The Labor Story - Part Two

M, Mom and I arrived at the hospital around 2:30am on Friday, August 17th. The place was blissfully quiet and downright serene. It seemed like we were the only people there as we made our way to the labor and delivery ward. I resisted the offer of a wheelchair at first, but thankfully changed my mind. The contractions weren't super painful yet, but they definitely made walking difficult. And it seemed like the corridor was endless, as was the elevator ride, before we finally got to our destination. By this point I was pretty tired, having been up for 21 hours already.

A nurse put M and me into a room, gave me a hospital johnny (so sexy!) and hooked me up to a couple monitors to track the baby's heartbeat and my contractions. Thus began a very boring hour, where we waited in a tiny room, me on the bed, M on a chair, staring at a monitor because the only thing on TV was Hanging with Mr. Cooper or some equally boring show. Admittedly it was fun to have M tell me, "You're having a contraction... and now it's peaking... and now it's going down," based on what he could see from the monitor. Otherwise, it was just boring. Except for the part when the nurse came in to give me my first pelvic exam. Hoo. Ray. Having a contraction while being poked and prodded from the inside is totally NOT awesome. When she first did it, I was no more progressed than I had been at my last doctor appointment the previous Tuesday (1 cm. and 80% effaced, for those of you who know what I'm talking about). So I thought for sure at that point it was fake labor. But when the nurse returned and did a second exam, finding that I was 3 cm. (while contracting) and 100% effaced, it seemed like the time had come.

Sure enough, I was admitted and we got our very own room for the duration. There was a moment when we were moving over to the room where I would labor, deliver, and then recover until we went home when I panicked. I realized, all of a sudden, that this was it. By the end of this particular road, I would be a mother. Have a completely foreign life. And have a baby for which her father and I would be 100% responsible. Somewhere in the recesses of my brain, I heard, "No, no, no! I'm not ready for this yet!" But the inevitability of my body's processes quieted the panic enough so that I didn't freak out and make a me-shaped hole in the hospital wall.

Once we got settled, it was just more waiting around for not much to happen. By then, it was nearly 4:00. The admitting nurse started going through a bunch of paperwork, which was not so much fun considering the fact that every few minutes I felt like my insides were turning inside out. She kept asking me questions I couldn't answer fully, giving me information I couldn't process properly, handing me documents to sign that I could barely focus on, and overall badgering the hell out of me while I was in a lot of pain. Looking back on it, she was just doing what she needed to do paperwork-wise. But it seemed downright cruel at the time. Thankfully, she had the patience of a saint, and kept badgering to a minimum during the peaks of my contractions.

Around 6:00, my doctor showed up to check on me. Hers was a welcome familiar face, although she wasn't there too long and when she checked me (yippee, more internal prodding!) I wasn't any farther along than the last check: 3 cm, and down to 80% effaced. Sigh. If I remember correctly, she came back one more time just before getting off shift at 7:00 and checked me again, but by then I was so tired that the memory is foggy of those morning hours. I got a new nurse, Marah, at 7:00 and she was with me through delivery. I loved Marah. She was so motherly and kind. She didn't badger me, and when I had a hard contraction, she would say things like, "You're doing so well, I am really impressed." The kind of stuff she probably says to all patients, but that made me feel like I could go on.

I think it was around 7:30 or so I'd had it with the contractions and asked for Nubain (a relatively mild pain medication administered via IV and a shot to the arse) to take the edge off. I had wanted very much to remain drug-free through labor and I was extremely leery of doing anything that would slow down the process. I held off on Nubain until this point because I'd rather deal with the pain then having this labor business go on any longer than absolutely necessary. By this point, though, I'd just about had it. I was so tired that I just needed a break. Labor takes a lot out of you, especially when you've been up for over 24 hours. (And before any of my competitive mommy readers wants to point out that my labor was probably the easiest thing since slicing bread compared to their labors, I don't wanna hear it - everybody's labor sucks in its own way. Am I right? Yes, of course I'm right. It's my blog.)

Anyway, once the Nubain kicked in a bit, I could actually relax a little. I was still in pain, of course, but I managed to sleep a little between contractions. So I had about 90 minutes of 2 minute catnaps alternating with three-minute contractions. Not ideal, but it made me able to deal with things a little better.

Next installment: Water, water, everywhere; more drugs, and the big push. Come for the science, stay for the gory details!