My due date came and went on Aug 17, and I was really bummed out because my midwife had been telling me for WEEKS that she didn’t think I would make it to my due date. The OB that she practices under doesn’t like his FTM patients to go past 41wks, so we had an induction set for 41+3 (and I really wanted to avoid that).I had my membranes swept at my 40 week appointment on Monday (8/19) at 40+3 (already 2cm dilated and very soft cervix). My midwife said to expect some cramping and bleeding and to stay active for the rest of the day. Afterwards we went home and my mom and I walked a total of 4.2 miles together around town throughout the rest of the afternoon. I remember angrily thinking that there’s no way the membrane sweep worked, because I was crampy that day but not any more than I had been since 37 weeks. In retrospect, I think I got a lot more emotional after the sweep and that was the first sign that it had indeed kicked things into gear!About 12 hours after my sweep I had a lot of bloody mucus when I wiped and went to bed feeling hopeful that I’d go into labor overnight.Well...I didn’t. I cursed the labor gods all day Tuesday and resigned myself to my induction the following week. My mom suggested that we continue walking and staying active, but I had a mini tantrum and went down to the pool and sat on my ass while feeling sorry for myself for a good portion of the afternoon.That night I decided to make eggplant Parmesan, not because I thought it would kick start labor, but because my mom loves my recipe and I promised I’d make it for her while she was staying with us. We ate dinner and around 8pm I laid down on the couch to watch TV, feeling really fatigued and contemplating going to bed soon.My back was getting achy laying on the soft couch so I got up again about 15 mins later to bounce on my birth ball. My dog came over and laid down at my feet, which was really strange because usually when I bounce on the ball she thinks it’s playtime and goes a little crazy. I remember sort of jokingly thinking to myself, “I wonder if she knows something that I don’t!”I got up off the birth ball to sit on the floor with my dog...and suddenly my underwear felt very wet! My first thought was “MY WATER BROKE!” But when I snuck off to the bathroom and sat on the toilet there was no more fluid trickling out of me. I pulled off my sopping wet panties, feeling defeated and thinking, “Wow that was a pretty gross amount of discharge!” I changed my panties and snuck off to quietly throw my dirty ones in the laundry room. I didn’t want my husband to see because he had been driving me crazy for weeks asking if I was going into labor at every little symptom, and I didn’t want to get his hopes up.But by the time I got back into the living room, the second pair of panties were soaking wet too! In complete denial, I changed out of those panties as well before soaking a third pair and finally admitting to my mom and husband that I was pretty sure my water broke, or I had just been peeing myself for two straight minutes. My mom confirmed that this was likely my waters and I had a brief moment of panic and locked myself in the bathroom, feeling sort of shaky with adrenaline.I texted my midwife and told her what happened (this was right around 9pm). I asked if it was okay if we stayed home for a bit and tried to get contractions going on our own before heading to the hospital. She said okay, but to go in if I wasn’t having consistent and painful contractions after 6 hours.My husband and I walked around town for a good hour and went to get ice cream. I was feeling crampy, but it sort of just felt like I was about to have a bad period. When we got home, I used my breast pump for about an hour and while this definitely increased my Braxton Hicks contractions, nothing consistent was happening. Finally around midnight we decided that the best course of action was to sleep for a bit before heading to the hospital.We went in at 3am, leaving my mom at home with the dog. It was such a surreal feeling to know that this was finally happening and when I came home next we would have a baby with us! My husband and I rolled down the windows and jammed out to the radio for the ten minute drive to the hospital, feeling giddy with anticipation.When we arrived and got settled in, they started me right away with a tablet of misoprostol to dissolve in my cheek. They had wanted to start with Pitocin, but because my waters had broken I was already going to be hooked up to the fetal monitor (and their wireless monitor was missing a part), so I wanted to avoid also being tied down with an IV if it was possible.But after 3 hours the misoprostol had done absolutely NOTHING and around 8am my midwife arrived and said that we needed to start the Pitocin because I still wasn’t contracting. I was pretty upset about it. My husband took a photo of me sitting on a birth ball with the fetal monitor wires trailing away to my right and the IV tubes connecting to the stand on my left, and a blood pressure cuff attached to something else behind me. I felt so strapped down. My midwife had to leave again to do her clinic hours on the other side of the island but said that she expected things to move slowly and she would be back around 5pm. She said she wanted me to be up and about and move as much as possible, but every time I tried to bounce on the ball or get into any other position that wasn’t just laying on the bed, the fetal monitors would start picking up my heartbeat instead of baby’s and one of the nurses would come in to tell me, yet again, that I needed to be careful not to knock the monitor out of place. I was so frustrated and I remember feeling a little weepy over the fact that things were already not going how I had hoped they would.By 12:45pm they had upped my Pitocin from a 2 to an 8 and I was juuuust starting to feel some consistent contractions. My husband was debating on whether or not he should go get my mom or send a Lyft for her, and I said that if he was going to leave he should do it now because I could feel things beginning to get heavy. I encouraged him to stop and pick up some food for himself as well. It had taken so long for me to feel anything that I assumed it was safe for him to leave and that the contractions would continue to come on slowly...but I was wrong.He left and they upped my Pitocin to a 10. By 1:15pm I could no longer talk through contractions. I suddenly didn’t give a fuck about the nurses getting upset about the fetal monitor and I was getting up and down off the floor, draping myself over the ball, and squatting down to make it through each contraction. I think at this point they were coming every 3 minutes or so. The worst part was how much I had to pee, and I had to time it so that a contraction wouldn’t hit while I was on the toilet because I just couldn’t get into position to give myself any relief. I started throwing up with every contraction, and at one point I just decided to stay unhooked from the monitor so that I could curl up on the bathroom floor with my IV stand and alternate between throwing up and trying to pee. (My midwife had told the hospital staff that I could continue to eat as long as I felt like it, so I had eagerly eaten a full breakfast and lunch to charge myself with as much calories as possible...but I ended up wishing I hadn’t eaten so much.)A nurse finally came in to check on me around 3pm because I had been unhooked from the monitors for so long, and I decided to try some IV fentanyl for a little relief. My mom and husband returned right as they were giving me my first dose. The nurse knew that I wanted to be moving around so she apologetically told me that I had to stay in bed with the fentanyl, and I told her that I didn’t care because I could barely stay on my feet anymore. The fentanyl definitely took the edge off my contractions, but I still had to breathe and vocalize through them, and it wore off after 40 minutes.I begged for the second dose and asked for a cervical check. The nurse said I was 80% effaced but only 3cm, and I decided to do the epidural because there’s no way I was going to survive through 7 more cm of that shit. She suggested I take the second dose of fentanyl so that I would be calm for the anesthesiologist, and I agreed.The anesthesiologist arrived right around 5pm. I was so lost in laborland that I couldn’t think, couldn’t talk, and my contractions were coming every 2 minutes and lasting over a minute. I had about 30-40 seconds to recoup before the next one hit me, and I told the anesthesiologist that I hoped she could do this quickly between contractions. And she did! She gave me a shot of topical anesthetic and then we waited through a contraction before she inserted the epidural. I had been worried about the whole needle in my spine thing, but I was in so much pain from the contractions that I didn’t feel a thing!*A note on the epidural: My original plan was to labor naturally, but I was open to pain relief if I ended up feeling like I needed it, especially since I was on Pitocin. I decided to go for it once I realized that I was no longer enjoying my labor, and I’m so glad that I did.I fell into a blissful and exhausted sleep right afterwards. I slept until 7pm when my midwife woke me up and said she wanted to check me. She repositioned me to open my legs, looked down and said “Well, I don’t need to check you. You’re going to push twice and be crowning. I can see her hair!”I was shocked, but I do remember feeling like I had to poop badly while the epidural was being inserted. In retrospect, I think that maybe I had dilated drastically beyond 3cm in the hour that I had to wait for the epidural. My midwife says that I was likely in transition and didn’t even know it at the time, because in the 2 hours that I slept after the epidural I not only finished dilating but my baby girl traveled down the birth canal on her own!I pushed for 40 mins on my side and she was born at exactly 8pm, 23.5 hours after my water broke. Pushing was definitely hard with the epidural because I couldn’t feel anything. I told my midwife that I did NOT want to tear, so she guided me as best as she could and lubed me up with mineral oil between contractions...but I still ended up with a second degree tear. My mom video taped the birth, and right at the very end when baby’s head was out the midwife said to me “Okay, tiny push here,” and because I couldn’t feel the intensity of my pushes I gave another big push and she said “Easy, easy!” I think that was when I tore. So, if you get the epidural definitely be sure to ask for a mirror so you can see what’s happening down there and push accordingly!Honestly, very little in my birth went according to what I had “planned,” but I had already made peace with the idea that birth was going to happen the way that it needed to and not necessarily how I wanted it to. Even though I had to be induced, and I was hooked up to all kinds of monitors and I ended up doing the epidural my experience was overwhelmingly positive and I get tears of gratitude in my eyes every time I think about it.My recovery was still pretty rough the first couple days home. The tear in my perineum that required stitches wasn’t too bad, but I had a couple of smaller lacerations around my clit and urethra that were too tiny to stitch up, and those hurt WAY WORSE. For a couple days I was terrified to drink anything because it stung so bad when I peed, even with the peribottle. (Side note: If this happens to you, the trick is to drink MORE WATER because it dilutes your urine and makes it less acidic. Since I figured this out I drink probably a gallon per day and my pain levels when peeing have dropped dramatically.) Because of all this it took me four days to poop after delivery, and I ended up having to take a laxative because I was too sore to push. The first postpartum poop is scary, but you will feel SO much better once you do it...so just go. Your stitches won’t pop out, I promise!I also have bilateral Bartholin cysts that became inflamed during delivery. (If you don’t know what these are you’re lucky...and if you do I offer my solidarity and condolences.) I’ve been on an antibiotic to try to make them less angry, but it’s looking like I might have to get them lanced on Friday. This has probably been the HARDEST part of my postpartum recovery. I wanted to share about this because I spent a lot of time looking for vaginal delivery stories from women with Bartholin cysts and had a hard time finding any info before my birth. My suggestion to any other Bartholin sufferers is to discuss getting on a round of antibiotics immediately after birth to prevent infection. I waited three days before reaching out and I think the inflammation could have been mitigated with earlier intervention.Due largely in part to all the fun issues I’ve been having with my downstairs, I did have some pretty major baby blues on days 3-5 but they seem to have passed (thankfully). What helped me the most with this was taking the time to shower and get dressed every day (even if I wasn’t planning to leave the house) and doing something for myself totally not baby-related. I had been reading books on labor and infant care for months, and when I finally decided to just pick up a nice novel instead this small choice made a world of difference for me!Oh, one more note: I’m a tiny person, 5ft flat and weighed 110lbs pre-pregnancy. Many, many people told me that I would probably have to have a C-section because I’m so tiny, and this was a worry that haunted me throughout my whole pregnancy. However, my baby girl fit through my pelvis with absolutely no issues and she was on the larger side of average (7lbs 10oz). Don’t let anyone stress you out and tell you that your pelvis is too small, because the width of your hips that’s visible from outside is not actually what matters...it’s the size of the pelvic outlet (and this is something that you can’t see externally).Anyways. Things have been tough but overall I’m absolutely overwhelmed with joy when I think about my birth. My best advice would be to have your birth plan but also give yourself permission to let go and have the experience that you’re going to have. I knew from the beginning that birth doesn’t have a “plan,” and I was open to anything and everything. I’m grateful that I was able to be in the right headspace to appreciate my birth exactly as it happened, and not as I had planned. My daughter was born a week ago today and I still can’t stop thinking about that moment when I pulled her onto my chest. The fetal monitors, the Pitocin, the tearing...none of that mattered to me in the end, because I got my baby girl. 💕 via /r/BabyBumps https://ift.tt/2LbZHkC
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