Straight From the Horse's Mouth

It is always fun to read Joel's take on things. If you want to read my take on the delivery, keep reading. If you have no desire to hear anything else about contractions, dilations, or mucous, feel free to abandon this post and do something useful with your time.

I suspected this labor would go fast, but I had no idea how fast. This was the timeline, for those of you who are wondering why I waited "so long" to go to the hospital:

A little after 6 pm, I feel a contraction. We are driving in the car to a restaurant everyone wanted to try out (my mom and sister had come into town three hours earlier and we wanted to celebrate before the baby was born). There is a long wait, so we go somewhere else. My contractions are about 6-7 minutes apart, and I have had no more than four of them.

We find another restaurant, park, sit down, order, and I decide I should start timing my contractions.

6:45--I was surprised that the contractions seem to be three minutes apart.

7:00--Definitely two minutes apart. Right? Am I timing them wrong? This can't be possible, can it? These were all things I was thinking.

7:15--I decide that yes, these are contractions, and yes, I should probably go to the hospital. It has been one hour since my very first contraction.

7:25--We arrive at the hospital. Joel and I walk in to the main entrance because we don't know where to go. We are directed to a long hallway leading to the emergency room. Still having contractions every two minutes. We check in and I answer some questions and try not to look like I'm in pain.

7:35--Someone comes to get me and puts me in a wheelchair. The contractions felt better when I was standing up but I go for the ride anyway.

7:40--I am in a small examination room and change into a robe. I am wondering why these contractions are hurting so badly. I figure I have a couple of hours until I'm going to be fully dilated, and that the contractions will get much worse--these I felt I could handle, but not if they got a lot stronger, so I mention that I would like an epidural so they have time to page the anesthesiologist.

7:40-7:50--I answer questions about my medical history. The contractions hurt (duh). Apparently the nurse asking me questions didn't notice that I was having so many contractions until she looked over and saw me grimacing. Then she looked at the contractions on the monitor and realizes that they are coming every 1-2 minutes.

7:55--the midwife arrives at the hospital and checks me, informs me I'm complete and ready to push. I am surprised. I didn't think I was even close. I laugh/groan and remark that this explains why the contractions were hurting.

8:00--en route to the labor room (we were only in a tiny check-in room), I start to feel the baby coming.

8:00-8:05--everyone is trying to get dressed and grab blankets and towels, but I feel like pushing so I inform the midwife that the baby is coming. I start pushing (with or without them being ready, I decide, but I knew they would be). All of a sudden I have two nurses helping me and the baby is crowning.

8:06--The baby comes barreling out after a few pushes. They place him on me with a whole bunch of blankets. It was really fun to hold him like that and let him nurse for a while as we wait for the third stage of labor to be completed.

A few things surprised me about labor, besides that this particular one went so fast. I thought it would hurt a lot more. The only part about having a natural delivery that scared me was the pushing part (I have had one child get stuck for two hours, and I didn't want that to happen again sans pain relief), but thankfully I only had to push a few times. At that point it was more a matter of wanting to get the baby out than trying to bear the pain, anyway.

I feel like I had a great overall experience and an easy delivery, and I know this was because I didn't already have my energy sapped from having contractions working up to the tough ones. My hat goes off to those of you who spent a few hours contracting only to have to work up more energy to deal with the really bad contractions at the end. Jumping in and having the tough ones to begin with and for only a little over an hour most definitely saved my sanity :). It probably also helped that I was walking around for a lot of it as we were coming to the hospital.

I have some better pictures to put up, but I'll have to do those in another post. If you're still reading, congratulations! You made it to the end!