The last thing that I said before we had Anberlin was that we were scheduled to be induced, but we weren't telling when. We were actually scheduled to be induced on March 2nd, but on the night of March 1st, Bean had different plans....
Thursday we had our last OB appointment and we scheduled our induction date for the following date. When I got home, I felt as though I was getting contractions all day, but really thought nothing of it because I was convinced that I would not be going into labor on my own at this point. So, Brad gets home from work and we plan to have one last "date night" even though I was having "contractions". We get to one of our favorite Brew Houses, Dogfish Head Ale House, and the wait to be seated was about 30 minutes. We wait for our table and when we finally get seated, my water breaks. I mean literally, we get to the table, I sit down and I feel something isn't right. I immediately get up and rush to the bathroom as fast as I could. At this point, it only felt like I wet my pants a little bit but I was SO WORRIED that the "gush" would happen as I was walking between tables getting to the bathroom - it didn't. But at the entrance to the bathrooms I was stuck behind a guy who was letting another guy by who was on crutches, which I would have normally been fine with because I like seeing the good in people, but at this point I was freaking out and praying not to spill water everywhere. I finally get into the bathroom and my usual stall is taken, which causes me to freak out a little more, but the other stall was open, luckily. I check my situation and I was like 99% positive my water in fact broke. I text Brad "OMG" and he writes back "No way". I love that he figured it out so quickly. :) The one thing that the hospital and childbirthing classes beat into your head is how your water looks once it breaks. You normally want to see the water clear, that means that the baby didn't poop in womb, and if she did then they tell you to look for black stuff. Well, my water wasn't clear but there was no black either. It was green and mucus-y. Ew, right? In any case, I leave the bathroom and sit with Brad. We just stare at each other in awe of what was happening. We start debating on whether or not to leave and what we need to do. We decide to go and I think it really worried our waitress and I hope she didn't think it was because of her, I just didn't want to announce that my water broke to the whole restaurant. The only problem with leaving was that I was STARVING, so we stopped by Burger King on the way home. Haha. When we get home, we call the hospital to tell them that my water broke and they told me to come in around 10pm. That gave us about an hour and half, so we ate our dinner, I took a shower (and shaved my legs!), and finished packing the hospital bag.
It was a surreal drive to the hospital. We were pretty quiet the whole way there. I really couldn't believe it was happening. My contractions were still going and they were about 5 minutes apart but not too strong. We get to the hospital around 10:30pm and check in to Labor and Delivery.
They bring us into the triage room to check the baby's heart rate and check to see how far along I am. At first, the doctor said that he would probably send us home, which wasn't what I wanted to hear at all. He checks me and I am only at 2cm dilated, but the doctor was concerned about the mucus that was in water so they decided to keep me. They mentioned starting me on Pitocin, which I did not want at the time, and the doctor's argument was that I was going to be induced the following day anyways. I didn't care, I wasn't being induced tonight. So he said that he would give me two hours to progress on my own. {I win!} They move us into our delivery room and put me on a heart rate monitor and on fluids.
For the next two hours, I continue getting contractions and they are getting stronger and closer together. We liked looking at the contraction monitors to see how hard they registered. At 12:30am the doctor comes to check me again and I was only at 3cm but my contractions were at about a pain level of 8 out of 10.
Even though I wasn't progressing quickly, they still let me wait on starting any Pitocin. For the next two hours, I just pushed through the contractions. I did my best to breathe and remind myself that it only hurts until the contraction stops. At 2:30am, I was at 4cm and my contractions were still at an 8, sometimes a 10. They sent in the anesthesiologist to talk about getting an epidural and the risks involved. I went into this labor not wanting an epidural and at that point I was still saying no to it. But by 5:30am, the pain was pretty brutal and I think the one thing that made me decide to get the epidural was that I hated having Brad see me in pain that he couldn't do anything about, especially if there was something that I could do about it. So I decided to go through with the epidural. While they were doing the epidural, I was told to be as still as possible, which was about the hardest thing ever because I counted 5 contractions while they were setting me up with the epidural. Somehow I survived and by 6am, I had my epidural in and my contractions were slowly going away. After being in labor for nearly 12 hours, it was a relief to have some "downtime" where I was actually able to sleep. Also, they gave me a button that I could push if the epidural ever stopped working and it would give me more juice. Best. Button. Ever. Haha.
By 9:30am, I was at 7cm (hello progress!) and my nurse said that hopefully I should be able to get the show on the road in about 2 hours. Well, 2 hours came and they said that I needed some Pitocin to get the contractions to come harder. But since I already had the epidural I wouldn't feel a difference in the pain and we should see a change in about half an hour. By 12:15pm, I was at about 9.5cm and there was a LOT of pressure going on. It felt like I had to poop but couldn't. It was the most uncomfortable feeling in the world. All I had left was the lip of the cervix left for the head to clear before we could start pushing. During the next hour the pressure kept coming and I just wanted to start pushing. At around 1:30pm, I was finally giving the okay to start pushing. That was so hard, especially when you don't know what you are doing. Plus, I was a little freaked out that Brad was watching this happen. I really didn't want him to watch, but after the fact I am glad he did. :) After about an hour, I think I got the hang of when I needed to push in conjunction with my contractions. Then, one hour later, at 3:30pm on March 2nd, 2012, I gave one final push and we had our baby girl, Anberlin Amy! <3
{There are some details I am forgetting. Some time during the night I was given an oxygen mask for some reason and I also started getting a fever while I was pushing so they had to give me some antibiotics.}
So since there was mucus in my water and the fact that I spiked a fever during delivery, the immediately took Anberlin away from us, meaning Brad wasn't able to cut the cord. They wanted to make sure she was okay, which was fine with me. She didn't cry right away but after about a minute we heard that cry and it was the best sound in the world. I was laying on the bed watching Brad look at her as the doctors checked her and I was full of love. Love for my husband, love for our daughter, love for our beautiful family.
This was easily the second best day of my life, following very closely to the day I got married to the man who made this day possible. <3
Anberlin passed all her tests and was given to us to stare at. Because really at this point, you couldn't keep your eyes off of her. We were only suppose to stay in the hospital for two days following the birth, but we had to have an extended stay. The night of the 2nd was fine, Anberlin slept in the room with us and I tried nursing her and she got the hang of it a little bit but not really. Then all day on the 3rd, this baby screamed bloody murder. All. Day. And we knew that babies were prone to cry, but not like this. Something seemed wrong. She cried all night, I cried all night. The night shift nurse actually came in and took her for a few hours so we could sleep, but she still cried most of the time with her. The morning of the 4th, the pediatricians came in and made note of her crying and how she wasn't sleeping and was not easy to console, so they took her to the NICU for observation and testing. We were told that they would be doing a spinal tap, testing her urine, and her blood. Naturally, that makes me cry. At 10:30am, the doctors come back saying that they will have to do the spinal tap again because the first one was unsuccessful. They started her on three antibiotics and a urine test showed possible inability to process sugars. She was on IVs to give her nutrients while breastfeeding was on hold. They were going to be testing her urine again as the test can give false positives. We were also waiting for results from other tests being done to rule out any other problems. At 12:15pm, we went to the NICU to visit Anberlin and she was sleeping. It was the most peaceful we had seen her in days. She was beautiful.
We were told that the tests we were waiting on would be sent out Monday and the results should be here by Tuesday. They were also not going to discharge me until Anberlin was ready to go home since Labor and Delivery was not that busy right now. The doctors thought that she might be galactose intolerant, so they start her on a soy formula, but have me continue to pump just in case. We are able to visit Anberlin whenever we want and we were able to feed her and change her while she was in the NICU.
We spend Monday in and out of the NICU visiting her and avoiding any of the nursing staff because they all seemed to want me discharged ASAP. But I wasn't leaving without my baby. Monday evening the NICU decides that Anberlin can move back into my room as she wasn't needing the IV anymore, plus that kept them from discharging me! So we had our sweet baby back in our room with us! Tuesday came and we were waiting for results from the tests that were sent out on Monday. The doctors said that if the results here positive we would know that night but negative tests would be given on Wednesday. Since Anberlin was doing so well, the did decide to discharge us on Tuesday evening and they would call us once the results came back! So finally, on the evening of March 6th, we were able to all go home as a family. <3
It was a hectic and worrisome 4 days in the hospital, but in the end the results came back negative. No more soy formula for Bean! Yay!
Those 4 days in the hospital showed us how hard parenting is going to be. You have this little life that you created and love so much that you don't want anything to ever be wrong with it. It's crazy how fast you can love someone you barely know.
And that... is our birth story. To the best of my recollection. Giving birth was an amazing experience. Pushing was pretty surreal to me and almost like an out of body experience. Not everything happened exactly as I wanted it to go, but I didn't have to have a C-Section and I have a healthy, gorgeous baby. I think I won in the end anyways. <3
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