Birth Story, Part Two

From around 5 am to 7 am, Terry and I dozed off. At 7 am, my doctor, Dr. Emery, came to check on me. I was now 3 centimeters dilated. I was making progress! And better yet, I wasn’t feeling any pain!

Around 10 am, I started to shake. I felt like I was having a panic attack. I thought for sure that something was wrong. When I told the nurse, she didn’t look surprised or alarmed. She just called the doctor in to check me again. It turns out I was in transition (read: the hardest part of dilation), and I was now at almost 10 centimeters (almost fully dilated).

It was around this time that I really started to feel the contractions and they weren’t anything like expected. In my mind, contractions always sounded like you would feel your stomach muscles tightening. In reality, it felt like a really bad backache with cramps.

At 10:30 am, I told the nurse that I felt like I was ready to push. To be honest, I’m not sure if I was actually ready to push, but it felt better to be doing something than just sitting through the pain. Looking back, I wish I had waited, because I ended up spending almost 3 hours doing a million sit ups. For someone who spent the majority of her pregnancy eating her weight in ice cream and scoffing at exercise, I was in no shape to keep up with this exhausting pushing.

Terry helped me during this time by giving me ice chips and holding my leg while I pushed. He was also my cheerleader, keeping me motivated and encouraging me. I don’t remember all of the details during this time, but I do remember that at some point a nurse came in to insert some antibiotics into my IV because I was running a fever and they wanted to prevent any infections. Also, I know my parents almost walked in on me in the middle of it all—thank god for those curtains that they have running along the entrance to the room! Embarrassing!

After almost three hours of pushing, my doctor came in to inspect the situation and decided that it was time to get the little bugger out of there. She could see that I was exhausted and had no more energy to keep going. At this point, if she had said that they needed to give me a C-section, I would have been relieved—anything to get this guy out. Luckily, she didn’t say that. Instead, she opted for the vacuum/suction thingy. It took her about fifteen minutes to get everything set up and then I felt some pulling and extreme pain. I thought that I was going to die from the pain. I could hear my doctor telling me to push, but I had no energy left. I tried to muster up enough strength to give it one last push, but I know my attempt was feeble. It didn’t matter, though, because all of a sudden my doctor was holding up a squirmy little Jack.