|
| ||
| ||
Click here for some great mommmy and baby freebies from BabiesOnline.com
 | ||||||||
 Main Page Site Index Getting Pregnant Pregnancy Parenting Pregnancy and Parenting Journals 
|
Birth Story
I was 20 years old, newly married & 300 miles away from my parents. 6
weeks before my due date, my doctor told me absolutely NO more
traveling. I was not even to go for an hour in the car. He said I could
go into labor at ANY time. I was dilated all of 1 cm! At 35 weeks, I was
still at 1 cm. At 36 weeks I was dilated to 2 cm. At 37, 38, 39, 40 and
41 weeks, I was still at 2 cm. After week 40, I had a total of 3
non-stress tests, and another diabetes test (I don't know why!). The
doctor decided he was going to put me in the hospital on the morning of
July 7, 1992 (13 days after my due date) and induce me.
The Sunday before(July 5), my husband & a good friend took me to the zoo
(Kansas City Zoo). We walked around the zoo for about 5 hours. I had
some contractions, but they were 1/2 - 1 minute long and 15 - 20 minutes
apart.
On Monday(July 6), the contractions slowly came down to 10 minutes apart
and 1 - 1 1/2 minutes long. They were at this stage by Noon. I called my
doctor and told him to forget the induction, I was in labor. He was like
we'll see, BUT "I still want to see you at the hospital at 8:00 a.m.,
we'll probably still have to induce you." I count Noon as the REAL
starting time of my labor. My husband was at work, so I did the stuff I
felt like doing. I took a warm shower, didn't know it would make the
contractions closer & stronger! I got out of the shower - the
contractions were 7 minutes apart & 2 minutes long. Then they went back
to almost 10 minutes apart, BUT stayed 2 minutes long. I got dressed,
dried my hair, nibbled on some fruit, watched TV from my glider - in
general, just took it as easy as I could. At 4:00 p.m., I drove over to
pick my husband up from work. (He got off at 4:30 & it was a 1/2 hr.
drive) Turns out, he had agreed to let a friend stay with us while his
apartment building was being fumigated! My husband didn't ask, he just
assumed that I should drive. A few minutes down the road, I pulled off
for a contraction. While my husband Ray (NOW EX-) complained at me to
hurry up, he wanted to get home, the friend (Doug) was nice enough to
say "Ray, why don't you drive? Or I will if you just want to hold
Bobbi????" Nice guy!
Well, we made it home, I used a neighbors phone to
order pizza
(we didn't have a phone, I didn't feel like cooking & Ray
wouldn't cook) and Doug insisted on buying. While waiting for the pizza
to arrive, I tidied up the living room & kitchen a little (I hadn't been
expecting any company).
So, the pizza arrived, and the contractions were
9 minutes apart, 2 minutes long. After we ate, I started to do the
dishes, but Doug stopped me & INSISTED on doing them. He said if I
really wanted to do something, he didn't mind if I stood in the kitchen
and bossed him around.
After dinner, things started progressing more. At
about 9:30 p.m., my contractions were down to 4 - 5 minutes apart and
were still 2 minutes long. Went to the hospital at 10:30 p.m., like the
Dr. told me to. They did a pelvic exam, said you're only dilated to 3
cm, you might as well go home.
Got home at 11:30 p.m., went to bed,
slept between contractions (6 minutes apart, 2 min long), woke up at
3:30 a.m.
(July 7) - gotta go pee! I stood up from the bed &
trickle-trickle, my water broke. I waited, rocking for almost 2 hours
for my husband to get ready. He thought they were going to send me home
again, so he just got ready for work.
Contractions when we left for the
hospital were 3 minutes apart, 2 minutes long. YUCK! Got to the hospital
& the contractions became 9 minutes apart
(oh no) but lasted 3 minutes.
My water had definitely broken(the pH test) and I was dilated to 4 cm.
They would have sent me home again if my water had still been intact.
I
lay on this bed for about an hour before the nurse came to check on me -
she was running a fetal heartbeat/contraction strip. Anyway, I hadn't
been laying really still during contractions, so the monitor had slipped
enough that it wasn't reading my baby's heartbeat. So this nurse decides
that she has to do an internal monitor - great - I'm stuck in the bed!
That was at 6:30 a.m. At 7 a.m., the nurses changed shift - THANK GOD! I
got this wonderful nurse, Diane, she brought me apple, cranberry & grape
juice! She helped me to get on all fours, so I could rock through
contractions. I was having alot of back labor, so she went & got some
REALLY HOT towels & Pressed them hard against my back - boy did that
feel good! Then she ran an external set of strips, with me laying on my
left side. My contractions were doing something called coupling (strip
looked like this /"\/"\_____/"\/"\/"\), which is when as soon as one
contraction ends, another begins, sometimes this is two or three in a
row, but I was having as many as five before a break of anywhere from 3
to 6 minutes. So they continued like this for the rest of my labor. One
good thing - it kept the Dr. from putting me on pitocin!
At 7:30 a.m., I
was dilated to 5 cm. YEAH! At 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12, I was still at 5 cm.
Then I asked the nurse if instead of using that awful bedpan, if I could
use the bathroom (walking!), she let me. 10 minutes after I got back
from the bathroom, she checked me again. I had jumped to 7 cm. HOORAY! I
stayed at 7 cm for the next 5 hours.
After one particularly brutal set
of contractions (6 minutes without a break), the Dr. came in and gave me
a choice. 1) Get an epidural now, or 2) get an epidural in an hour with
a C-Section. I chose #1, under duress.
I didn't want any medication for
pain at all and I have had chemotherapy, so I didn't want any needles in
my back. The epidural was administered (with me standing up) at 5:05
p.m. The nurse checked me at 5:20 p.m. after I got back into the bed &
on my side. I was at 9 CM!!! I got the lowest dose possible in my
epidural, so it didn't take away all the feeling, just the pain.
The
contractions were still uncomfortable, but not painful. BOY did I want
to push! At 5:30, the nurse let me start pushing, but she made me blow
with each push, so I was barely pushing.
At 5:45, she checked me again &
the baby's head was a little bit through the cervix. I started really
pushing then! The doctor finally came in at 7:00 p.m. - they had to
track him down!
Ray(my ex) and the nurse had just told me they could see
the very top of the baby's head. I pushed 2 more times and then the
doctor did what we had agreed he would not do. He gave me an episiotomy.
A big one. He then asked me to push once more to deliver the head and
WHOOSH! my daughter was born, every inch of her! Her head had never
coned, so it was alot bigger than her shoulders! The doctor was drenched
in amniotic fluid - it had all been trapped behind her body!
She was
born at 7:16 p.m. on July 7, 1992, weighing in at a hefty (yeah right) 6
lb., 1.7 oz. and 17.5 inches. Her APGAR scores were 8 and 9. She was
nursing before she was 2 hours old. She was named Ahrianna Alexandra.
|
|
||||||
Please feel free to email us at 
if you have any questions or comments!
© Earth's Magic Inc 2000 - 2007. All Rights Reserved. [ Disclaimer | Privacy Statement ]