Birth Story

Mr. A and I went to our 39w appointment on Monday, December 17^th and met with Dr.R. Since baby girl had been measuring 2-3 weeks ahead throughout the majority of my pregnancy, and her movement had slowed significantly in a short period of time, he was uncomfortable waiting too much longer for her arrival. He checked her heartbeat on the Doppler which was perfect. He was happy with my progress, being at 3cm and 80% effaced and stripped my membranes.

We scheduled baby girl’s induction for Tuesday morning, December 18th at 5am.

Tuesday morning, Mr.A and I arrived at the hospital, checked in, completed some paperwork and prepared to get the show on the road. I was hooked up to the monitor right away, which showed sporadic contractions. They hooked me up to the IV to begin fluids and started Pitocin around 6:15.

The Pitocin worked pretty quickly, and I began to have more consistent contractions around 7-8 minutes apart. At first they were more of a tightening feeling with little pain. I could talk and laugh through them without issue.

0700: The nurses switched and I met my new nurse, Edwij (ed-weej – it is French). I was a little apprehensive at first since I adored my first nurse, but Edwij was such a sweetheart it didn’t take long to realize that she was pretty awesome.

0745: My contractions were 3 minutes apart, but still not very painful. At this point, Mr.A and I thought that the height of the “mountain” on the monitor signified the intensity of the contractions. Since some of my “mountains” were fairly high, I was pretty sure that I was a rock star with a high pain tolerance, handling difficult contractions with ease.

Edwij came in to show me some instruments that they may use at some point throughout the day and explained the IUPC. The IUPC is a monitor about the diameter of a pipe cleaner that could be inserted into my uterus and measure the intensity of my contractions. This is when I realized that the external monitor couldn’t and wasn’t accurately showing intensity.

0900: My contractions were beginning to get stronger and I was starting to have back pain. Dr.R came in to check me and break my water. At this point, I had been having contractions of some variety for about 3 hours and was hopeful when he checked that I would have made at least a little progress. Nope. Still at 3cm. Edwij increased my Pitocin and the doctor stated that he wanted it increased every 20 minutes.

After my water was broken and the Pitocin increased, contractions became significantly more painful and were coming around 2 minutes apart. I really wanted to wait until I progressed a bit further to ask for the epidural since I had heard that it can sometimes stall labor.

1023: My contractions were becoming more and more painful, and were only about 1 minute apart. It was becoming more difficult to breathe through them since they were so close together and I wasn’t getting much rest between them. I decided to give in and ask for an epidural.

Edwij explained that they would need to push 1000ccs of IV fluids before the anesthesiologist could place the epidural so it would likely be 40 minutes to an hour before the anesthesiologist would come in.  

Edwij offered me a pain medication in the interim called Phentanol but said that it would make me and baby sleepy. I didn’t like the thought of baby being affected by the medicine, so I declined.

1045: After several very painful and some overlapping contractions, I gave in and asked for the Phentanol. Edwij administered it through my IV and it took affect pretty quickly. It helped take the edge off the contractions while I waited, but unfortunately the relief only lasted 20-30 minutes before it wore off completely. Even more unfortunate than that, shortly after it was administered I began vomiting.

1130: Anesthesiologist came in and epidural was placed.

More vomiting.

1200: Epidural is a success and I feel very little pain from the contractions! Edwij came back in to insert my catheter and check my progress. I was happy to hear that I was 5cm; finally some progress!

12:15: Both legs felt like they were 500 lb tree trunks and I needed help from Mr.A and my mom to change positions at all. I was vomiting again and also realize that my left leg is completely lame and numb.

1230: Dr. R came in and stated that he wanted to insert the IUPC to measure the significance of the contractions and would also check my progress. Dr. R was happy to see my progress, now at 6cm. He said he estimated that she wouldn’t arrive until late evening based on how I had progressed thus far.  

From 12:30 until 2:45, I just hung out with my mom and Mr.A. I was comfortable and would occasionally ask if I was having a contraction because I could feel the tightening feeling in my belly. I continued to get sick intermittently.  

3:00: I started getting a little uncomfortable and began having some back pain. I wondered if things were progressing since I was feeling different.

3:15: I am going to quote Mr.A’s notes directly. “Dr. came in and checked, apparently baby is ready to go! All the barfing helped push baby down. The team is being assembled.” I am officially 10cm and ready to push!

3:20: Edwij wants to try to practice pushing while we wait for the “team”. Mr.A (who said he would never look) sees the head, she is crowning! Edwij calls the nurses’ station to assemble everyone while we waited for the Dr. to return. Edwij makes me stop pushing and wait.

3:49: During the second push, Dr. R had to stop me because he wasn’t prepared for her to come so quickly and needed to reach for something.

3:50: Healthy baby girl born with lots and lots of hair! She is 8lbs even, and 20.5 inches long.

The nursery nurse was wonderful and gave me my slimy, perfect baby girl immediately just as I had wanted. I began crying instantly. I couldn’t believe that this beautiful baby girl was mine. They let Mr.A and I meet our baby girl for the first time, and evaluated her while she was on me skin to skin.

I ended up with a second degree tear from the birth, maybe from my quick transition and delivery.  Dr. R continued to work on me while Mr.A and I met our beautiful, teeny, tiny daughter for the first time. It was so emotional seeing our perfect little girl. It is an incredible feeling knowing that we somehow created something, someone, so perfect and also that she somehow fit inside of me.  

Baby girl still didn’t have a name until late that night when Mr.A wanted to send his official “she’s been born” picture/text to our family and friends and needed to know her name. We had discussed a few possibilities leading up to her birth, but I had not wanted to decide until I saw her.

Our beautiful, perfect daughter's name is Samantha Grace.



My birth experience and recovery were/have been much better than I anticipated. The contractions are seriously no joke, but once I got the epidural I was good to go.

The only negative things about my experience were the vomiting and the fact that my left leg went completely numb from the epi and it took quite a few hours to wear off. Because of this I needed a lot of assistance shifting in bed, moving at all and going to the bathroom. Mr.A saw and learned a lot more about human anatomy, birth and pads than he ever wanted to know, but took it all in stride.