Henry's birth story: Part 3

At this point, I woke Ben up because I was really needing to focus through the contractions and I also felt the need to stand up and lean against him as I swayed and tried to breath through them. I told him to call my mom and tell her to come to the hospital since she wasn't originally planning on coming until later since we thought the induction would take awhile.

My mom got to the hospital around 830 AM and by that point I was entering transition. People really mean it when they say that transition is the most intense part of labor. At this point I threw up a couple of times and was needing Ben to give me counter pressure with each contraction. I would lean over on the bed and say, "Higher! Lower! Harder!" as Ben pushed against my tail bone.

The counter pressure helped a lot when I could find just the right spot for it, but the contractions were coming so fast now and I was so exhausted that I was really struggling to get through them, and then I would practically fall asleep in the fifteen seconds before the next one. I kept saying, "I just need a longer break. Henry just give me a little break, please." I had read birth stories where contractions had stopped for women around this point as if their body was giving them a break before pushing, and in that moment I just really wanted to be one of them.

I had told Ben that if I ever got to the point that I said, "I can't do this anymore," it meant that I was in transition and that he needed to help me push through it. I was right. When I uttered those words I was dilated to an 8, but Ben was not about to make me push through it. I asked him for his side of that story and he said, "I know that's what I was supposed to do, but I don't believe that any husband could bear to make their wives push through it when they are experiencing that kind of pain and exhaustion."

My midwife came in and when she saw how I was doing she said, "Sydney, you've done an amazing job, especially enduring everything that you've already had to endure. You've made it all the way to an 8, but my concern is that you are not going to have the energy to push. It's just a suggestion, and you don't have to do it, but I think you should get an epidural." I thought about it and I realized that she was right. It had been a week since I had had more than two hours of uninterrupted sleep at a time and I didn't want them to have to use forceps or a vacuum to try to get him out of me, so I said, "OK. I want an epidural." I think Ben was more relieved at this point than I was.

They made everyone else leave the room during the epidural which I hated because I really needed to lean forward onto someone's shoulders if I was going to sit down during contractions and they made me just grab onto a pillow instead. I remember the anesthesiologist saying, "OK you have to hold really still if you have a contraction while I'm putting the needle in or it will go too far and become a spinal." HA! Holding still during a contraction makes it 17 trillion times more painful...

Once the epidural took effect I was out like a light in a matter of seconds and I was able to get about two hours of sleep before they woke me up and told me that I was dilated completely and it was almost time to push. They went to get my midwife and while we waited for her I suddenly became much more aware and self-conscious because I wasn't turned inward to work through the pain. I realized that my friend Betty, who I had asked to take pictures of the birth, was there and had been since shortly after my mom got there. I also realized that I still had pink calamine lotion slathered all over my body and that I hadn't washed my hair or face in two days because I'd been so consumed with the PUPPS. Suddenly I wasn't so sure that I wanted those birth pictures after all ;).

My midwife came in and asked if I wanted her to turn off the epidural for pushing and I said yes. I started pushing, and for awhile I still couldn't feel anything, but eventually it wore off and I was able to push a lot more productively. The time came that I felt "the ring of fire" and I think that was the worst part of the whole labor for me. I had wanted to push slowly to reduce my risk of tearing, but when I felt that "ring of fire" I couldn't stand to not push through it.

I pushed for about an hour total before Henry Doc Lindsey was born on Wednesday, August 22, 2012 at 1:51 PM weighing in at 8 pounds 1 ounce and measuring 20 and 1/4 inches long. My midwife pulled him out and said, "Mom reach down and grab your baby," so I did and I pulled him up on my chest, holding him close, examining every inch of him, and telling him how much I loved him.

It's hard to describe how I felt in that moment. I always thought I would cry, but I didn't. Instead, I just felt complete, as though I was saying, "Oh there you are, I've been waiting for you."  I instantly felt like his mom and I instantly loved him.

I finished the delivery, they clamped the cord, and then some mean nurse took him away from me to wipe him off, wrap him up, and stimulate him because he wasn't crying a lot. Ben got nervous about him not crying, but I knew that he was just fine and was annoyed that she took him from me. I kept saying, "Wait, can I do skin-to-skin with him?" and one of the other nurses had to say, "She wants to do skin-to-skin," so she finally brought him over and laid him back on my chest.

During all of this I was bleeding more than what is normal and Ben was pretty freaked out about it. I only had a first degree tear but apparently it was in a very vascular spot and so it caused me to bleed really bad. My hemoglobin dropped four points and they were almost going to give me a blood transfusion but they didn't because I wasn't exhibiting other signs of needing one. I was pretty blissfully unaware of all of this at the time because I was just soaking in my new little baby.

Things didn't go as I originally planned. But I think that everything happened exactly the way it needed to and I'm very happy when I look back on my birth experience. Things are going really well at home with my sweet little boy, he already knows and loves his mama.  Both Ben and I are absolutely smitten with him. And my PUPPPS rash is still around in some spots, but definitely not near as unbearable and is getting better every day.

The End.