All The Gory Details

Well, all, #2 is here!

Seeing as pretty much all of you are either family or friends I'm sure most of you know this by now.  I was pretty detailed about my birth experience with #1, and I am glad.  I don't have a memory right now, and I'm glad that I have that record.  So, here we go again.  This is more for me and the future #2 than anyone else.

Saturday, Feb 2, I was having some pretty hard contractions in the morning.  However, these contractions weren't close enough together to warrant going to the hospital.  I let Hod know what what going on, and he decided to come home for his lunch.  While he was home I wasn't have a single contraction.  However, my lower back was KILLING me!  He was pretty worried about me.  I'll be honest, I was too.  Something just didn't feel right about my body.  After some prayer, Hod decided we needed to go to the hospital.  I readily agreed.  That is unusual in and of itself.  I am kind of anti hospitals.  Well, not super anti because I would never consider delivering anywhere else.

We called some friends to take #1 and off to the hospital we went.

We got there, around 4 in the afternoon, I was hooked up to monitors and even though I couldn't really feel them I was having regular contractions.  I was already dilated to a 4 and the bag of waters was bulging and ready to pop.  We decided to stay for a few hours and see what would happen.  60 min later I was at a 5, and having painful contractions.  We got the official word, they were keeping me!  #2 was on her way!  When we had sent #1 away with friends we hadn't given them everything they would need to watch her more than 5 hours.  Hod went on a quick run to take care of all of that while I waited.

I was enjoying some HGTV when they came to tell me they were ready to augment my labor,  We waited for Hod, and then quickly broke my water, started pitocin, and got an epidural.  I had an epidural with #1, and loved it.  It didn't work perfectly but it was still pretty great.  But this time it was a little funny. Everything started sounding really metallic.  I realize that doesn't make much sense, but I don't know how else to describe it.  I felt really light headed and I'm still not sure if I passed out.  (Wow... that sounds kind of scary now that I mention it.)  But the pain was gone and I appreciated that.  Also, pretty soon the metallic sound and light headdedness left too.

However, a few hours later the pain was back.  And it was back in full force.  Because of the pitocin the contractions were really hard.  Knowing that I was getting an epidural I hadn't practiced any other sort of pain management techniques.  This is the one unperfect part of the delivery.  It took about an hour to figure out what the problem was.  Turns out ... well I don't really know I guess.  All I know is that they ended up moving my epidural and then I could handle my life again.  That hour... man.  It was no good.  However, once they took care of it life was blissful again.

When I arrived at the hospital, #2 was still sitting posterior.  But my amazing nurse had me doing some acrobatics to get her to flip.  And it worked!

Just before midnight chaos broke out in the maternity ward.  There were at least 3 other woman laboring at the same time as me.  Within minutes 2 of them were moved into the OR for emergency C-Sections.  Sadly my amazing nurse, and my doctor had to go with one of those women.  But the new lady was nice.  One of the first things she did was check me again, and I was fully ready to start pushing.  Turns out the other lady laboring who didn't need a C-Section was ready too.   So, instead of immediately starting to push, they let me labor down on my own for a bit.  (I say "let me" even though I'm pretty sure they wanted to get a little more organized because everything was happening all at once.  Whatever, I didn't mind.)

Once everything else had calmed down, and they found me a new doctor we got ready to push.  Sadly, I did end up needing to be on oxygen again.  Hod had an easier time than he had during our first delivery.  He was able to watch the birth without getting light headed.  He said it was really amazing.

To help get me in the correct position, I had an exciting tug of war party with one of the nurses.  She was rather impressed with my upper body strength.  I do have some pretty amazing shoulder muscles from all the heavy drum carrying I did in High School.  I actively pushed for only 45 minutes.  That was worlds better than the 3 hours I pushed with #1.  #2 came and she was beautiful!  No vacuum  no forceps, just an easy delivery.   The only sad part is, right as #2 went to gasp for air some more amniotic fluid came out, so she got it in her lungs.  This made it so I couldn't hold her immediately as they had to take care of her.  They took her away to attend to her, stitched me up (Yeah, I tore again, but only a stage 3 this time!) and then Hod and I waited for them to return our girl to us.

This experience was so different than #1's.  And I'm glad.  The entire time in the hospital from check in to baby was only 9 hours.  We did end up with a few hic-ups.  The results for my group b strep test were inconclusive so we were both treated for that.  That meant we had to spend an extra night in the hospital.  As for healing, it is going pretty well.  The nurses in the hospital thought I was crazy.  I haven't ever needed anything more than strong ibuprofen to fight the pain. Heck, the part that hurt the most was my arms from my awesome tug of war fight.  Over all it was quite the pleasant experience.

Life at home is exciting.  Well, that is one way to put it.  Today is my second day home all alone.  It was hard to see my mom go.  So far we've all only cried once!  I'm excited and nervous about this new part of life, but ready or not, here it is!

(I was going to post pictures too, but I can't figure out how to activate something on my phone so it will let me connect my phone to my computer and my amazing phone guru {AKA my hubby} is at work.  I'll see what I can figure out for later.)