10:00 - 11:00 pm
Watching Planet Earth, sill counting contractions, in bed. It's a party compared to what's to come.
Monday, 9/10/07
11:00 pm - 2:00 am
3 more hours of early labor. Contractions getting stronger, in fact, they just plain hurt, birthing ball not cutting it upstairs, so I start laboring in a hot bath. Much better. Contractions are at 1 every 4 minutes, well within range for going to the hospital but I still want to hang out at home for as long as possible.
Monday, 9/10/07
2:00 - 2:30 am
Calling the doc, running around, grabbing bags, shoes, cell phones. Contractions are 2 + minutes apart (holy crap!). Good thing we only live 3 blocks from the hospital. We're admitted and get our room. I am 3 cm dilated. Only 7 more to go.
Monday, 9/10/07
9:00 am
We've breathed our way through 6.5 more hours of early labor. I remember thinking, "the pain can not get much worse than this." Ha. The doc comes in and says, contractions are good, but I've not dilated much further. This sucks. She offers to break my water, and we decide sure.
Monday, 9/10/07
12:00 pm
Active labor. Holy, holy crap. This is pain. The contractions are blinding. Jason and our nurse, Andrea, breathe through them with me, one at a time. They are incredible. I begin to doubt that I can do this with no meds.
Monday, 9/10/07
1:15 pm
I'm stuck at 7- 8 cm. She's stuck. They turn me on my side.
I push and the doc guides her past the last bit of cervix. The doc, Sharon Mikol, is amazing. Let's just say I picked the right lady way back when. In many other realities, my delivery could have likely become fraught with intervention and/or a c-section (our baby ended up being 9lbs, 3 oz of it and 21 inches. That's a BIG baby.). Dr. Mikol knew all the tricks and never once suggested anything outside of my initial wishes. She stuck to my guns... for me. No drugs.
Monday, 9/10/07
1:35 pm
"We see her head! We see hair! It's long, and there's lots of it! She's almost here. Push!" they say. "Almost". That's a relative term, depending on who's perspective is king.
I will say this about this part of delivering a baby: It's an experience that either can't be described with words or people just don't talk about it afterwards. I have a very high tolerance for pain, so the contractions, I managed. But, what I did not anticipate, was the anti-intuitive yet required act of causing myself pain (pushing = pain) a number if times over in order to get her out. I thought it would never come to an end. But it did.
Monday, 9/10/07
2:49 pm
More than an hour later, with much yelling, tears and exhaustion, we witness the real beginning of our Storey. Storey Rain Williams.
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