Labor & Delivery (8/30/11-8/31/11): Keely Victoria

WARNING: The story of Keely's birth may be a little more graphic than you would like to know about so just skip this Blog Post if you don't care to know :)

The week leading up to my due date, I thought I lost my mucus plug and that labor could be only days away, but August 20^th came and went without anything happening. I got some contractions every once in a while and throughout a few nights, the contractions were strong enough to keep me up but nothing ever remained consistent or strong enough to put me in labor.  Waiting for Keely to come was so much harder than I thought it would be. I thought for sure my second baby wouldn't be as late as my first and, if she was, not THAT late. I was doing my part and walking a lot.

I was fingertip dilated and 50% effaced at 38 Weeks. By 40 ½ weeks, I was 1 ½ cm and 60% effaced. By 41 weeks and 2 days, no progress had been made even though I had had some contractions throughout the week. On August 29, my induction date had been scheduled for Friday, September 2^nd, at 6:00am. I was really concerned about this because I really didn't want to be induced as I wanted to try an all natural birth and if I was induced, I knew there was no way I could do that.

My doula, Annely, recommended her daughter-in-law who was an acupuncturist who specialized in women and babies (and has had success in getting women into labor, among other things). After much debate between Jeremiah and I, we finally decided to give it a try. So the next day, Tuesday, August 30^th, I had acupuncture done for the first time. My appointment was at 11:00am and I got out of the appointment around 12:45pm. It was very relaxing and I even had a few contractions during the treatment. During the second round of treatment, I was feeling crampy and the cramping stayed with me throughout the rest of the day! Prior to the acupuncture, I hadn't been feeling any contractions or cramps, so I knew something had worked during the treatment.

I went back to the in-laws house and Jordan and I went to her gym and worked out for 20-30 minutes on the elliptical. Then we had the water massages for 10 minutes. When we got home, I rinsed off in the shower and then Debbie gave me a really long, really relaxing massage. It was wonderful! I even had a few contractions during it. Then I relaxed the rest of the day until it was time to go to dinner.

We all went out to Gregorio's for dinner and Jordan and I did some laps around the shopping center to help the contractions keep coming – and they did. I actually had to stop to deal with them during the walk. During dinner, I kept having contractions, every 10 minutes or so. Chloe could tell something was going on with Mommy cause she had a concerned look on her face each time I had a contraction and I closed my eyes to deal with it. We finished with dinner around 8pm. Mandi had the brilliant idea to drive the Focus back to their place so I wouldn't have to drive and Jeremiah could drive me home. That was a really smart idea as I definitely wouldn't have been able to drive with the contractions. It also gave me a chance to make some phone calls to clue people in on what was going on.

By the time we got home and put Chloe to bed, it was close to 9pm. I got in the shower and Jeremiah did a few last minute things he wanted to get done. While in the shower, I couldn't even get through washing my hair without having a few contractions, so they were definitely coming closer together and getting a little stronger.

The contractions weren't unbearable and I was feeling really good in between them. We even took my last preggy pics while I was in labor (and had to stop a few times for a couple contractions). We (Jeremiah) got the car loaded up and I was keeping track of my contractions on the computer. They were coming about every 5 minutes and were at least a minute in duration.  We finally called Debbie, a friend, close to midnight to come over to watch Chloe and we called Annely around the same time to come over.

Debbie was over shortly after and went straight to bed in the guest room.  A little later, Annely was here and was helping me with the contractions. She gave support by squeezing my hips together to help relieve the pain/pressure during the contraction. She also showed Jeremiah how to do this to help. After a while, she had me lie down on the bed to get off my feet and rest a little more in between the contractions. This was an ok position but not always very comfortable during the contractions. After being in this position for a while, I started to get the shakes and I wasn't so "happy" in between the contractions as I had been. Annely said that the shakes were caused by a rush of hormones going through my body and that it was a good thing. She also said we should probably start going to the hospital.

While we were in the car, I looked at the clock and it had just turned 2am. We got to the ER and I walked in by myself while Jeremiah waited for Annely to get the keys from him to move our car. There was a man in the ER who started talking to me about his own daughter and wife when she was in labor. It was the last thing I wanted to be doing – trying to be polite to a complete stranger while going through contractions! Then Jeremiah came in and the man went through his stories again! Finally, the attendant with the wheelchair came to wheel me up to labor and delivery.

It wasn't very comfortable sitting in the wheelchair with the contractions. We got to the reception desk and I had to fill out the entry form. Then I was taken back to the triage area. It was starting to get more uncomfortable in a sitting position dealing with the contractions and just waiting around for things to happen. When they checked me, I was 4cm dilated and 80% effaced. It wasn't as far as I was hoping, but at least progress had been made. It was about 2:20am when this happened.

Then they moved me to L&D Room #1. It was the same room I started in when I came in to give birth to Chloe (but we were eventually moved to Room #2).

They hooked me up to the machines and they had to order antibiotics to be able to start administering them to me since I was Group B Strep Positive and they try to give you to doses 4 hours apart from each other. They said it would take ½ hour to administer it and during that time, I would have to stay on the bed so they could monitor the baby at the same time. But once it was over, then I could get up and move around. It was until around 3am that it was finally done and I was able to move. That seemed like the longest half hour!

Once I was finally able to move, I felt a little more comfortable during the contractions, but they were definitely getting more intense. When I was in triage, they asked, on a scale of 1 to 10, how bad the pain was, and I think I told them an 8 or 9. Those pains were nothing compared to what I was going to feel! I could actually feel Keely's head descend into the birth canal multiple times and those were the worst contractions!

Eventually, Annely had me go on my knees and lean against the back of the bed and that seemed to help a bit but the contractions were getting so strong and they were getting very close together. In the back of my mind, I kept thinking about an epidural because I knew that it would just take all the pain away. When the contractions just wouldn't let up and I felt like I wasn't getting any breaks between them, I finally asked for the epidural. Jennifer, our wonderful nurse, came in and looked at Annely and then looked and me and told me that she thought I was going to have a baby soon. She asked if I would like to be checked first before deciding on the epidural and I said "Yes!".  I was 8cm! She then asked if I would like to take some pain meds to help take the edge off instead of the epidural and I said ok. (I always said I would never take these because on all the baby shows, when women took these, they always seemed to make the women feel loopy and tired but not really help with the pain – funny how I was so willing to take them now!) Jeremiah then asked if there were any side effects and Jennifer said yes. She then started to list them off – I didn't want the side effects so I said I'd try to get through it without them.  Jennifer suggested that I try my hands and knees as a different position to help with the pain. Meanwhile, Jeremiah called our parents to tell them about the progress (no one was at the hospital yet).

About 5 minutes later (no more than 10 - around 4:25am), I told them I needed to push. So Jennifer went to call the doctor. When Dr. Murillo came (who, I later found out, was just prepping for a C-section with another patient but was pulled away since I was about to deliver) the urge to push stopped. So I just rested for a minute or so. But that didn't last long. I started to push and I was still on my hands and knees and that was the position that I was going to deliver in. When Dr. Murillo saw this, she was confused that someone would voluntarily be in this position for delivery as the only other two times she had delivered a baby like this was because of complications.

It didn't feel like I was making much progress and after pushing for a while they saw that my water hadn't broken so Dr. Murillo broke it. Then I pushed again and they said they could see a lot of hair. My response was, "Just Now?!?". With my experience with Chloe's birth, it took a while for you to see her hair and then when you could, it took a while yet to get her out so I was frustrated a little that there was still a while left of pushing to get her out. But, fortunately, I only had to push about two more times and she was out! It was 4:43am and no one had made it to the hospital to see her birth because she came out so quickly (Jeremiah ended up videotaping and taking pictures of the birth all by himself.)

I flipped over the umbilical cord and laid down on my back on the bed so they could put Keely on my chest. It was wonderful! She was so beautiful and I got to enjoy her right away. I felt great! Jeremiah cut the cord and I got to enjoy Keely for a full hour before they did anything with her.

They put her under heat lamps to get her temperature to increase as it was lower than they would like but it didn't seem to be working. So they finally had her go skin-to-skin with me and that was a very special time. She also started nursing right away as if she had been doing it her whole life.

This was an amazing birth and I'm so glad that I was able to get through it without the meds. The recovery afterwards was completely different than it was with Chloe and all in good ways.

We are so blessed to have another beautiful, healthy girl!