1-2-3: The birth story

I have had several requests for the birth story so here it is!

She was born Friday (the 20th) in the morning, the night before at about 11:30 I started having pretty intense contractions to the point where I couldn't get comfortable in any position. At about 12:30 I woke Joe up because I was pretty confident that this was the real deal and I was at the point where I needed some help. He helped me try and find a comfortable position and started timing my contractions. At this point they were about 5-6 min apart and lasting 40 seconds - 1 min. Within an hour they were about 3-4 min apart and still lasting the same amount of time. By 2:30 I'm pretty sure all I was saying was "get the bowl" (I was puking a lot...) and " I can't do this." Joe was a great help but I wouldn't let him touch me I guess so that made it hard on him. By this point my contractions were 2-3 min apart but only lasting 40 sec and I was in an incredible amount of pain so we finally went to the hospital.

When we got there we had to go in the emergency entrance because it was the middle of the night, thankfully there were girl nurses working that desk who saw the amount of pain I was in and got me a wheelchair to take me up to Labor and Delivery because I'm not too confident that I could have walked any more at that point. From this point on don't ask me what anything looked like because I think that my eyes were closed most of the time just trying to get through the contractions. The admitting nurse was the slowest nurse that we worked with through the entire process ( I don't think she realized how much pain I was in), thank goodness we had pre-registered! But they still ask you a bunch of questions before sending you to triage, frankly at this point I don't think I even remembered my birthday (good thing Joe was so with it!). Once they handed us over to the triage nurse things went a little better, she could tell I was in pain and tried to work efficiently but they still have to ask you a million things before they can even check to see how far along you are. After she was with us for a couple minutes she realized that my contractions were right on top of each other and tried to go faster but the contractions were making it hard for her to get a normal blood pressure on me. I was either way high or practically dead. When she finally got to the point that she could check me I kept thinking that I better at least be at a 5 by now. I was at 9cm. No, I am not joking. I was in extreme pain and serious LABOR! I remember the first thing that I said after she checked me was " Can I still get an epidural?!" And you better believe there was some serious desperation in my voice. Thankfully I liked her response. She said that if that was what I wanted then yes.

Then man alive did the nurses start to move fast!!! They rushed me through the rest of what they had to do before putting me in a labor room and even saved some questions until later. One nurse tried to make me walk to the labor room- ha ha right.... not happening but they ended up wheeling me- thank goodness. When we got in there they were already unpacking all the sterile equipment (kinda surprised I even noticed this). At this point I was basically mobbed by nurses all trying to get stuff done so that I could get an epidural. I think I had two trying to get a normal blood pressure on me and two trying to get an IV in a vein that kept rolling away ( I had to have a full bag of fluids before I could get the drugs), as well as one putting bands on my wrist- now it is entirely possible that some of these were the same people, honestly I have no clue. Once they got the IV in they pumped it to full blast and gave me some paperwork to "read" so that I could get the epidural. At some point the doc on call from my doctor's office came in and introduced himself and then I guess he decided to let them do a spinal instead of an epidural (thank you!). A man named Joseph gave it to me and it was working within seconds- ahhhhhh.... =) It was while he was giving it to me that I started to feel the urge to push but that quickly went away. For me I never had any doubt that I could have done it naturally, I just had no desire to and even though the pain relief may have come a little bit later than I would have liked I was grateful for it.

At that point they let me rest a little bit, for which I was very grateful. A little after five the doc came back in and after four contractions (about 12 pushes) later Michelle Aubrey Bidwell was born at 5:25 am, 8lbs 2.5 oz and 20 in long, with a full head of dark hair!!! I was shocked at having such a big baby but more shocked that she had hair!!!! In total my labor was about 6 hours- big surprise to me. If you are wondering why I waited so long to go to the hospital here are my reasons- everyone says that first time labor is long so don't go too soon, my contractions weren't consistently lasting a minute they were more like 40 sec., but the biggest one was that I did not want to be that first time mom that goes in too early and gets sent home. So it was quite the adventure but now we have our little cutie pie!!!

And now a few pictures ( I promise more to come):