We arrived at the hospital within the hour. Because I'm group B strep positive (google it) it was pretty important for me to get to the hospital immediately and start a regiment of antibiotics to protect the baby against related complications. And then we waited. And waited. And waited for labor to start. After a couple of hours we got a little more proactive, walking the hospital, sitting on the birthing ball hoping gravity and using my core muscles would help, and even pumping. All day Saturday as the midwives shifts changed they came in with to monitor my vitals - they had varying limitations on how long they wanted to let me go before the evil Pitocin would be introduced, but I never imagined I'd have to worry about it, something like 80% of women go into labor within 24 hours of ruptured membranes. On Saturday night they offered me an antihistamine and some narcotic, I think Morphine, to make sure I got a good night of rest. I took the antihistamine, but skipped the Morphine.
I got a few hours of sleep. On Sunday morning the midwife, Rebecca, was mysteriously absent. We would come to find out later that she was kind of pushing the envelope letting me go to see if I would go into labor. Around 2pm we had "the talk" about Pitocin. If we were going to have to induce, we didn't want to get too much later into the night- so that I would have the energy to labor well. So, at 4pm, 36 hours after my water broke, they induced me.
Giving birth was the most physically challenging thing I have ever done, but the physical and emotional exhaustion that followed, along with hormones and adrenaline, quickly hazed my memories key hours of the event.
Mostly, I was really inside myself. Hours of trying to get my body to work efficiently with what the pitocin was doing to me were punctuated by milestones in labor. The first few contractions were scary. I knew they would get worse, more intense, closer together, but I couldn't think how I would survive the ones I was experiencing. I closed myself in the bathroom for a bit to try to right myself.
And then I just did it. It hurt. It really hurt. And I occasionally had a few seconds of a break between contractions to say something salty or tell people to leave me alone. Jon bathed me in ice water and coached me on my sounds and kept me focused. MM cheered me on (without sounding cheery), supported Jon however she could and documented the events for us.
When I got to 7 cm, we moved the caravan of stuff from our room to the waterbirth room. The tub was soothing, but not as dramatically different as I had anticipated. I was probably more comfortable laboring on the toilet. I had hoped to deliver in the tub, it seemed a gentler birth for baby, but the monitors became cumbersome and it became difficult for the midwife to keep good track of Kai's heartrate.
So, out from the tub, loaded up on the bed and ready to go back to my room, I heard someone say that they will need a clinician. I didn't know what that meant, but I guessed maybe a doctor. The midwife said the baby was in distress and started having me change positions to get Kai to respond with a more favorable heartrate. The position changes hurt. Jon was right in my face, looking at me intently, trying to distract me. I was thinking that a c-section was in my future.
Some time passed and then then it was time to push. I don't know how many times I pushed...not more than a few and at 2:21am, he was born. I heard someone say that the clinician was no longer needed, the baby was fine. I never really had the time or energy to react or be afraid of how Kai was. I didn't even have the context to know when to be concerned. But when they pulled him up on my chest he was blue. Blue like...BLUE. And I just couldn't believe he was okay, but they rubbed him and he cried and he was fine.
I pulled him to my breast and he tried to latch right away. The position was all wrong and we were both tired, but he knew what he was supposed to do. I held him as I delivered the placenta (no one ever talks about that, but it's like delivering a preemie twin...not pleasant.).
MM, Jon, Kai and I hung around for a while, maybe a couple of hours? And then Jon took MM home and I took a bath while Kai got his. We spent a little while working on feeding and then we slept.
