Waiting for Lucas

When I think of how to put my thoughts of labor and childbirth down on paper, I instantly get overwhelmed. How do you express in words the gigantic range of emotions that you experience during this time? It's something that I want to put into words and share, mainly so I won't ever forget and also for all of you to get a sense of how Lucas came into this world. So here we go...

First of all, I will start by telling you that my due date was March 5th. Remember in my last post I told you that he arrived on March 12th. Do the math, that's a week LATE! That alone was enough to almost drive me crazy. Throughout my pregnancy I saw a group of fantastic midwives that work through UNC Hospitals. Before you form opinions on this, hear me out. I chose to see the midwives for a few reasons. First of all, I have always desired to have a natural childbirth. Working in the hospital myself, I see how sometimes the medical team fails us when we know what we want...when we have a 'plan' sometimes it's more complicated for the medical staff. Birthing with a midwife allows more personal control. They give options, like to have an IV or to not have an IV. To get up and move around. To EAT, amen? The list goes on and on. And this group of midwives deliver babies in the hospital. They aren't the stereotypical hippy midwives that come to your house and deliver your baby in a blow up swimming pool in your living room. So get that image out of your head :) This group of women are brilliant and expertly trained in childbirth and get to do so in a state-of-the-art hospital setting. This is the best of both worlds, knowing that my plan of a natural childbirth was supported and encouraged by the midwives, but also having an incredible OB and NICU team at our fingertips if anything went wrong. I have always respected the miracle of birth. To see a life enter the world in such an intricate way is amazing. To experience this as women have experienced it from the beginning of time is how I wanted it to be. This was our plan.

So back to the story. Leading up to my due date, I was never thinking that I would go overdue. At my 39 week appointment, I was 1cm and 50% effaced and pretty excited about it. Progress! But the conversation had to be started to cover the "what-ifs." What if you go over...we need to have this talk and discuss our level of comfort for how far over we would be okay going, and to pick a tentative date for induction if necessary. Helllloooo stress. Simply the word 'induction' made my skin crawl. It took a lot of courage and suppression of my anxiety to even talk about it, but we had to. Labor and delivery at UNC is a busy place, and heaven forbid we need to get this baby out and there is no room in the inn! So we picked a date...The evening of March 13th would be the date I would get admitted to start the process, and our baby would probably be born sometime on March 14th. Immediately my prayer and the prayer of many others was "please Lord, don't let me get to that point! Let this baby come out on his own!" So 39 weeks comes and goes uneventfully, I continue to work long and hard 12 hour shifts, having perfected the pregnant waddle by this point. Brandon and I walked and walked, and my parents got into town on March 1st with the expectation that this baby was going to come at any minute. From the minute my mom got into town, fresh after back surgery might I add, the two of us basically walked the pavement off of the Tobacco Trail that runs near our house. We would go on two walks a day, putting in about 5 miles of walking. The dog loved it, but between a gigantic pregnant lady and a lady post back surgery, we were quite the sight. The weekend before my due date rolls by and dad and Farrin go back home to wait for the phone call. March 5th comes and I go to an appointment with one of the midwives. We see Nancy, who to be honest was the midwife that I was least comfortable with to begin with. She's quiet and reserved, which aren't necessarily bad things, but compared to the bubbly personalities of the other midwives, we just didn't click as well. The exam showed I was 1.5cm and 90% effaced. Progress! She stripped my membranes with the hope of getting something started. My prayer was still, "please don't let me be induced. Let's do this." So we go home and we walk. And walk. And walk. And WALK. We literally saw the seasons change during our walks. We saw the trees go from sticks to flowers to leaves. We went from walking in toboggans and scarves to shorts and t-shirts. I get a prenatal massage, a pedicure, and even take black cohosh, which is a root in liquid form that tastes like straight up dirt. It's supposed to help bring on contractions. So I sucked it up and threw it back like shots, chasing it with everything from water to orange juice to sweet tea to diet coke. It was disgusting, but I was desperate. To make a long story not quite as long (as you can tell, I'm not good at telling short stories) I had some contractions and even a few false alarms. We had 2 nights of consistent contractions that I was sure was the real thing at the time, only for them to completely die down in the morning. To say I was frustrated is an understatement. As the week went on, my induction date was looming. To sum up my desperation, I will tell you that we bought a bottle of castor oil. If you don't know how that helps with labor, google it. I'll spare you the details here. I called the midwife on call to ask her opinion on this, and I came pretty close to taking it on the Friday the 9th. She advised me to wait until the day before I was scheduled to be induced, just to give my body more time to hopefully do something on it's own. I held out, hoping I wouldn't have to resort to this.

Fast forward to Saturday March 10th. It's nearing nighttime and here come the contractions again. I was excited! Here we go! Saturday night I was uncomfortable. I only slept for maybe an hour or two, and spent the rest of the night timing the contractions on an awesome app on my iPhone. I got up and sat in the glider in the nursery to wait out the contractions. They were coming every 6 to 10 minutes and were pretty uncomfortable. Sunday morning, everyone wakes up (Brandon, mom, dad, and Farrin. Dad and Farrin came back this weekend, too.) Everyone was so excited to see that I had been up all night with them! Brandon stayed home from church and by lunchtime, nothing. UGH. Really? False alarm again? You've got to be kidding me. The afternoon rolls on and I send Brandon to church for the Sunday night student event. He left the house a little before 4:00 p.m. I kid you not, he probably didn't make it out of the neighborhood before I started having contractions again. I said something to my mom and she just laughed. None of us wanted to get our hopes up....again. We went for a walk because that always stopped the contractions before. So we left for the walk and I noticed that these contractions were different. I had to stop walking and talking during them. We get back home and I decided to send Brandon a text message giving him a heads up, but I tell him to stay at church. No need to come home yet, but this is different. A few hours go by and things are kicking up. Brandon came home a little early and I was consistently contracting every 6 minutes or so by 8:00 p.m. I called the midwife on call at the hospital to give her a heads up and let her know that I wanted to labor at home for as long as possible. She was all for it and told me to keep her posted. So we labored at home, and it was beautiful. We had the lights down and music on. I had endless options of positions and support people and food and drinks. Sidenote, I was freezing during labor. I am embarassed to admit this, but we have a Snuggie and I wore it pretty much the entire time I was laboring at home. (The Snuggie was given to us as a joke, by the way, but it was AWESOME.) Anyway, I walked around the house and worked through contractions with Brandon, mom, dad, and Farrin by my side. When a contraction was coming, someone was there to hold onto me, rub my back, encourage me, and time the contraction. I moved from the couch to the recliner to the birth ball. We had a great team, I can't even tell you how vital every person was. Even the dogs where helping. Lexi and Oliver (Farrin's dog) were concerned about my discomfort and were ridiculously sweet.

At this point, these contractions were no joke. I felt them primarily in my back and my butt (sorry if that's T.M.I. but it's true.) They hurt like they had never hurt before and it was tough. I broke down and cried during one of them. I was disappointed in myself that I let myself give in like that and knew that I had to hold it together and work hard. They don't call it labor for nothing, right? We updated the midwife at midnight and since things were picking up she gave L&D a heads up for whenever I decided to come in. I sent Brandon, dad, and Farrin to take a nap because I was positive this was the real thing this time. During their power nap, mom and I continued to work through contractions. We layed down upstairs for a while and I fell asleep for about 4 minutes in between two contractions. When I quickly woke up as another contraction started, something was different. Mom looked at me and said, "Is this different?" I instantly said YES. She said, "Do we need to go?" Again, I instantly said YES. I was worried about how I was going to know when it was time to go to the hospital and my mom said over and over, "you will just know." As frustrated as I was with her answer, she was so right. I just knew, and this was it. She went and woke everyone up, we put the dogs in their crates and before I knew it we were in the car.

Okay. If you're still reading this, I'm impressed. I am going to save our hospital experience for the next post. Be forewarned, it might be a little detailed for some of you, but I think an experience as life changing and miraculous as childbirth deserves some details. So feel free to quit reading at any time, agreed?