The Birth of Kiernan

The not very surprising facts: Labor is hard, motherhood is awesome and David is great.

I was very lucky with the labor thing. We were only in the hospital labor phase for 2 hours. In my defense i had been having contractions and effacing pains for about 2 weeks but still 2 hours is hard to beat.

Every evening the contractions were stronger than most of the rest of the day and also closer together so when on the evening of the 22nd the contractions were stronger and closer together i was no more certain of impending birth than i had been for the last few days. I couldn't sleep very well so i got up at 2am so i wouldn't wake up David with all my tossing and turning. i went to sit in the chair of wonder and that helped enough that eventually i went back to bed.

3:30 am
i woke up with a feeling like a very strong baby kick right next to my belly button and then a bit of leaking. i sat up a bit and got a gush of leaking. Happily i had been expecting this so i was sleeping on a baby mattress crib sheet to save my bed (thanks for that advice Isata). I woke David up so that he could turn on the light. According to the birthing class what you need to do when your water breaks is check the color. If the liquid is clear all is well and you will have to have the baby in the next 24 hours but there is no rush. If the liquid is green/brown then there is fecal contamination and you need to go to the hospital right away.
so. . . David turns on the light and i look down to discover i am in a pool of blood.
ALARM!!
needless to say the shot of adrenaline i got has never been matched by me.
i grabbed my mostly complete hospital bag and my wallet with insurance card and 5 bucks to get David a vending machine snack. I was a bit shocky. I felt cold and shakey and really scared about the blood. David was great. i called the ob/gyn emergency line to let them know we were on our way to the hospital and waddled (Burr with the wet gushing in the cold January 3 AM) down to the car to sit on the towel.
Traffic was great lol
3:55am
by the time we got to the hospital the contractions were very strong and very fast. We got a good parking space (this is actually very hard even at 3 in the morning as their visitor lot is shrinking for construction). We got out of the car and i asked David to get me a wheel chair. I was fine between contractions but felt so odd and cold and wet pants (blaa) that i wanted the chair. We went straight up and yay for all the classes and stuff we had the smoothest hospital check in ever. They had all of my paperwork and insurance information already and we wheeled through to be examined.
My contractions were 2 min apart and quite strong.
The exam revealed that i was completely dilated.
4:00-620am
labor was strange.
you know how sometimes when you spend a lot of time thinking about something it build up this sort of epic out of time feel to it? i had this about labor and then there i was in the middle of it. it was surreal and it moved too fast and was too painful to observe. It was an entirely in the moment experience.
The first thing the nurse had me do was strip off my street clothes and put on a gown, this happened in the middle of the room with only a curtain over the door. I was feeling rushed (by the pain and anxiety about the blood and worry that something was wrong with Kiernan) and i was feeling floaty because it was hard to believe that The Event was upon us. I was also a bit embarrassed to be naked in the middle of a large room with bright lights and strangers. The staff seemed entirely unconcerned about the blood which i took as either a good sign or total incompetence (it was a good time for confusion). They put a white Velcro belt on my stomach that had a fetal heart monitor in it. As soon as i heard his heartbeat steady and just the same as it had been at all my Dr.'s visits my heart warmed and i want so cold and disconnected anymore. I remember that there were a lot of questions in this room, things like have you been vaccinated for this and that and do you know your current weight. Every few questions a contraction would hit. The pain from the contractions starts like the pain of PMS and then turns into a strangely sharp and amplified version of the same (or at least it did for me). After about 3 years of this the pain took a big jump up. The nurse said "wow we are really close you didn't want a epidural did you?". I said "well yes i kinda did". She told me that we would finish the questions and if the baby want born by the time we were done they would get me one but she wasn't sure how much good it would do. My feeling at this point was that even an Advil to take a tiny bit of pain would be awesome and the potential pain killing of an epidural was the stuff dreams were made of.
Happily i got the epidural.
The anesthesiologist was not very happy. I am not sure if he was tired or i offended him or what but he was a bit surly on the other hand he killed the pain God bless him. when he came in i was writhing about and climbing up different parts of the bed to look for a 'comfortable' positron. He told me that i was not to move around so much or he couldn't do the catheter tube so i held still with great difficulty and he said some thing like well you don't need to hold that still.
sheesh says the Missy in retrospect.
at first i felt only my toes growing numb but after about 3 contractions of diminishing pain i couldn't feel my legs and then the pain was gone...nothing ...just gone...
yay
of a rather entertaining side note they had to give me an IV to keep my blood pressure up and my veins are quite difficult. they blew the veins in my left arm (which even now is very bruised) and then they got one to work in my right arm (which no w has a blood clot thingy and several bruises) so that in the end throughout the later stages of childbirth i kept thinking aaa my arms my arms. lol
When we got to the pushing stage i got concerned again because apparently Kiernan was on his umbilical Cord and every time i pushed his heart rate would drop perceptibly. They put me on oxygen and watched his heart rate closely and tried to hurry things along. I think that it went well
but the nurse kept saying push harder push harder and as i couldn't feel anything i want sure if i want pushing right or if we were just using the script of delivery. once they could see his head we hit a bit of a stand still. Eventually they did an episiotomy which apparently sent a rooster tail of blood across the room (David describes this as the anime blood thing at the end). After the cut Kiernan came straight out.
The Dr. said "his head is out" and i strained my ears, still tuned for the heart monitor now silent, for any baby sounds and after longer than i thought it should take i heard the gurgley angry wail of my son.
6:21 am
oh man