Annora's Birth Story - born Oct. 20th, 2007
Friday October 19th
Felt tired and drained all morning while working around the house. I was having some strong Braxton Hicks contractions all morning and into the afternoon. My sister called at about 3pm and I remember telling her I felt 'achy' all over. Since my membranes had been stripped on Thursday, I was starting to wonder if the 'contractions' could be the start of labor. I decided to go on a walk at about 4:30pm to see if this got anything started, but NO things remained the same.
Rich and I had Jonathan and Becca over for dinner and a movie that night. I had been craving a Buffalo Chicken Pizza from Johnny's so the guys went out and picked it up. I really wasn't hungry at all during dinner and only ate about 1 ½ slices...not normal.
They left at about 11pm and I was just exhausted so I went to bed.
Saturday October 20th – her due date
2am – woken up by strong contraction – This had happened the weekend before so I really thought nothing of it and went back to bed. Rich was playing video games in the bonus room and I harassed him about coming to bed. My thought was, 'Get some sleep, if this happens soon you need rest too!'
3am – woken by another contraction
3:40am – woken by the 3rd contraction – at this point I decided to just get out of bed and come downstairs and play on the computer.
The contractions continued to get closer together but were really randomly spaced, 10mins, 14 mins, 20 mins, 7 mins. I read every section on labor in my pregnancy books and decided that it had to be false labor....I crawled back into bed with Rich around 9 am and told him that I'd been having contractions but was convinced it was a false alarm. Rich woke up and pulled out a crossword to work while we continued to time them...So there we were solving word puzzles...
10am – get out of bed to go to the bathroom, comment to Rich that I feel like I'm peeing myself everytime I have a contraction. Rich laughs at this because I'd peed myself several times during the pregnancy from sneezing. That and I have a really sharp pain under my right rib cage, hindsight 20/20 she probably ruptured the sac at that point.
10:15 – Having to breathe through contractions and Rich suggests I take a shower 'just in case'
10:38 – Get out of shower after having about 3-4 contractions and decide this is probably it. Call Doctor's answering service and say I 'think' my water broke. Doctor says to come on in to the hospital to get checked.
12pm – Arrive at hospital, get checked in maternity triage – 3.5cm dilated, 100% effaced, +1 station.
I will note at this point that triage was 'empty' when I got there, no nursing staff to be found. Rich was downstairs on the main floor of the hospital checking me in so I was all alone.
1:30pm – We get moved to a room on the ward. My hospital anxiety takes over at this point. The contractions are getting stronger and I just can't keep myself calm. Rich is also showing a lot of worry and his eyes tear up when I'm in pain. Decide to get epidural to help both of us out.
2pm – Get epidural – hooray! Sweet relief and a nap! Since I'd gone to bed at 1am I was already exhausted.
6:30 pm – Dr. Alarcon comes in to check on me. He looks at my contraction pattern and is like 'whoa, we may have to slow that pitocin drip, your contractions are every 1 min.' I wasn't on pitocin. He decides to check me and finds I'm only at 5cm! After 6.5 hrs, I've only progressed 1.5cm and she's gone back UP to a 0 station!
7:00pm - Dr. Alarcon decided to insert an internal contraction monitor to better test the contraction strength. We find out I'm having 1 productive contraction for every 3-4 I'm having....Ugh! So, we start pitocin. At this point I ask for a little more epidural because I'm feeling cramping through my current dose and I know that Pitocin makes STRONG contractions.....
7:45 pm – Comment to Rich that I've started to feel cramping only on my right side again and it's getting stronger! Nurse flips me to my right side to see if the epidural meds will run to that side of my spine to numb me....yeah, you're suppose to flip from side to side every 15 minutes for an hour after getting an epi...The nurse FORGOT!!!!
8:00pm – Anesthesiologist arrives and I'm crying through contractions at this point. Our best guess is that I'm in transition(8-10) centimeters and feeling ALL of it on my right side. Anesthesiologist gives me a double dose to kill off the pain....oh, I felt sooooo much better
Proceed to get the shakes from the epidural, like chills but you're not cold.
8:30pm – Dr. Alarcon comes to check – COMPLETE! +2 station. Well, hooray, I'm numb....Dr. has to go do csection and will be back in a bit. With me numb and a first time mom the nurse/doctor assume it will take a while to push this baby out. Little do they know.....
8:45pm – Still having the shakes and start feeling nauseous...throw up olive green bile. Yeah, I feel REALLY sexy at this point! But better non the less....
8:55pm – Feeling really full in the pelvis despite the numbness. Rich goes and gets the nurse.
9:00pm, - Nurse and Rich flip me to my back. Nurse sets up stirrups. She then looks at the heart monitors and calls down the hall on her cell – 'Um, I need some help down here' Four nurses come into my room and start flipping me from side to side.
9:05pm – Annora has descended FAST, heartrate up at 200+ and she's crowning. Every nurse is calling their doctor on the ward as mine is still in a csection! Oxygen mask is on my face at this point and I'm told to breath deep.
9:10pm - Doctor Mary Lanham-Chapel walks in to deliver baby (background, I 'fired' her as my OB about 4 years ago for refusing to believe I had a hormone issue, calling me 'fat', and not prescribing a diaphragm like I wanted)
9:10pm - Started pushing, since I was numb tried to visualize what that would feel like. Rich was on my right side holding my right leg back and talking me through things.... About 7 pushes later and with the use of a small suction cup....
9:20pm - Annora arrived! And Dr. Alarcon walked in 2 mins later from the CSection
