Birth Story - Part 3

Birth Story - Part 2

THE BIRTH

Up until this point, I could feel the contractions up in my belly. After an hour of Pitocin/Stadol the contractions began to feel different. Now they had moved lower and I could feel them in my cervix. The only way I can describe them is they felt like an orgasm, but painful. I needed to pee so Steven helped me to the bathroom. While I was there I had two more contractions and they felt very expulsive. I felt like I had to push and then my body started pushing all on its own. I panicked and pulled the cord for nurse assistance. Suddenly 3 nurses rushed to my room and helped me back to the bed.

I told them I needed to push but they didn't really believe me since I was only at 5 cm an hour ago. As my nurse was getting prepped for my exam I had another contraction. She could tell by my noises and body language that I was pushing and told me to stop. Yeah, right! There was nothing I could do to control it. My body was in charge now. Not to be crude, but it's like trying not to have explosive diarrhea.

The nurse checked me and - surprise! - I had gone from 5 cm to 10 cm in just an hour, and she said I was ready to push. I didn't even wait for Lucy to come in before I got in position and started pushing. After hours and hours of labor pushing felt good. Don't get me wrong - it was hard and it hurt, but it still felt good.

In class I had been told that pushing felt like having a bowel movement. Yeah, kind of. There's that type of pushing and then there's a whole other level of pushing that is lower and more intense. Apparently I was good at pushing because there was very little coaching from Lucy and lots of "you're doing good." After feeling like a failure all day, it was wonderful to finally be getting some praise. To be fair, Steven had been praising me all day, but it was nice for Lucy to not be disappointed in my progress.

As Luke was crowning Lucy asked me to hold back and do several little pushes in a row. I remember having no idea how to do that. Imagine you're holding a car over your head, straining to keep it from crushing you, and then someone asks you to lower it just a little. In my opinion, there's doing it and there's not doing it, with nothing in between. Whatever I did worked because Lucy told me to keep doing it. Even though he never thought he would want to, Steven ended up watching the baby come out. He admitted it wasn't pretty, but curiosity got the better of him.

With only a few more pushes, the baby was born. After laboring for 21 hours, it only took me around 35 minutes to deliver. Lucy showed the baby to Steven and he told me "It's a boy!" They placed him in my arms and I spoke my first words to him,

"Hi, Luke!"

Birth Story - Part 4