Si's birth story:: part one

From about the 6th month of my pregnancy, I had decided not to share my birth story on the blog. I wanted to keep it as something that was special for me and Chris and honestly wasn't sure how personal I wanted to get on here. I didn't want to think about getting the perfect photos for a blog post or be concerned beforehand how I would write things out.

But, my labor was harder and different than anything I anticipated and made me so glad that I went into it without a birth plan. Even more so now, I'm a believer in being flexible about your birth expectations!  I think our story is worth sharing and so, here ya go.

After posting my 40 week update on Thursday, I was feeling rather impatient for Si to get here. Around 1:30pm, I was laying on our bed watching HGTV Design Star episodes when I heard a *pop-pop-pop* in my guts. I realized quite quickly that my water was breaking and rushed to the bathroom, with what seemed like gallons pouring from me. Think peeing your pants times about 20. So weird.

I got so excited. It was happening! We were going to meet our son this weekend!

Called my mama. She started looking for a flight down as soon as possible.

Called the dive school where Chris works and the "receptionist" guy panicked when I told him he needed to find Chris because my water broke. I told him it wasn't an emergency, but his reaction was pretty funny.

Called my OB office and they said I needed to come in right away.

Chris called me while running to the car. He got home and I took a shower, blowdried my hair and made sure I had everything packed that I wanted. Chris was a bit anxious to get going, but I knew we had time and didn't want to rush off.

We stopped at Chickfila for some sustenance before heading into the hospital.

When we arrived at the hospital, I was put in a small room where they monitored his heartbeat and my contractions for a little while. I was told then that the doctor would probably want to put me on Pitocin right away, since my contractions weren't getting stronger or more consistent. After getting moved to a labor and delivery room, she came in and gave us her reasoning. Though neither of us really felt it was necessary, it's hard to go against a doctor's advice, so we agreed.

But after talking it over and getting a pep talk from my mom, we decided to tell our nurse that we'd rather wait and see what my body did over the next few hours instead of starting Pitocin.

Our nurse during the night shift was a saint. Kevin was so supportive of our decision to try out natural and him being pumped about it made us pumped about it. He brought Chris his own freshly ground coffee through the night and bantered with us just enough to keep things light. The 19 (ish-- depends when you start counting "labor") hours that I went natural were made so much easier and better because of him.

So I labored through the night with only an IV for fluids, but no drugs. Because my water had broken, my temperature was checked regularly to watch for a fever. Thankfully it stayed down.

Natural labor was hard. So hard. I vomited about 12 times through the night. We watched diving and track Olympic events during the breaks between contractions and once they started to get really tough, I even slept in between contractions, which I never thought was actually possible.

Chris was an amazing coach through the whole night. I know it was excruciating for him to watch me in that much pain, but he did an amazing job of helping me relax through the contractions and encouraging me on.

After many many hours of hard natural labor, we were sure that I would have progressed to 7, maybe 8 cm through the night. I was at my threshold for pain and hoping I'd be able to start pushing soon. When the night shift ended at 7am, and a new nurse came on duty, she checked me and I was at 3cm.

Time for the epidural.


(Read part two of Si's birth story here)