He's here!!!

There's my little trooper, givin' me the ok sign! This picture was taken right after he got swept away to the NICU. 

So, here's what I can tell ya. I'll be typing up a more official birth story but I figured I'd post a recap for my friends and family that have been trying to get a hold of me while I come down from the events of this week! Beware, I'm just gonna tell it like it was so you may learn a lot about me you didn't know you wanted to know, haha. 

As most of you know, my water broke at Target of Saturday, May 25. I was put on bed rest at the hospital which totally sucked, by the way. Well, it wasn't that bad but I just really hated being hooked up to all the wires and not being able to get up and stretch my legs without having a million people run in. I understand their goal was to monitor the health of my little guy, but I could feel him and my guy, literally and figuratively told me he was ok. Besides the c-section scare things were pretty uneventful. Then Monday night rolled around. 

The NICU doctors had told us Ryker would be ok on the outside, so I was ready to just get the show rolling. I couldn't stay stuck in that bed until June 4, so I checked out Ina May Gaskin's info on naturally starting labor and did the only thing I could on bed rest, nipple stimulation and I added a laxative to the stool softener the hospital was having me take. The nipple stimulation did all the work, the laxative didn't really affect me at all as far as I can tell. Vic and my mom had left to run some errands and let me rest early on in the late afternoon and came back to find me standing next to the bed swaying back and forth. I also had started to have some blood streaking the amniotic fluid that I was still leaking. While I didn't want to get too excited, I totally knew inside that the nipple thing had totally worked and things were starting. 

I sent my family home so I could get some rest and I laid down to try and watch Harry Potter again. We had alerted the nurse to the fact that I was spotting blood and she had tried to get me to switch back to the previous room that I had been in so that I could go back on continuous monitoring. This was the first interaction with the legal team at Portsmouth, I turned down their recommendation to move to continuous monitoring, signed the paperwork saying I understood my decision and I labored in my other room by myself for the night. Like I said, I tried to sleep but I was up by two-ish with cramps that were too much to take lying down. I wandered the room until about three, trying different positions and trying to ascertain as to whether or not I was really in labor. Finally, I called Vic around three and said it was time to get to the hospital. 

I let the nurse know what was up and reluctantly got wheeled over to the labor and delivery unit where I knew they would hook me up to a million cords. This is when things got really interesting. There is no other way to put it, the interns working that night were straight bitches. They wanted to me to essentially tell my body to stop laboring because they wanted to wait to induce me on June 4th. They wanted me to do this by laying in the bed without moving around during contractions. I let them know that what they wanted was adorable and that when a contraction hit (which meant my lower back and my butt got super sore and tender in an instant, no laying/sitting during that) I would be out of the bed and walking until it passed. They got pissy because Ryker would not show up on the monitor while I moved around. I let them know that I could feel my active baby move during the contractions and that they could just deal with it. I signed more paperwork. The checked me, I had gone from 1 cm, fully effaced and station -3 (meaning the baby was higher) at nine o clock that night, to 3 cm, fully effaced station -1 by three am. 

Vic got to the hospital around the time they finished the exam and I was kind of a monster to him. All I can say is, I have my way of dealing with stress and sometimes I'm not so nice about it, I made sure to apologize later though! Once I was in the actual labor and delivery room the contractions were no effin' joke. I couldn't sit down, the pressure was just too much, so I stayed standing towards the monitor, swaying with each one. Around four I had to have Vic start counter pressure on my hips to help get through them. I texted my doula, Christy, and asked her to be at the hospital by six to help me out. 

Well, little did I know things were about to get nuts. Within forty five minutes I went from man, these contractions suck, to holy shit Vic-text Christy and tell her to get here now! They checked me again and by the time Christy got there around 5:45 I was fully dilated and fully effaced with that little baby head all the way down. I had a feeling this was happening because right before they checked me my bowels had finally released (a good sign in labor) and I had started to shiver uncontrollably. I had recognized the signs of transition but was reluctant to say that I was that far along. Luckily though, Vic and I had gotten a hold of Christy and my mom in time. 

As Christy ran in to the labor and delivery room they were getting me set up to push. They had me start on my back, curled into a C around my belly. Because Ryker was so premature they had to bring the whole NICU team in, so I had a full audience of what I think was close to 15 people. The best part was that Vic had hooked up our Blu-Ray player to the TV and we had Harry Potter playing. He said the whole time I was pushing the men of the NICU team were watching Harry Potter waiting for my little guy to pop out. Too funny right? I also love that active labor to delivery took less than the first Harry Potter movie!

After about half an hour of pushing on my back they had me stop. I couldn't really distinguish contractions from non contractions in that position, there was just so much back labor that it constantly hurt. Here's where I got really frustrated and so did my team of supporters...

Shift change at the hospital is at 7 am. They had told me I was totally complete and ready to push, with no cervix blocking at 5:45. At 6:30, time for turnover, they had me stop what I was doing and sit up to hold in the contractions and not push and told me I had magically redeveloped enough cervix to need to wait half an hour. I tried to do so and my mom rubbed my back while Vic put pressure on the pressure points of my feet to help the cervix pull back, Christy helped with massage and a glorious heat sock that she put on my back for the contractions. Christy also suggested that I ask to get on hands and knees. Well, once she said that I was like "hell yea, I need to get off my butt!" so I flipped on over. Almost immediately I felt like there was no holding the baby in. The entire labor and delivery team and the NICU team had left for shift change, we were all alone. Vic ran out to the nurse to say "she's going to push this baby out, he's coming" and the nurse replied with "she can't have that baby right now, no one is here". We promptly let her know in not so many nice words that she better get them fast. While that conversation was happening I was already pushing him out with just my mom and Christy there. 

They finally came running in and this is the part that seemed to go by really fast. While I was pushing on my back I was holding my breath and curled weird. On hands and knees I made all sorts of sounds and literally growled at one point. I knew from my research and Christy was telling me that they loud noises don't actually help, but man they felt good to get out so I just went with it. I kept crying out that I couldn't do it, even though I could feel it happening! Then, all of a sudden, I felt the most bizarre feeling ever and they told me he was out. It really did just feel like I had gotten the biggest poop ever out of me, haha. Everyone kept telling me to turn around and see him, but I kind of had to linger on my hands and knees for a second and gather the fact that I had just done it, a baby came out of me. I had given birth with no medications, not even an IV for fluids, on my hands and knees in a sundress!

I flipped over finally and while they were messing with the cord and the placenta they brought over Ryker so I could hold him for about twenty seconds before they took him away to the NICU. Vic followed the baby while my mom and Christy stayed with me. The placenta didn't take very long, after a few minutes I just beared down again real had and plop, there it was. I had torn a little bit, probably because I had gotten so frustrated and pushed so hard once I was on my hands and knees, so I got a few stitches. The doctor had the audacity to point out that she was late for turnover because I had given birth at 6:58 at least three times. The bitchy nurses that had been so rude to my mom and I had also left, but thankfully the new nurse guy was really sweet. They got me cleaned up and pretty soon I was taken over to my recovery room!

After that everything was a blur of finally getting to shower, getting some food in me and Vic talking the NICU into letting me in during their rounds so that I could see my little guy. He came out with APGAR scores of 8 and then 9, almost perfect for a full term baby! I'll post later more about the NICU, but it's almost time to pump for my little guy so I've gotta go. I hope you enjoyed my crazy birth story!