Birth Story

Saturday, August 16th, (a day after my dehydration stay in the hospital) was pretty good...no contractions. The night before we had friends over and I was able to eat decently despite the day full of naseau, that's why I think I was able to stand the next day. It was the Hindu holiday of Rakhi, so I tied G's rakhi on his wrist and G did the same for me (in his household it's customary for the brother's wife to get a rakhi as well). Afterwards, G and I went to the North Bend mall to do some cloth shopping for G. We also stopped to do some farmer's market shopping and grocery. Below is a pic of me right as we are leaving to go shopping. I was enormous. Probably around 188 to 191 lbs. The weather that day was wonderfully sunny. We had a flat tire along the way back home so our plans for an evening movie were canceled.

Sunday, August 17th was normal enough, Mom had arrived the night before from Minnesota. She cooked lunch (yay desi okra) and then in the afternoon we decided to take Mom to the Cascade mountain range, about 5 hours from where we currently live. In the morning I started feeling light contractions, but I knew that this was just random practice labor and decided to be risky and drive far off where there is no cell phone reception a day before my due date. :-) Of course we didn't tell Mom how I was feeling, if she had known she would never have agreed to such a long drive. Below is a pic of us at a pass in the Cascades.

By the end of the day, I had to really pace myself because I was having contractions every 30 minutes, and my whole lower region was achy feeling and I walked at a snail's pace. I was also really craving liquids, especially gas station slushies. :-) We came back at night and I barely ate dinner (I think I put on more of a "show" that I was eating dinner just to satisfy G and keep him from getting on me about not eating). Everyone went to bed, and I began having more painful contractions every 20 minutes or so. They were still bearable, but I was unable to sleep the entire night. I kept a log of the contractions while G slept peacefully besides me (halfway through the night I started moaning and of course woke up G with each contraction).

By 4 am, Monday the 18th, I woke G and told him we definetly need to go to the hospital, I didn't care if we didn't match the 5-1-1 (5 minutes apart, lasting a minute, for an hour) rule, they were getting too painful. So we woke up Mom and all 3 of us headed to Overlake. They checked me into a room, and the most annoying nurse came into help me. She checked my cervix and I started crying out of pain, she took WAY too long to measure the cervix (most people pop their fingers in and out, she took her sweet time). G and Mom were holding my hands the whole time. The annoying nurse told me I was 3 cm dialated and could have the baby now if my OBGYN popped the bag. Luckily my OBGYN was at the hospital at the time (I love the docs at this hospital, they show up for everything!) so he dropped by and discussed my options. I told him I wanted a chance for the bag to break on it's own, so Mom and I dropped G off at work and then Mom drove me back home. I was VERY much in pain by then, so Mom had to deal with a very moody and crabby daughter giving her directions back home. Back at home I took a LONG hot shower and beared through 4 hours of intense contractions. I tried reading, watching TV, anything to get my mind off the pain. G actually had the balls to ask me if I could take the car to the autoshop to get the spare tire changed (from our flat tire on Sunday) while I was writhing in pain at home. Obviously, that didn't happen. :-)

At 1pm Mom and I left for my afternoon appointment (I had originally had a 40 week checkup with the OBGYN scheduled). G was supposed to meet me there after he had lunch with a friend. G was 15 minutes late and I was pretty mad, but in so much pain that I really didn't care to bitch about it. The doctor was also late. The doctor said I was a whopping 7 cm dialated by then, so it meant baby was ready to come that day. The nurses in the clinic were excited and we all said goodbye and headed to the hospital. In the labor room a super nice nurse, Corey, helped me get ready for the epidural. I wanted an epidural more for rest...I had been contracting strongly the whole day and night before so had very little patience and strenght left in me. I changed into my own gown, and then the anesthesiologist had me curl up in a c shape and did the needle work. The oddest popping feeling followed. A student from a tech school came in to assist Corey, her name was Danita and she was also sweet and even cried at the end of the labor when Om was born.

So basically I had done 75% of the labor at home. The epidural was GREAT...God bless the person who invented it. I could still feel sensations in my legs and the urges to push. I still needed a catheter to use the bathroom, however, and getting that put in HURT. (I figured out I'm a big baby when it comes to anything below my waist...I would rather get 10 IV's put in my arm than go through an internal exam or catheter inserted).

Om kept playing with the umbilical cord while inside me, so his heart rate kept jumping up and down which concerned the nurses and had me turning sides to get his heart rate back up. Eventually I was a full 10 centimeters dialated and my OBGYN showed up to do the delivery. I pushed for 20 to 30 minutes, and then Om was born. He had a 3 feet umbilical cord (really long) wrapped around his neck, and he was covered with a film of meconium of greenish color. Apparently he had a bowel movement about a month back, hence the film. Due to that the doctor didn't put Om on my stomach, instead he was whisked off for some checking. I heard Om cry and saw him through my legs briefly. I was in a weird state of mind at that time, and was focused on the pain from the OBGYN stitching me up, so I really didn't mind anyway.

G was holding one leg of mine up the whole time, and the OBGYN was holding the other leg up while attending to the labor. My mom and the two nurses were near my head and giving me encouragement for pushing. G had a very close view of the labor, which I really didn't want to happen, I wanted him to be near my head giving me encouragment, but in the heat of the moment the doctor told him to hold my leg up and things started moving so fast that there was no time to adjust people's positions. But the good thing is that G knows how many breaths Om took before crying, how he looked right as he emerged. That is really special and I'm glad someone saw all that, despite how dirty it can be down there during labor. The nurses mentioned that the labor was really dramatic...I'm not sure how, but I guess all the people around me and how fast things went made the scene dramatic.

The OBGYN had to use an internal monitor on Om during the pushing phase to keep track of his heartbeat. He also used a vacuum to turn Om's head a bit. Om now has a slight bump at the back of his head, hopefully that'll go away soon!