Julie's Story

As I was prone to do late in my pregnancy with you, I was up a lot during the night.  I was tossing and turning around 5:30AM when I started wondering if my water had broken and had started to leak.  I finally got up around 7:00AM and the leaking stopped.  The books had said that might happen as the baby’s head could stop the flow of the fluid.  I was having no contractions, so I was doubting myself but I decided to call my doctor’s office and let them decide.  The doctor on-call told me to go to the hospital to get checked out.

  Your Daddy & I tried to hurry up and get ready, but I wasn’t due until 1/21 and was feeling great.  I was convinced that I was not going to go early.  So I did not have my hospital bag packed (but I did have a list) and I didn’t even have your nursery ready to go.  I remember packing thinking that I was going to have a baby later that day and it just didn’t feel possible.  I would finally find out if you were a boy or a girl . . . a surprise I wanted to wait to discover in the delivery room.  We ended up not leaving for the hospital until around 9:00AM. 

  As soon as I got to the hospital, they took me back to triage and quickly determined that my water had indeed broken and I was staying to have a baby!!!  I couldn’t believe it.  I think I was just on auto-pilot at this time.  I was in triage until around 10:30AM when they moved me into a room in Labor & Delivery.  They hooked me up to pitocin at 11:00AM to get my contractions started.  I was at 2cm and was 50% effaced at this point.

  Grandma Pam, Hillary Rizza and Sonya Dunnick came up to visit with me and I just hung out with them for awhile.  I started to feel the contractions, but it was like cramping that would come and go in my abdomen.  The pains weren’t slowing me down much and I was carrying on normal conversations.  My doc came in and checked me around 12:00PM and I was at 3cm and 80% effaced.  The same thing continued until 1:00PM when they checked me and I was still the same.  The resident doctor said that he would check me around 2:00PM and hopefully I would be at 4cm and could get the epidural then.

  At this time, everyone left your Daddy & I alone in the room and I moved to the birthing ball and was on it for about an hour.  Contractions were much stronger this time and I was  having to concentrate on breathing through them.  I was even getting dry heaves after some of them due to the pain.  I worked hard to relax through them though as I could definitely feel more pain when I would tense up through them.  Your Daddy was wonderful and massaged my back through each contraction. 

  I finally moved back in bed around 2:00PM in anticipation of being checked and getting my epidural.  Unfortunately, my nurse (Sarah) came in and let me know that the doctor decided not to check me until 3:00PM due to the risk of infection.  She said that the doctor did order stadol for me if I wanted it.  She said that if I wanted her to, she would try to convince the doctor to check me now, but she guaranteed me that if I wasn’t at 4cm the doctor wouldn’t check me again until 4pm.   We decided that we didn’t want to take the risk of waiting until 4pm, so Sarah gave me the stadol around 2:30PM and I just had to make it through until 3:00PM.  I figured I could make it another half hour.

  What a weird experience stadol was for me.  Yuck!  As soon as the nurse put that in my IV, my eyes rolled back in my head and I was OUT!  I would wake for every contraction, but as soon as the contraction would ebb my eyes would roll back in my head and I was out again.  I didn’t expect to feel so out of control with this medicine and I didn’t like it at all.  I do not know for sure how far apart my contractions were at this point . . . maybe 2-3 minutes.  (Interestingly, we never timed the contractions during my labor with you.)  It only lasted for about 20 minutes though and suddenly the contractions were one on top of the next and I was getting no break in between them.  I got the shakes along with the pains and was extremely uncomfortable.  I had your Daddy track down someone as I was confused and I wanted someone to fix it. 

  The resident doctor finally came in at 3:00pm to check my progress.  The doctor checked me and it seemed to take a long, long time.  He finally said, “I am sorry, you are at 9cm”.  NINE CENTIMETERS!!  I was just trying to get to 4cm and here I was at 9cm already.  I was not prepared for that.  I knew that the epidural was not a possibility now, but your Daddy wanted to help me and he asked them to bring down the doctor who administers the epidurals just in case.  Meanwhile, the resident said that there was a bit more of my bag of water left and he broke the remainder of that and left to update my doctor.

  As soon as that doctor left the room, I felt the urge to push.  I remember reading about that urge in the books and had no idea what they were talking about.  But you know it when you feel it.  And I was telling anyone and everyone that I had to push.  People I didn’t know and people that didn’t care, heard about my need to push.  Sarah kept trying to remind me to breathe through the pushes using the technique taught in class.  I kept trying, but it was the hardest thing in the world to do.  For some unknown reason, I decided that I needed something to do with my hands to keep time with my breathing so when I was puffing through the contractions my hands would go up in the hair and I would flap them like the first part of the Chicken Dance.  Oh what a sight I must have been.  Your Daddy said he had no idea what I was doing, but he was smart enough not to ask me at the time.

  The nurse ran to get the doctor back again and he came in at 3:35PM and confirmed that I was at 10 cm!  Yea!!!  He left and the nurse told me that I could “push for comfort”.  Seemed like an absurd statement, but was she ever right.  It felt so good to push against the pain. 

I pushed for a few contractions and then the nurse had me stop as you were crowning already.  How was it that this was happening so fast?  The nurse ran to get the doctor and scrambled to get everything set up for your birth.  No one was expecting me to go already. 

  Dr. Bartholomew finally showed up and I pushed through one more contraction and then heard the doctor with the nasal aspirator.  I was surprised and asked if your head was out.  What a surprise to hear that your head was already out.  All the books had told me to expect to push for about an hour as that is why the call it “labor”.  It hadn’t even been 15 minutes yet and your head was already out.  You had decided that you want to be born and you were going to be born right NOW!!  Little did we know that this was a personality trait that we would see later in you.

  One push later, at 3:50PM, you made your way into the world screaming.  And I mean screaming.  You were bright pink and loud!!!  There was no suspenseful pause where we wondered if you were okay or not, you let us know that you were fine, if not happy, at the instant you were born.  You scored two 10s as APGARS and came out perfect – your head wasn’t even misshapen and you didn’t have a mark on you.  The doctor even pointed out that the tips of your fingertips were pink, which is very unusual.

  The doctor cut the cord and placed you on my chest.  It wasn’t the magical moment that I had imagined as I was really out of it due to how quickly you were born.  I even asked, “Is it a girl?” even though they had already told me.  I was just trying to catch up.  I knew you were beautiful, but it was as if I was afraid to touch you.  I had always been so good with babies, but now that I had one of my own I didn’t know what to do.

  Once I got cleaned up and they got you cleaned up, I started to come into my motherhood though.  I couldn’t believe how perfect you were.  Grandma Pam, Grandma & Grandpa T and Miss Hillary were all there to see and hold you right away.  They were right outside the door during your birth.  You weighed 6 pounds 11 ounces and were 19 ¼ inches long.