Hubs and I got up at 5:30 yesterday morning to get ready to wait for "the" phone call, telling us to come in for induction. It didn't come till 10:00am, but it did in fact happen. We arrived at the big hospital around 11:00am and started the process of getting me monitored and hooked up to all the machines, blah, blah, blah.
Labor began around 1:00 in the afternoon in earnest, not long after my water broke. I have to admit I was pleased that it ruptured on its own; that was one of the things I wanted to experience spontaneously. And man, oh man, was it. I had been instructed to sit on a birthing ball and rock a bit to get her into a good position, and at one point I had rolled my pelvis forward and heard/felt a loud "pop" almost as if the bones of my pelvis had slid over one another and then popped back into place. Next contraction there was a tsunami gushing all over the place.
I got to float around in the labor tub in my room for a while, and you know what? I now fully understand why they call it the Midwife's epidural. Unfortunately Princess Wiggle Worm didn't like not being surrounded by water, so the doctor had be crawl back into bed and they did the first of what turned out to be several amnio-infusions (they slid a catheter into my uterus, past the baby's head and kept it full of sterile water.)
Labor progressed unmedicated until around midnight-ish (give or take). I was well into moaning "OH" at the top of my lungs and trying to use the sound and the motion to keep my birthing bits relaxed and working in my favor, and just needed a break. So I broke down and called for an epidural. Yeah, I know; wuss. I'll have other opportunities to try again. Even with the epidural, I never did get relief on my right side. :P
This continued for quite a while, with the doctors and nurses intermittently worrying about decelerations in Wiggle-Worm's heart rate. At one point Cesarean was suggested, but the docs and nurses were able to use gravity to get her head past my cervix in relatively short order, and in what felt like almost no time, they were standing around my bed in their delivery scrubs, telling me it was time to push. Three pushes (they say two, I say three) later, she was delivered. She did have her umbilical cord wrapped twice around her neck, but the resident fixed that once I got her head out, and she was pink and pretty literally within minutes.
The new and interesting part in all this was that my placenta did not want to break free from the uterine wall. This meant that the resident had to remove it manually. As hubs so eloquently puts it; I became a hand-puppet. Delicious imagery, I know, but *holy crap* I did not expect anything like that! It wasn't horribly painful per se, but it certainly was uncomfortable.
She spent the next two hours being adored and snuggled and warmed up against her Dad's skin, and ate a healthy 14 ounces of formula before we were even moved to maternity.
Today has been a lot of recuperation and rest, but I've pumped a little bit of breast milk for her and helped the nurses out in the nursery for a while (originally with the intent of paying some attention to the Princess; but she had to get some tests done, and so I wound up helping with a couple of the other babies as well. I guess I look like I know what I'm doing or something. LOL.)
A lot of people have been concerned that this would somehow damage me emotionally; letting Princess Wiggle Worm go with her father. And I admit, I started to get a little concerned the last couple days, that I would get mopey or break down; especially after delivery. But you know, I'm still really not attached. She's a beautiful baby for sure, and she's very mellow and very tough (not a peep out of her after being jabbed and poked and stabbed for tests by the nurses) but I'm no more bothered by "letting her go" than I would be about watching a friend's baby go home after babysitting her for a couple hours one afternoon, so that friend could run some errands.
As for the physical, I'm sore in the birthing bits. I did tear a little bit, so I have a couple of stitches and well let's be honest; I pushed a small human out of those bits and then had to have hands in places I don't think they really belong. I'm gonna be a bit sore.
In perfect honesty: I'm happy that I've done this. I'm excited for my I.F. And you know what? I can't wait to do it again.
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