Nothing According to Plan

I kind of had a birth plan.....kind of. I remember the nurse at our birthing class told us that she literally cringes every time a pregnant mom comes into the hospital in labor and hands her a birth plan. She said it is an automatic jinx on their labor and delivery. Now I am not a particularly suspicious person, but I decided that I would not write down my birth plan. I was approaching it with the thought that I would have "birthing wishes" and just hoped that they would come true. Boy, was I wrong.

This was how I envisioned my labor and delivery going down:

I wake up on the weekend and around mid-morning, I start having contractions. I wait around getting things done until it is time to go to the hospital. I am showered, well fed, and have my hair and makeup done when arriving. My contractions are effective, but not overly painful. I can deal. After approximately 8 hours of labor and no epidural, I am completely dilated and ready to push. Fast forward 20 minutes and we have our beautiful baby boy via a natural birth.

The end.

This is how it really went:

On Thursday the 15th, Ryan and I came home from my parents house. We had decided to have a little party get-together with his brother and his wife on Saturday night to watch the BYU vs. U of U football game and were teasing that Stratton (our baby) couldn't come that weekend because it would mess up our entire plan. We get ready for bed and I lay down. And then I wet myself.

Or did I???

After much contemplation and debating, Ryan convinces me that my water has broken with a slow trickle and that we are going to have the baby soon. I don't want to go to the hospital because it is about 10:30 pm and I'm not even having contractions. Deferring to my judgement, Ryan and I go to bed. We then wake up at about 6 am and have breakfast. I'm still not wanting to go to the hospital, but this time I defer to Ryan's judgement and we decided to go in.

They take me back and take a swab to determine if my water really has broken or if I have lost control of my bladder. I would have felt so dumb if I had just wet myself! The lab comes back and it really is my water that has broken. Now this is a little interesting fact: Only about 10-15% of women actually have their amniotic fluids break on its own. Of that small percentage, only about 10% do not experience contractions with their fluids breaking. I am one of those 10% of the 10-15% of women. Crazy eh?

So they started me on pitocin at 9:30 am. Hour after hour passes while they slowly dial up the dose. I also had tested positive for Strep B so they had to give me antibiotics for that. I hated that part. The antibiotics made my mouth taste like metal. Gross.

At this point I am doing great. I keep thinking with each contraction, "Really? This is it? These contractions are a cake walk. I could keep this up all day....."

However, at about 3 pm, it was like I hit a wall. All of a sudden the contractions went from uncomfortable cramps to mind-boggling, breath stealing, body shaking pains. AND they were coupling contractions so instead of getting a contraction that lasted about a minute and then went back down to normal, I would have 2 contractions with 1 immediately following the other and they would last for about 2-3 minutes each. It was insane. Suddenly my thoughts of having a natural birth without an epidural flew right out the window. I asked for an epidural at about 3:30. I was then told that the anesthesiologist had just left but he was expected back in about 30-45 minutes. I seriously thought I might die before he returned. However, since I am typing this, I obviously survived. The anesthesiologist finally arrived and quickly gave me the epidural. I think he gave me a bit too much though because it completely knocked out all feeling from about my rib cage down to my toes. My legs would randomly flop off the bed and I wouldn't even know. I felt nothing.

After getting the epidural, Stratton's heart rate dropped and wouldn't come back up, so they took me off the pitocin and waited to see if my contractions would continue on their own. His heart rate recovered and although my contractions slowed down drastically, they continued, so we just started playing the waiting game.

At about 5 pm I convince my family that they should order pizza and that it is no big deal if they want to eat it in my room! I think I'm masochistic. Around 7 o'clock the smell of pizza has really started to get to me and I decide that I want to eat just a little piece of crust. While the nurses weren't looking my sister Katie was able to sneak me a couple bites. I was in heaven. However, later while I was pushing, I got really sick feeling and had to throw up. It was pretty awesome cuz as I am hurling into this little bucket, I'm frantically looking for pizza crust chunks and hoping that the nurse can't see them and get upset at me! Ha ha! Turns out it wasn't the last time I would throw up that evening...I know I threw up once after Stratton was born and I might have even thrown up one more time between. I can't remember. It was all a blur.
                                                                             
Okay...back to birthing.....
Finally at about 9:45 pm I was dilated to a 10 and the nurse told me that I was ready to push.

*Just a side note about my nurse*
She was fabulous. Absolutely loved her. She was very nice, patient, encouraging, and I actually felt like she knew what she was talking about. :)

It is now a little past 10 pm I am instructed to start pushing. Do ya'll remember that epidural that I mentioned earlier and how it knocked out all feeling from the ribcage on down? Well.....it made it very difficult to push when I couldn't even feel anything! I had think little spot right under my left rib the would kind of tingle when I was about to have a contraction. I'd tell the nurse and then she would look at the monitor and tell me to push when the contraction got going. Then the little nurse would tell me if I was actually pushing or if I was just holding my breath for nothing. It was quite difficult to be imagining what pushing would feel like if I COULD feel and then trying to do it. I think my lack of feeling really contributed to our long pushing time.

After about an hour of pushing with no results, the doctor decided that he needed to use the forecepts. Stratton was coming out face up (it works better if they are face down) and his head was kind of getting stuck on my pelvis bones, so the doctor wanted to help me out. I was pretty excited when he told me this. I'm totally thinking, "Bring it on! I push a little and the doctor pulls and we are going to have this kid here in no time!" That was before I saw the actual forecepts! Those suckers are pretty scary. I have no idea how they get them to fit inside of a person along with a baby and all the fun tubes that are already up there. So he gets the forecepts around Stratton's head and starts to pull with my contractions. I would have died if I didn't have the epidural at this point. I couldn't feel my contractions, but I could feel those forecepts!

So....the Doc pulled and pulled and I pushed and pushed, but the little pig just wouldn't come out. Sadly, the forecepts weren't doing much. Stratton was stuck pretty good and I was wearing out. At 11:30 the doctor turned to his nurse and said, "I'm going to take the forecepts out because they just aren't helping anything. We will give her 2 more contractions to push through and if he doesn't move with either of those, we are going to have to go back to the drawing board." I knew that this meant a c-section and I really didn't want that! Fear is a great motivator. I started to pray. I don't know why I hadn't done this before. I'm thinking that my pushing time might have only lasted a few minutes if I would have prayed first, but now I guess we will never know. So I'm praying and they take the forecepts out and tell me to start pushing and Stratton finally started to move!!! I was so excited! Fast forward 10 minutes and our little guy had arrived!

He was so funny when he came out. He never even cried, just did 3 little disgusted whimpers and then relaxed. I also was amazed that he knew the sound of my voice. The entire time that he was being cleaned up, he was looking past the nurses and just listening to me talk. So stinking adorable!

Ummm....what else can I tell you about our little hospital stay?

Here is an overshare: between the forecepts, Stratton's big head, and having him come face up instead of face down, I tore quite a bit. It took the doctor almost an hour to get all my internal and external tears stitched up. Sad, sad, sad.
Anyway....

His nasty little forecept bruise

Me back when I still though contractions were fun

My favorite picture of the night. I love that he is pouting and looking right at Ryan. I imagine he was thinking something like, "What the heck Dad!? That wasn't fun!"

Our baby!

We named him Stratton Ryan Stubbs. He was born on September 16th at 11:40 pm.

He weighed 8 lbs 6 oz and was 21 inches long