Sorry it has taken me so long to write this one, but its taken time to wrap my brain around how I wanted to write this. You see, its not your average birth story and while I am extremely proud, its not all my tale to tell. So, please understand that I may not go into as much detail as I could or I leave something out. Its not because I don't want to share those things, but because I feel like its not my place.
My alarm went off at 3:30am, but lets face it, I was up long before that. In fact, I'm not sure I slept much that night and I know N didn't. The excitement was killing us!
My husband and I arrived at 5am to get medicine started and get checked in. N&R came (fashionably late) right after I was dressed in the amazingly sexy hospital gown and had climbed into the bed.
"We are having a baby!" N shouted as she entered the room, annoying the nurse putting in my IV. "There are people trying to sleep..." The nurse said with a scowl. However, once we explained N was The Mother, the nurse backed off.
Once the IV was started, we tried to sit patiently for the pitocin to arrive and soon fell easily into conversation. We didn't even realize there was a problem with the medication until the nurses did a shift change and the doctor showed up to break my water. Apparently the pharmacy had rejected the OB/GYN's signature (who does that) and instead of telling anyone, just went along their business. Doc was a little upset at this, but thanks to our amazing delivery nurse, we were soon back on track (at about 8am).
Ok, so I will skip the boring parts... Basically, Pitocin gets started, contractions continue and things REALLY start to get rolling. Meanwhile, everyone is in the waiting room taking bets on how much longer I will be in labor. You see, I have a rep for fast deliveries. With H, we showed up at 6am and she was born at 1pm. C, 10am and was born at almost 3pm and R, I showed up at 6am and had a baby a little after noon.
Unfortunately, the pool that had started in the waiting room was unknowingly stressing me out. Well, maybe my subconscious knew, but she didn't bother telling the rest of me until my vision went blurry (the first sign I am going to get a migraine) I wanted to give birth already! Everyone was so excited and depending on me and that pressure to preform gave me the migraine.
*** For anyone who is wondering, yes a migraine SUCKS when trying to push out a baby!***
My doctor gave me two options (after shutting down the betting game), I could either stop the pitocin, get some meds to help with the pain and take a nap or I could get an epidural and see if that helped. I decided to take the epidural. No way was I starting this process over.
More boring stuff- epidural is givien (best anesthesiologist ever), doc breaks my water and I go from 6 cm to 10 in no time.
Along with the contraction pain, my migraine lessened to a headache. Thanks to the very strong epidural. Everyone thought it was a good idea to make the epidural strong, because of my migraine and so did I, but while it numbed my head, it also numbed the rest of my body even more. This made it very hard to figure out what I was doing in the pushing department. I think I was pushing my eyeballs out of my head for the first few minutes, but once I got the hang of things Mr. D came pretty fast. In fact, he was born right before Noon! New record, oh yeah!!!
The most amazing moment happened right after Mr. D was born. My OBGYN laid him on my stomach for all of us to see. In that moment, everything we had been through just melted away. All the sickness and pain my family and I had endured was gone in that instant. I'm sure N&R felt the same way as they looked at their brand new baby boy.
All of a sudden, they were a family. That angel they had prayed so hard for had finally arrived and I got to help. There is nothing that could rival that feeling. Second only to the birth of my own children.
For the next hour, my husband and I got to watch as a bond between Mother, Father and Son formed. It wasn't just that though, in that time we all became closer. The OBGYN teared up, the nurse mothered me and checked every couple of minutes to make sure I was physically and emotionally ok. My husband held my hand, just like he did with our childrens' births and tirelessly watched over me as I was stitched up and cared for.
After that, the extended family was let in. It was like the flood gates erupted. Small at first, like a tiny crack had formed, but then all of a sudden the whole dam broke and there were people EVERYWHERE! Some laughing, most crying, but all smiling.
Everyone and everything brought together, probably for lifetimes to come, by one tiny 8 pound 6 ounce, amazing, perfect little miracle.
