things i carry

Saturday: 10/9/10: The day before Dylan's arrival

I cleaned all day. And then I rearranged the entire house. I moved wall hangings from room to room, moved beds, moved toy boxes, rugs... I even randomly moved my wireless internet into a different room. I bawled for several hours while I rearranged over a silly family matter. Then I called my father and bawled some more. Hyperventilating tears.

I cleaned and organized from 3 to 9 PM. I was forty weeks and three days pregnant. With all of this erratic behavior I suspected I would go into labor soon, but when Sean and I curled up in bed at 10:30, I didn't expect the contractions to start thirty minutes later.

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11:01: first contraction, terrible cramping, pretty sure my water breaks. It smells like paint thinner. I let Sean sleep and start timing my contractions. I get up and walk around the house.

My contractions start at 3 minutes apart. So much for not knowing whether or not I was truly in labor.

*

At 11:52 I walked back upstairs (I had been on the couch watching Jersey Shore repeats as I labored and writing down every time I contracted in the notebook application on my Blackberry) and I woke up Sean. I told him I had been in labor for an hour now and that he should probably get up and help me get everything ready to go around here.

He sleepily told me that I was supposed to labor for 2 hours before we went to the hospital and that he was going to go back to sleep for a while.

WHAT?

Sean is the sweetest man I've ever met and he normally breaks his back to take care of me in every way, so you can imagine the shock I endured an hour into labor when my husband had decided that sleep was more important. I later realized that he misunderstood me and thought that I wasn't quite sure if I was in labor or not. Either way, I'm glad he got some rest. I woke him up a little while later and told him this really couldn't wait.

Sunday: 10/10/10: Dylan's birthday!

At 1:40 AM I called the doctor on call, Dr. L, who informed me that I should probably head over to the hospital. We were in our birthing room and I was hooked up to the monitors by 2 AM.

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Here we are at 4 AM (five hours into labor):

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I'm still wearing street clothes because I was only 2cm dilated when I arrived so even though my contractions were three minutes apart, the nurses did not admit me until morning when the doctor could examine me.

Sean is exhausted on his two hours of sleep, I'm even more tired on my zero.

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Here is the machine which measures Dylan's heartbeat (red) and the rate of my contractions (black) at 4:37 AM:

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And this is me the next morning in our cozy pink birthing room which we were thrilled to call home from Saturday night to Tuesday:

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*

At 9 AM, after ten hours of labor, Dr. L arrived and checked me again. I was only 3cm after enduring an entire night of painful contractions. The doctor was dressed in a sweater instead of scrubs and she told me that she was going to leave the hospital for several hours. She gave me the option of having an epidural then, or waiting until she left. I opted for immediately, thank you very much. They also started me on Pitocin to induce me into a faster-paced labor.

Everyone always says how awful the epidural is, the TLC shows portray it as the devil incarnate, that huge needle going into your spine. I didn't think it hurt at all. Sean's favorite epidural moment was when I asked my anesthesiologist, "Isn't it true that anesthesiologists have the highest suicide rate amongst doctors?" Sean found it hilariously inappropriate to ask him while he was sticking a giant needle in my back, but I thought it to be a fabulous conversation topic. This will turn out to be one of Sean's favorite moments of labor.

At 11AM, the nurse told Sean that he should go home and take a nap, grab some lunch, that I was going to be a while. I was pretty pissed. He had already gone home early that morning to take care of our pups, and here she was telling him to leave again. I didn't want to labor alone. I was in less pain after the epidural, but still, I wanted my Love with me. He asked me if he should go and I told him that he should. After all, I was fine and being selfish, and I wanted our dogs to be able to get out of the basement and out into the fresh air of the backyard. Sean's dad stopped by while he was gone and kept me company for a short while and Sean was back in time to watch the Giants game with me at 1PM.

I took a nap while Sean was gone and woke up to find my nurse Sue cathing me. Since I couldn't feel my legs I wasn't allowed to get out of bed. She told me, "You're peeing!" as she drained my pee into a bucket. I would've been embarrassed, maybe, but I was half asleep and feeling wonky and so I told her, "You have to be my best friend now, you are officially the first person who peed for me" and went back to sleep.

*

At 1:30 PM, my doctor was back (the Giants were winning) and checking me again. My heart broke when she told me that I was STILL 3 cm, but 100% effaced and Dylan was extremely low. How could I still be 3 cm?

*

At 4:30, my epidural wore off and the pain went from feeling like a dull pressure to a severe 9 out of 10 pain. And then a 10 out of 10 pain. The nurse called in another anesthesiologist and had him give me a second epidural. The doctor checked me again and HOORAY! I was 9 cm dilated and they were going to have me start pushing soon.

Are you still reading this ridiculously long blog post?

By 5:15 I was allowed to push. Our delivery nurse Christine was incredible. She took hold of one of my legs and instructed Sean on how to hold the other. It was the three of us in our cozy pink room, a nice private scenario, and I was determined to figure out which muscles to push with, I was still numb from the waist down from epidural #2.

At some point during my pushing there was a knock on the door. Christine answered it behind the privacy curtain and we heard, "Now is not really a good time, we are pushing." The cafeteria was trying to deliver Sean's dinner right in the middle of my labor! We cracked up hysterically. And soon our room phone rang. I was hunched over the bed doggy style trying to push Dylan out using gravity and suddenly Sean was answering the phone. It was his sister. She was at the hospital waiting to see our not-yet-arrived newborn and she was mortified. "Oh my god! I didn't expect them to patch me through to your room!", she told Sean. Again, he and I exploded with laughter.

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The final push

I knew I was going to shit myself on the delivery table, and boy did I ever. By the time I delivered Dylan, I would be in labor for 21 hours, and I probably pooped four or five times while pushing. To make the pooping more entertaining, our nurse had set up a giant mirror at the foot of my bed so that I could see which muscles I was pushing with. I've never seen myself push out a BM before, and I kept telling Christine that I was sorry each time I shat, yet at the same time I found this hilarious. Sean and I pretty much laughed throughout the whole labor.

Not only did I poop, but I hurled twice from pushing so hard. Christine grabbed a pink bucket and a cold wash cloth and after I hurled pure brown bile into the bucket she'd wash my face for me and comfort me. She genuinely felt bad for me and I loved how she mothered me. We all know how much puking sucks. I hadn't puked in front of anyone since I was a kid, so this was more embarrassing than pooping for me, and I felt terrible for both Christine and Sean who had to witness my puking episodes.

I was determined to meet my baby. During each contraction, I was instructed to push at least three times and hold it for as long as possible. I would push 5-7 times instead, never giving up. I felt proud of my lung capacity and kept thinking how much singing in choirs had prepared my lungs for childbirth!

I'll skip to the good part, meeting our baby.

The hardest part of labor was birthing Dylan's head. We could see his hair, and soon there were two nurses, my doctor, and a pediatrician in our room. Dylan had pooped meconium in my womb and so we were all worried that he would breathe it in and severely damage his lungs, so the doctors were taking all precautions to make sure there was enough staff available.

I looked over at Sean who was still holding my leg, and he had tears in his eyes. I wanted to reach over and hold his hand and get all romantic and sappy with him about this moment before we became parents together forever, but I was too damn determined to push and had my hands wrapped tightly around the back of my legs.

It hurt, yes, but the pain wasn't foremost on my mind. Holding my little baby was. Making sure he was safe. Healthy. Everyone kept saying, "You're doing so great, Lauren, hold it! Push! You're so close!" There was an overabundance of compliments and encouragement and I felt like an achy million bucks with all of this cheerfulness.

Finally, I pushed his head out (he was face down, nose near my butt) and the rest of him slid out as if my vagina was a water slide! Whoa! I thought it would take a while once his head was out but he was out within seconds and laying on my chest.

He wasn't blue, or covered in blood, he was covered in baby poop and crying. I'd like to say that I was instantly in love with him when they put him on my chest, all cute and poopy, but I was so out of sorts that all I could think about was that he was so warm!

The nurses put him on his little incubator table to clean him off and Sean was able to take a few pictures:

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Dylan James was born at EXACTLY 8:00 PM. He weighed 7 lbs 10 oz and was 20 and 1/2 inches.

Here he is being held by his mama (not just placed on my belly) for the first time (this is when I fell in love with him) and by his daddy:

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And my placenta got stuck and it took Dr. L 30 minutes to deliver it after Dylan was born. My body looked like a crime scene with blood and that blue umbilical cord reflecting back at me through that giant mirror. But who cares. I pooped, I puked, people cathed me and peed into containers for me... you really just give up on modesty while giving birth.

Here we are, 18 days later. I am so incredibly madly in love with this little boy. I'm in love with Sean more than I thought could be possible because we were already madly in love before Dylan arrived.

This is our little pumpkin yesterday:

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If you read this whole post, you are my hero. And if you're about to give birth, rest easy. It sucks, big time. But if those girls on 16 and pregnant can do it, and I can do it, you can do it.