Meg’s Birth Story #1

December 23, 2019

We’ll call this one ‘The Lost Weekend’

When you’re expecting a December baby, there is a constant narrative in the back of your mind of whether or not this baby will arrive in the middle of holiday plans. There’s family to see, festivities to celebrate, and shopping to do for most of the month. I wondered if she would arrive on her own special day or overlapping a memorable event. My due date was Christmas Day. Pregnancy was physically hard on me and I was excited for the part I was accustomed to as a postpartum nurse. I knew I’d thrive better there. I don’t have many photos of myself while pregnant, but here is the last one I have with my nephew, about two weeks before he got to meet his new cousin and best friend.

And so it began…sort of…

Fast forward to 39 weeks and 2 days (a Friday) and I told my husband as he headed to bed that something felt different, and I wanted to stay on the couch for now. I deal with pain best by moving and swaying and I knew I’d disturb him if I tried to lie in bed. Those Braxton Hicks contractions started becoming painful and regular late in the evening and continued into the early morning hours. I woke my husband up in the middle of the night and said, “I think I’m in labor”.  We timed contractions, swayed, practiced the breathing we learned in childbirth class all through the night. They were coming every 5 minutes by the time the sun came up and I was stopping to breathe through them all. Aaaaand then by 7am they fizzled out entirely. I went several hours without a single one and was so discouraged, but also welcomed a chance at some sleep. When I woke up from a nap, they started up again. I know now that this is textbook prodromal labor (don’t call it false labor unless you want to get punched). To make a very long weekend shorter, this pattern continued every few hours until Sunday evening. I called every midwife in the entire practice throughout that weekend asking for advice. Each time I dialed their number, I hoped to hear the voice of my favorite midwife (and one of my most trusted colleagues), but she was off for a few days leading up to her call on Christmas. They told me everything from trying to sleep and ignore them to drinking a glass of wine and trying to eat a meal. I couldn’t manage much of any of it over those two and half days. One even told me she could hear in my voice that I was still in early labor (as opposed to active) because I sounded as if I was giving her report on the phone rather than calling her as a patient #nurseproblems. I was tired and felt like I had exhausted my patience for controlled breathing and pain management. I just wanted to have a baby.

Active Labor Begins

By Sunday night, I was irritable and utterly exhausted. My daughter had been sunny side up and days of back labor left me drained. I decided to try and eat a meal for the first time in quite a while. Afterwards, I tried to get comfortable in bed. My husband begged me to try and get some sleep or at least close my eyes. He knew how fed up I was. Around 2am on December 23rd (39 weeks and 5 days), another contraction peaked, and I ripped the covers off, stood up and screamed “I CAN’T TAKE THIS ANYMORE!!!!!!” and simultaneously my water broke with a big pop and a gush. I followed up that loud exclamation of surrender with an “oh crap!” and a waddle to the bathroom trying not to leak on the carpet. My husband followed me in where he found me sitting on the toilet. Immediately the contractions were twice as strong and twice as frequent. I could barely talk through them and I vomited that dinner I managed to eat earlier all over the sink. We called the midwife on call again and she knew as well as we did that we’d finally crossed the threshold into active labor, and I was ready to make my way in to the hospital. She asked me if I wanted a room with a tub or if I wanted an epidural. Up to this point the conversations we had about it during my prenatal visits were a sort of “wait and see” attitude. I wasn’t sure I’d need it but wasn’t sure I wouldn’t either. I was indifferent to either scenario and just wanted what I felt was right for my body in the moment. When she asked on speaker phone in the bathroom, my husband loves to recount that I responded loudly with “I WANT AN EPIDURAL PLEASE”. My exhaustion was inhibiting my ability to cope with pain and I had a hunch I’d have trouble dilating as long as I was gritting through contractions instead of relaxing into them.

A Warm Hospital Welcome

We made it to the hospital and got settled. As I said earlier, my preferred way to cope with pain is to rock and sway. I also feel anxious in crowded rooms, so I kept my eyes closed most of the time with my husband guiding me. I came to the hospital on a slow night (it was days before Christmas) and got a lot of attention from a lot of different people. As an employee on a slow night, it was nice to be welcomed and settled quickly. One nurse placed my IV, one took my vitals, one helped me change my clothes, and one hooked me up to the fetal monitor. It all happened so fast, and I was sitting with my legs crisscrossed in the bed, swaying back and forth with my eyes closed all the while. The midwife who was on call overnight never left my room and even sat in the corner for support while the anesthesiologist placed by epidural. That physician was an angel on Earth and treated me kindly, gently, and was in and out of my room in about 5 minutes. He placed my epidural with absolutely no pain or discomfort in under 60 seconds. I was particularly concerned about being able to stay still for the procedure, since I hadn’t stopped rocking back and forth since my water broke, so I was really pleased with how quickly it went. I immediately started to feel relief and was able to relax into the bed again. My midwife waited until my epidural took effect to check my cervix. When she finally did, I was 4 cm and fully effaced. They anticipated I’d have a baby maybe later that night, considering it was my first baby and I had a ways to go. I closed my eyes again with a huge smile on my face as I listened to my daughter’s heartbeat on the monitor.

A Special Christmas Surprise

My mom, who is also a nurse and works at the same hospital, came in for her shift around 6:30am to say hello and take my husband downstairs to get some coffee and breakfast while I continued to rest. I also said hello to a few friends who were heading home after their night shift. I felt well cared for, loved, and comfortable. When my husband came back, the midwife who was on call for the day came to say hello. I didn’t know this at the time, but she was newly pregnant herself and dealing with some terrible morning sickness. After that initial check in, I never saw her again because she went home sick. As I mentioned, I was still feeling a little disappointed in the back of my head that my favorite midwife wouldn’t be on that day. I knew she was working over Christmas so I had narrowly missed her by a day. Little did I know that when the midwife I should’ve seen went home sick, they notified the rest of the group that I was admitted, and my favorite midwife came in ON HER DAY OFF just for me.

When I felt rectal pressure and figured it was time to push, I pressed my call bell to let my nurse know. I heard a knock at the door, and someone walked in, but it wasn’t my nurse. When I turned to look, it was Lisa, the midwife I hoped would catch my daughter. I had tears in my eyes knowing she was there, and I had absolutely everything I wanted. When she checked me, I was 9.5cm dilated with a cervical lip. Since I had an epidural, she was able to reduce it manually without much discomfort and ready to push. I chose to push on my back, but if I knew what I know now, I might’ve tried getting on my hands and knees since my epidural was light and I hoped my daughter might turn anterior. I pushed a few times with every contraction and laughed and rested in between them. I had a new nurse on orientation next to my head on one side helping to coach me. I’ll never forget her soft voice in my ear helping me count as I pushed. My husband was on my other side, and my midwife was at the foot of the bed. In about 45 minutes, my daughter was born and on my chest at 10:24am. We laughed, we cried, and we both decided in our heads that her name was Teresa and announced it to each other simultaneously. It was a very sweet moment and the sound of his voice saying her name for the first time is imprinted in my memory forever.

Golden Hour Disruptions

A few minutes after she was born, assessed, and dried off on my chest, they asked if they could take her to the warmer to assess her more closely because they were concerned about her breathing pattern. I agreed, and my husband followed her over to the radiant warmer where she was weighed an assessed. She weighed 8lbs 12oz, which is just shy of the threshold to be considered “large for gestational age”. My husband and I were both absolutely shocked by her size and had to ask the nurse to repeat the number for us several times before we believed them. The decision was made to take her to the newborn nursery to check on her blood sugar and grunting noises (which sometimes go hand in hand due to low blood sugar – very large or very small babies sometimes have difficulty with this). My husband went with her and was treated like royalty by my friends and coworkers.

While they were gone, I enjoyed an ice pop and Lisa stitched up my second-degree tear. If you had asked me in the moment if I was disappointed that I lost my golden hour, I’d tell you yes, of course. But with a little bit of hindsight perspective, I can tell you that it happened the way it was meant to and I don’t regret it. I do sometimes wish I had spoken up more in the moment. Maybe she wouldn’t have left me. I don’t really remember her breathing or color being is poor as they said, and when I look back at photos, she looks pink and comfortable to me. But I also recognize that I wasn’t the nurse in the room and my judgement might not have been the best that day. Mostly I just remember that my husband returned with my daughter absolutely beaming. He got a special few moments alone with her and proudly got to present her back to me a little while later. I would never steal that moment from him even if I could go back and redo things. In the end, I had uninterrupted skin to skin with her for the next several hours, initiated breastfeeding, and we made up for it all and then some.

In summary…highs and lows.

We were discharged home bright and early on Christmas morning. Mom and dad in accidentally matching green shirts and sweatpants, babe in the Santa jammies I saved just incase the stars aligned for her birthday. I have a few very vivid memories and lessons I learned on the postpartum side of things, both in the hospital and at home, but those are a story for another day. The sum of this birth story is that my miserable pregnancy ended with THE MOST miserable weekend of my life (at least until the next time I had a baby 😉) and was followed up by the most peaceful, comfortable, and perfect-for-us birth story.

Everyone’s birth story and experience is their own. We wanted to share this with you to share a part of ourselves. Nothing in this birth story or our future birth stories is the “right" or “wrong” way, just the way it happened.

Your postpartum nurses Meg and Carly here to prepare you for postpartum and beyond. We want to make sure you have the education you need to care for your own healing body after birth, not just your baby.

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