I have to go into a bit of the backstory in order to get to the "fun" stuff.
Overall, I had a pretty easy pregnancy, but things seemed to change toward the end. My blood pressure had started to rise at about 20 weeks. They kept an eye on it, but I had no swelling or any other symptoms of preeclampsia, so yay for that! When we went for our 36 week appointment, I was measuring small, so the doctor scheduled an ultrasound to check things out. Doc did the ultrasound, and all was well. She was just so low that he said she was "locked and loaded". Oh, and I had a lot of amniotic fluid. Not too much, just more than average. At our 37 week appointment, Monday, November 3rd, my BP was quite high, so Doc took us over to Labor and Delivery to have a Non Stress Test. We were in there for a few hours being monitored to see how everything was going. My BP kept going up and down, and turns out, I had been contracting about every 5 minutes and didn't realize it. When Doc decided it was ok for us to leave, he had me do a 24 hour urine test to see if I had pre-e or if I just had gestational hypertension. Doc said that, basically, I would be induced soon to keep both Savannah and I safe.
So, I do the 24 hour urine test, and Doc calls me on Thursday, November 6th (my 38 week mark), around 12:30 saying that the lab did the test the wrong way, but that it really would be safest for me to be induced since my BP had been so unpredictable and I was already contracting and whatnot. He asked if we could come in at 5pm to start the process. Luckily, Brady was home for lunch so he went back to work and got as much done as he could without freaking out for what was about to come.
We get up to the hospital at 5 and got admitted. Doc checks me and I was completely effaced and dilated to a 3. Oh, and Savannah's head was basically right there. I got an IV, they took blood for tests to make sure I could get an epidural (I originally did not want one, but with the high BP, I changed my mind in order to hopefully keep the pain down so my BP would stay down as well). Brady and I hung out in the hospital and at about 7pm is when I got my pitocin. Savannah was doing great, and I was starting to feel the contractions a bit more, but it wasn't anything I couldn't handle. Suddenly I felt sick to my stomach (in hindsight, I should have realized that I was going into active labor at this point, but hey, I had never done this before, and I was kind of concentrating at one thing at the time). My nurse (who was awesome!) got me some Zofran and the nausea disappeared. I had been on a external monitor the whole time, and the monitor decided to not be reading my contractions.
Now, I am not a vocal person. I pretty much internalize pain and use the pain to push harder (thanks, Crossfit for giving me a nice outlet for this ;) ) but at about 9pm I started contracting really hard. Brady felt horrible because he had never seen me in that kind of pain before and wanted to help me, but couldn't--other than the counter-pressure he was applying on my lower back, which felt amazing. Anyway, at this point, I felt like the only thing that would relieve what I was feeling was to push, so I told Awesome Nurse and she went to check and see how I was doing. She was checking me, and she couldn't tell how dilated I was because my bag of waters was bulging out so much. She called the on-call doc, and he came in to check me and told me I'm good to push if I want because I was fully dilated. He didn't want to break my water, so he told me to push with the contractions, when it felt right.
Side note--Right before on-call doc came in, I asked about the epidural. I didn't know how much I had progressed, and the pain was finally bad enough that I thought an epidural would help to ease the pain. They called the nurse anesthetist, but when on-call doc checked me, they told him to turn around. He did.
On-call doc told the nurses to call my Doc to tell him to turn around and come back to the hospital because he wanted to be there for Savannah's birth. So, he turned around.
I was pushing (loudly) for about 5 to 10 minutes, waters intact (and all 4 nurses and on-call doc in the room with us), until it broke. Little Miss Savannah was almost born En Caul, which would have been a first for many in the room! With my waters broken, I felt so relieved of pressure. It felt so stinking good! Finally my doc got in the room (he had to get someone from another department to let him in because he left his badge in the car and no one was at the desk because everyone was in our room!) and Savannah was crowning. Doc got in there, helped coax Savannah out with my very loud pushes, and she was screaming on my chest at 9:20pm. Brady watched the entire thing; me giving birth without medication!
Now, I did have second degree tearing and some tearing inside on my right side from Savannah, and Doc had to sew all that up, but he took his time. I did hemorrhage due to tearing in some hidden places, but I got to hold my daughter on my chest the entire time I was being sewn up, until her cord stopped pulsing, and longer. She wasn't taken to be weighed, measured, and tested until over an hour of her on my chest and feeding. She was constantly making little noises and making her presence known.
So, my first birthing experience was not one that I had expected. I got original my wish (which we had prayed for for so long) to birth Savannah with no medication, but I was in awe that my experience was really only a couple of hours, with minimal pushing! God gave us the healthy and (very) strong baby girl we had been praying for as well as the "natural" experience we had been praying for also.
We've both been blessed by Jesus with a beautiful baby girl, and now I can't imagine life without her.
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