Baby's Birthday

Thank you all for the notes and congratulations. Charlotte is 1 week old today and she is wrapped up in a baby sling on my chest. She is beautiful and we are so in love with her. I'm amazed that this all happened so fast and we actually have a real live baby in the world. I'm anxious to get the story down so that we can remember everything that happened, so here it goes.

This is the story of Charlotte's birth.

On Thursday evening, I went out with my friends for some Mediterranean food at Alladin's. It was a nice distraction from being enormously pregnant. We hung out until about 9pm chatting and I eventually waddled myself back to the car and drove home around 9pm. I remember saying that I was really hoping that labor would start that night (haha). I found Chris at home reading up on the new camera that we bought specifically for taking baby pictures. He insisted on teaching me the basics of how to use it, but I was sort of feeling strangely emotional and weird and crampy. In hindsight, I was definitely in early labor. We watched the daily show and went to bed at around 11:30pm.  

At about 1am I woke up to go to the bathroom and my water broke on the way down the hall. At first I was confused and upset about being all wet, but when I realized what was happening I was super excited. I cleaned up and put on new pajama pants (big mistake, by the way, because there were 3 more gushes that followed in the next few hours, and lots more amniotic-fluid-soaked pajama pants strewn throughout the house. I thought that the "water" only happened once!). I came back to the room and told Chris that my water broke. We were both very excited, but a little dismayed that we had only gotten an hour of sleep. I was worried I wouldn't make it the 24-36 hours that labor would take. Good thing for us, the whole event only lasted about 11 hours.

Our birth class teacher had told us that the most important thing to remember was that if you thought you were going into labor, you should go to sleep. So Chris dutifully told me that I should go to sleep so that I wouldn't be too tired when it got really intense. Good advice, but this was totally impossible for me, because I had already launched into active labor. Contractions were coming every 4-5 minutes and lasting for about 30 seconds. I wandered around the house moaning through contractions and rocking back and forth on my hands and knees. Chris kept telling me to try and sleep. As the contractions got longer and more intense I needed help to get through each one. Chris was really good at pushing down on my lower back to take the pressure off my hips. He was still telling me that I should try and sleep, but by this point, I was ready to murder him if he looked like he was trying to sleep and I insisted that I couldn't sleep and he had to stay awake with me.

I got Chris to call the Doula at about 7am. He told her something along the lines of, "Whenever you get a chance, you can make your way over." I was in the background saying, "No, tell her to get here NOW! We need to go the hospital SOON!!!". He was ignoring me... which I guess was the best thing to do with a crazy laboring person, but it annoyed me at the time. Jessica arrived about an hour later and seemed surprised that I was in such active labor. She checked me and I was already 6cm dilated! Our plan was to head to the hospital when I was at about 5-6 cm dilated so that was great news.

Chris started running around the house gathering our bags and just generally having a panic attack. I, on the other hand, had started to go into "labor land". I was rocking back and forth with my eyes closed and really focusing on my body. I was heavily under the influence of crazy endorphins and other hormones getting me ready for the main event. The contractions were feeling a lot stronger, but they weren't quite as raw as before. I felt like I was in a trance. It was almost impossible for me to communicate because all I could think about was working on my labor. Jessica helped me through contractions while Chris packed the car. When it was time to go, I wandered out of the house to the car moaning and, in general, looking like an escaped schizophrenic patient.

The car ride and our arrival at the hospital is all a blur in my mind. Chris probably remembers it better. He looked over at me and said, "Jessica could feel the baby's head! We're so close!". I managed to nod and smile. Next thing I remember we were in the elevator going up to the labor and delivery floor. They were going to get me a wheel chair, but they were taking too long and I just marched in the direction of the elevators. I was furious at everyone in the elevator for making it go slower. Totally irrational. Next thing, they had us in the triage room and it was a blur of random nurses. They hooked me up to a fetal monitor and they checked my cervix. I was at 8cm dilated and 100% effaced. At this point they asked me to rate my pain level on a scale of 1 to 10. This question makes absolutely no sense. They could have been asking me what the square root of 569 was. All I knew was that if I said anything higher than 4, the nurses would be obligated to offer me pain medication, and I didn't want anyone saying the word "epidural" to me.... so I said 4.... then another contraction hit and I said, "It's a ten! I want an epidural!". Chris and Jessica calmly reminded me that I didn't want an epidural and I was already at 8 cm and it would be time to push very soon. I probably had a bit of mental deliberation, but thinking was so difficult that I just went back to laboring.

Next we were in the labor and delivery room and I was leaning in the shower with my hands on the wall and Chris was pushing on my back. I was in transition and completely in the midst of labor land. Chris was with me the whole time and he kept telling me he was so proud of me. They made me get out of the shower and the nurses checked me again and it was time to start pushing. They called in my Obstetrician, who arrived with a table full of scary looking metal instruments and she was donning what appeared to be a hazmat suit, complete with a face shield. They set me up with a squatting bar and put the bed low to the ground and threw a huge plastic tarp under me. With each contraction my body was involuntarily pushing down hard. As soon as I started pushing I felt so much better. The pain was gone. The contractions slowed down so I had 5 minutes between each one, but they were super strong. When I felt a contraction coming Chris and Jessica helped me pull myself up into a deep squat and I pushed as hard as I could. Chris started counting to 10 with me and reminding me to breathe in. The Ob was stretching my vagina and putting some sort of lubricating stuff around it. The baby's head started crowning and I reached down and touched the top of her head. I was so excited she was so close and I started roaring with each push. Her head was out and then her shoulders and at 12:04 pm on September 23rd, the Ob put a tiny, lavender, slimy, squirming Charlotte on my chest! The room filled with butterflies and rainbows and unicorns and Charlotte took her first breath and let out a big wail. She was breathing really well and turning nice and pink and she was wide awake. I looked up at Chris and he had tears coming down his face. The nurses cleared out and left us alone with her for more than an hour. She was so perfect.

Looking back, there is not a single thing I would have changed. Jessica was amazing with helping Chris and I stay calm and with the plan. The nurses and the Ob respected my wishes and really paid attention to my birth plan. I'm so happy that everything was going so smoothly that I was able to birth my baby with no drugs and minimal interventions. I was able to get up and walk around just a few minutes after having the baby. Within a few hours I took a shower, had an enormous dinner, and Chris and I napped with our new baby in the hospital room.

The past week has been amazing and exhausting. Expect more posts and pictures. There's lots of pictures on Chris's facebook page if you'd like to check that out. Thanks for reading!