Birth story

We were scheduled to be induced on Thursday morning. At about 1:30 that morning, I got up to use the bathroom and my water broke. I thought I would be panicky when something like that happened, but the first thing I thought was "I had better shave my legs." So I took a nice shower and got dressed and ready. I woke B up to tell him what happened and then told him to go back to sleep. He did. I don't think he even registered what I told him. I made some toast and apple juice and took it downstairs to surf the internet for awhile.

I was having a fine time when all of a sudden I had a contraction that hurt so bad it took my breath away. Then, 10 minutes later, I had another one. Then 6 minutes. Then five minutes. I had thought that the early part of labor would take hours and hours; I hadn't counted everything happening so quickly. By this time, it was about 3:00 am. I woke B, told him to get ready to go to the hospital, and then went to the bathroom. When I came out, B was calmly eating some cereal and reading a magazine. He thought I had just woken him up to get ready to go be induced!

I, not so calm now, explained that we needed to get to the hospital NOW. Luckily, there isn't much traffic at that hour of the morning, so it didn't take us very long. Remember how I didn't want an epidural? The first thing I said to the labor nurse was "can I have an epidural right now?" She said yes, but "right now" turned out to be a few hours later, after I had a bag of fluid pumped into me and some blood tests done.

Even with the epidural, contractions were pretty miserable. Saul's head was pressed up against my pelvic bone and I could feel bone on bone with every squeeze. At some point during the morning, my mom and my in-laws showed up to hang out in the room with us. The labor nurses estimated that I would be fully dilated and ready to push around 6:00 pm, so my in-laws went out to get some lunch and B ran home to pick up the things we had left in our rush to the hospital.

Sometime around 2:00 pm, I mentioned to the nurse that I was feeling an awful lot of pressure. She looked surprised, but checked and found that I was 10 cm and ready to push! When Saul decided to be born, he was in a hurry. I only pushed for about 45 minutes. But those 45 minutes were maybe the most intense of my entire life. I was so exhausted and in so much pain that I had forgotten all about the baby. I remember asking B over and over again "and when I finish, I can have a Sprite?" When he was finally born, the nurses had to tell me to open my eyes. When I did, there was a slippery, screaming baby on my chest. His blue eyes were looking straight at me and I somehow recognized him. I couldn't say or do anything, all I could do was look at him in awe.

B cut the cord and they took him to the corner to clean him up and weigh him. While that was going on, I delivered the placenta and got stitched up, but I didn't even notice. All I could do was watch the baby across the room.

The last few days have been somewhat of a blur. Everyone had told me to expect some hard days at first as my hormones came crashing down. But I have never been so happy in my entire life. I had no idea that anything was missing, but it feels like for the first time, my life is complete.