Fast and Furious... Baby Girl TeeJ's birth story

On Monday, October 27th, Baby girl TeeJ, aka H, made her grand entrance! DeeJ and I are so excited that she's finally here! Forgive me in advance for the TL;DR. It was a short delivery, but long feeling experience.

I woke up around 4:30am with a sharp pain in my lower back that wrapped around to my stomach. I got up and went to the bathroom and just sat there. After a minute or so, the pain went away and I went back to bed. When I laid down, DeeJ was awake. He looked at me and smiled and we held hands. We started talking about how happy I was to be working from home this week. About 15 minutes later, that same pain came back. I ran to the bathroom saying, "I think I'm having a contraction. And I have to poop." I opted to stay in the bathroom and started my contraction timing app. Since it was 15 minutes between the first and last one, I figured it would carry on for awhile and eventually go away. After all, most first time mothers go past their due date. But then the contractions came back. Every 6-7 minutes, I was nearly on the floor writhing in pain. About 30 minutes of that, I started vomiting. I yelled as loud as I could so DeeJ hear me, asking him to call Dr. B. He called, got their answering service, and we got a call back from the midwife about 10-15 minutes later. DeeJ passed me the phone and at some point during the call, another contraction hit. I dropped the phone and started breathing heavily. After it was over, the midwife said I sound like I'm doing ok. WHAT?!?! She said that I should wait a little longer because it's not 5 minutes apart and she didn't want me to go to Labor and Delivery just to be sent home. Yeah, ok. After I hung up, I asked DeeJ to take me to the hospital. While he ran around to collect our bags, I got dressed. I have to say, it's very difficult to get dressed, especially during a contraction. Getting dressed would have taken less than a minute pre-pregnancy, and maybe 10 minutes while pregnant, but took almost 30 minutes because I couldn't function while contracting. So it took an hour to get ready and head towards the hospital. We got to the hospital around 6:45am. Out of all of the times I've walked from the hospital entrance to Labor and Delivery on the 6th floor, this walk felt the longest. The wait for the elevator felt like an eternity. But eventually, we made it. I was taken to the triage room for monitoring. 

The room has 3 beds, all separated by curtains and were occupied by other Moms to be. I took the last available bed and just waited. While waiting, I overheard a labor and delivery nurse speaking to one of the other Moms. After monitoring her for over 2 hours, they were sending her home. Her contractions were too erratic and inconsistent. When the nurse left, the woman just cried. I felt so bad for her, but also worried for myself. Nothing worth panicking over, but I did not want to be sent home. I was getting up every couple of minutes at this point because every time a contraction came, I felt like I had to poop and throw up so I would run to the bathroom. It was quite a challenge because the nurses had to keep disconnecting the monitors so I could sit in the bathroom. During one of my runs to the bathroom, the nurse looked at the bed and there was a bunch of fluid on the sheets. She asked DeeJ, "Did she go to the bathroom in the bed?" DeeJ shrugged. I mean, how would he know? As asked me while I was in the bathroom and all I could say was, "I think so." before throwing up some more. So the nurse took the sheet to be tested and I made my way back to the bed. That's when things got interesting. Shortly after I got back into the bed, the nurse confirmed that my water broke. My contractions were suddenly much more intense and frequent, but there was a small complication. The only way I could manage the pain of the contractions was to sit upright, but doing so made my H's heart rate drop. The solution? The nurses and DeeJ had to hold me down while laying on my side just so that they could monitor things for a few minutes. At that point, I have to say I was in the most pain of my life. Next, the nurse did a cervix check. She said after the check, "Wow. You're 5cm dilated and 100% effaced. It's go time!" I said, "Great! What's next?" She then asked if I want an epidural. Before she could finish the sentence, I said, "I want all of the drugs. Give me the drugs." She chuckled and placed the order. But then she said, "Ok, we're going to put you in Delivery Room 3 and you'll get your epidural." What I didn't know was that I had to WALK to the delivery room. I recall saying, "Can't you just wheel me over in the bed?" But that didn't matter because the next thing you know, I was practically running to the room, so much so that one of the nurses was running behind me to cover up my butt.

As soon as I got to the room, I laid back and waited for my epidural. The anesthesiologist arrived a short time later and gave me the run down of how the epidural would be administered. I sat up quickly, signed the paperwork and suddenly I felt numb. At our hospital, they don't allow visitors in the room so DeeJ had to step out. Once the epidural was done, DeeJ came back into the room and I remember saying, "This feels amazing..." over and over. The nurse adjusted me to do another cervix check and she says to the other nurses and DeeJ, "The head is right there. I can see it." That might explain why I felt like I had to go to the bathroom. Then she tells me to push. Which I swear I heard her say, but I was too high to actually understand her. I started dozing off from the epidural. The nurses started to yell at me to get me to be alert. Then they asked DeeJ to hold my leg while I pushed. After some oxygen from a mask, I started to wake up a bit and I started pushing. First couple of pushes, H's head was out. The nurse says, "The head is out! Push some more for the shoulders! Grunt if you have to!" As I start pushing again, the on call OB made an appearance... In his regular clothes. He says, "What's going on? I was just paged." The nurse tell him that delivery is pretty much done. He shrugged his shoulders and said, "I guess I'm not needed." and walked out. Probably the funniest moment of the day. Eventually he came back in scrubs to make sure everything was ok though. While I was still out of it after delivery, there were some additional complications for H. She had some heart rate issues so they also gave her an oxygen mask for about 30 seconds. I was so relieved and happy to hear her cry. It also took her awhile to get up to an acceptable temperature so I didn't get to hold her right away. Once I did though, My Munchkin was 6 pounds, 6 ounces, and 19 inches of pure perfection.

Overall, everything went really well. From beginning (first contraction) to delivery, I was in labor for a little over 4 hours with only 2 of those hours spent in the hospital. Things went so quickly that I technically wasn't admitted into the hospital yet and DeeJ and I had to do the paperwork after the fact. Things went nothing like I imagined, but quite frankly, I think it was the best example of to expect the unexpected and parenthood in general. And we're in love with our little H. I'm so glad she's here and we hope she loves us as much as we love her.