical. You know, the typical “as I gazed into my child’s eyes (eyelids?) I had this overwhelming sense of how much God loves me because of how much I love this child and this is just so amazing, incredible, etc…” I’m not ridiculing you if this is how you felt, I’m just saying my mind wasn’t even close to having such deep thoughts at that moment. The extent of my profound ponderings was “wow, how amazing is it that I just pushed such a large object out of such a small opening!”
Of course all the more meaningful thoughts came later, but honestly at the time I had reached unparalleled exhaustion and felt like total crap (though I was relieved he was finally out). Reference below picture (ha!):
I had slept 4 terrible, restless hours in the previous 2 1/2 days, labored for 19 hours, was carrying a lot of extra weight, just got a rip stitched up, was bleeding profusely, and had to pee like crazy. As far as I know my birth experience was really nothing out of the ordinary or especially awful – it really was pretty standard, so my hunch is that people who were capable of a deep moment after birth are either projecting later feelings back onto that time, were delirious from the drugs/exhaustion, or were the dad 🙂 Also on a random tangent, I have yet to understand how some women are able to post a picture to facebook 5 minutes after giving birth looking chipper, with their hair and makeup perfectly done (you know what I’m talking about, can I get an amen!?) I mean, mad props if that is you, but the absolute last thing I wanted to do after giving birth was take a picture period nor did I care one ounce how I looked.
Just in case there is any question at this point, I do love my son and in retrospect Caleb’s birth experience was incredible; those are just the honest and raw emotions I experienced at the time. Like I said, Caleb’s birth wasn’t unusual or particularly crazy, I just wanted to document the details because it is special to me 🙂
The other day I woke up early (well earlier than normal) to answer a phone call. Melissa is, well, lets just say a heavy sleeper but I was pretty loud. (You know, if you talk a little louder it sounds like you have been awake for more than 35 seconds.) During the conversation she kept rolling over making frustrated huffs and snorts… shooting me an occasional dirty look.
So when I climbed back into bed she glared right at me and said, “I am so mad at you right now!”
“Oh really?” I asked, knowing that she was talking in her sleep and hoping I could keep the conversation going.
“Yeah, the purple and green dinosaur won’t even sing for you anymore!”, she replied.
At that point I started laughing for about a half of a minute, until she continued with, “And neither will the men in sweaters!”
To be fair to her, I have to explain that it turns out not to be as crazy as it sounded. The day before, Melissa was reading a book that was talking about children’s TV shows like Barney and Mr. Rogers. What’s more, Melissa talks in her sleep all the time. Somehow she can go into a half-conscious state where her eyes are open and she can even walk around but is totally asleep and doesn’t remember what she said or did the next morning. I love it when that happens… it’s never a dull moment! Check back in the future for more sleep talking stories!
