Barb was a regular at our Prenatal Yoga classes. She and Rob also came to Infant Care class. I’m honored that she’s sharing her birth story with all of us. Happy reading!
I woke up in the morning on November 23 (my due date) feeling great with no plans to do Black Friday shopping. Since Rob’s brother was visiting, we decided to all go the gym together – Rob, his brother, his dad, and me. I went on the elliptical for an hour, a little bit slower pace since I had been feeling pretty stretched out the past few weeks. Plus, since it was beautiful out on Thanksgiving afternoon and when we were all full of turkey or tofurky; we had already taken a long walk through Frick Park.
After the gym, we conned Rob into getting a haircut by telling him that Dan had an appointment, when all along the plan was to convince Rob to take his place… which he did, and it looked awesome. Baby Spagiare now finally could make his entrance since his papa would look good in the baby photos!
We all went to dinner, and I ordered my Chinese sizzling platter 7/10 spiciness to try to help the little munchkin along, but really it wasn’t as spicy as I wanted it to be and was more like a 4/10. After dinner, we went to go see James Bond Sky Fall in the Waterfront, but alas, it was sold out just before we got there. So we went to get a cappuccino instead. Rob’s friends were in town, so he went to hang out with them, and I went to hang out with my friends who had done some mega Black Friday shopping since 2am.
I was thinking I was a little uncomfortable starting around 10pm or 11pm, but I figured it was just my plain old Braxton Hicks contractions acting up. So at 12:30am, I figured it was time to head home. Just before going home, my friend asked “So are you getting contractions ever?” and I responded “Yeah, all the time” and was thinking “Jeez, tonight they really are all the time…”
When I got home, I was getting more uncomfortable and starting to have little contractions more often and laid down with our two dogs for a nap in front of the TV. At 1:30am, I woke back up and thought, “Man, this is really getting uncomfortable! Shit, am I in labor??? If I have one more of these, it has got to be labor!” And then another one came… I tried to lie down and sleep but from 2am-3am, I was too uncomfortable to sleep, not in mega pain but just too much discomfort to fall asleep.
At 3am, Rob came home. I went downstairs and asked him, “How drunk are you?” to which he luckily responded, “Not very.” So I told him, “Good, because I am starting to get pretty uncomfortable.” And he gave me a funny look and was wondering if I was in labor, and I guess I was. I told him to try to get some sleep since I knew that I wouldn’t, and at least one of us would be a little awake to drive in the morning. He went to bed, and I hung out downstairs with the pups.
I decided that I should get those last 7 patient notes done that I had been slacking on, because I knew that there would be no way I would want to do those later. Talk about procrastination, but I guess I work best under pressure. It was funny, because as I was typing, I’d have to pause every few minutes to breathe through a contraction.
After all my notes were done, I took a nice hot shower. I shaved my legs for the first time in forever, because what the hell else did I have to do in the shower for half an hour. Haha! I tried to go back to bed but that failed, so then I went downstairs again to watch “Moonrise Kingdom”. That was a pretty good distraction, and a pretty funny movie. About half way through though, the contractions were getting pretty strong, and I decided to wake Rob up, sort of to suffer with me and sort of because I just needed someone to be with me. That was around 8am.
At 8:45am-ish, the contractions were really getting painful, stronger,and coming frequently. We called my parents around 9am, and my sister-in-law (who was at my parents for Thanksgiving and is also pregnant herself) recommended downloading a contraction iPhone app. I was trying to push the button myself every time I had a contraction just to make sure they were actually lasting for 1 min and coming every 5 min, because it didn’t feel like they were actually lasting that long but definitely really frequent. I started to want to throw the iPhone across the room, because who the hell on earth wants to hit a button every time they are starting and ending having severe pain?!?!? So Rob hit the button a few times for me, and they were lasting 1 1/2 min and coming at least every 5 min, so we stopped timing after just a few contractions.
We decided to call the midwife at 9:45am, since that had been about an hour of pretty intense labor. Through the contractions, I was mostly just doing deep breathing, walking around the house, and leaning up against walls and the big bouncy ball. Kathy called back but I was having a contraction, so Rob answered the phone. Then he put me on.
She asked if my water had broken yet, and I told her that I was seeming to leak more fluid than usual since yesterday morning, but no big gush. She was concerned that if it had broken that I was at 24 hours and needed for sure to be in labor or else would have to be induced. I told her, “Believe me, I am in labor”… and then I had another contraction. We agreed to meet at the Midwife Center at 10:30am for her to check me and see if my water actually had broken or not.
So we grabbed our bags and off we went. Of course there was snow on the ground and it was freezing, so Rob had to defrost and scrape the ice off the car. Rob was driving like a madman, and I told him that there was no need to. He saw how much pain I was in, so I think he just wanted to get to the Midwife Center fast. We got there just around 10:30am. Luckily no Squirrel Hill Tunnel traffic.
When we got there, Kathy took me upstairs and did an exam and saw my membranes were still intact and I was 5cm! Woohoo! So I was staying. I went in the jacuzzi which was pretty nice. The contractions got stronger, and I just tried to keep taking slow breaths through them and closed my eyes.
It was funny, because whenever opened my eyes, there was someone else in the room in a different place- either Rob had moved, Shannon appeared, and at some point the nurse in training Danielle appeared, and Shannon introduced us. In between contractions, I actually had no pain at all, but during them, my back was really starting to hurt. A lot of pain, but I knew that it would be over soon, so somehow it wasn’t horrific. Rob and I passed the time trying to come up with middle names for a boy, because we still hadn’t decided! When it was down to the wire, we finally agreed on Viktor. The girl’s first and middle name had been picked forever ago.
Funny that we could have totally normal conversations between the contractions.
The baby was wiggling around like crazy in between all the contractions too, “Go Ninja Baby!” This continued all the way until the last few contractions, I hadn’t expected that. Even when Danielle and Shannon were checking the doppler, they kept having to shift it around because the baby kept shifting around. I got out of the jacuzzi once to pee and then went straight back in.
A little while later I kind of thought I had an urge to push, so I asked if I could be checked. Rob and I were wondering how were we gonna know if my water had broken if I was in the jacuzzi. Well, I stood up to go to the bed to get measured and had a contraction. Rob hugged me tight, and then all the sudden “WHOOSH!”– my water broke and exploded all over his legs, on his pants and in his shoes!Oh my god,what a mess! Insane amount of fluid! I was laughing, not sure if Rob was. Haha!
I waddled over to the bed. Kathy said I was complete and could push when I wanted. I pushed for 3 contractions worth. After the second, Kathy said the baby was crowning. I was in so much pain and didn’t know if I could do it, but really I did know, because its not like I had a choice at that point. Rob gave me a kiss on the head and was sitting next to me cheering me on. Kathy, Shannon, and Danielle said, “There’s no one here, so you can be as loud as you want.” Not that them saying it gave me permission, but I starting yelling while pushing without even realizing it, “It hurts, I can’t,” maybe used expletives, maybe not, can’t remember. On the third contraction I pushed again and felt burning and then the head plop out and then another push and the baby was out.
Kathy placed the baby on me and said “Open your eyes! Open your eyes!”
And then I saw the baby- wide awake and crying. I couldn’t believe a baby that size had just been in my belly! They asked if Rob wanted to cut the cord but he had seen enough and declined. Rob got to chance to tell me the sex of the baby, even though we had originally planned on having them tell us at the same time because that’s what Rob had thought he wanted. Rob says that he looked to see if the baby was a boy or girl and that he was in so much of a haze he didn’t even know until they pointed to his testicles, and Rob told me we had a boy. Haha!
They asked us the name, and I went totally blank, and Rob said “Flynn!” It still felt like a dream, maybe because I was sleep deprived since I had only slept an hour or maybe just because it was such a wild experience.
The placenta took a while to come out, and Kathy had me do this funny awkward squat to get it out, but it worked. Somehow by some crazy miracle, there were no repairs needed. Tears had been my biggest fear of labor, and somehow I escaped with only a little nick that didn’t require any suturing. Maybe that ridiculous and annoying perineal massage actually worked?
We tried to have Flynn feed, and it was ridiculous letting him bobble around. He was so little! Rob had lot more patience than I did, I just wanted to help him latch on. He didn’t succeed at first, so then Danielle and Shannon measured him and clamped his umbilical cord. And then he succeeded in nursing!
I ate a PB sandwich, delicious! Afterward, the 3 of us were all so tired, so we fell asleep for an hour. Then we woke back up and were hungry for dinner. We went through all the paperwork and teaching and got footprints and finger prints. We got Flynn changed into his first outfit and carseat bear suit. And then we went home together for the first time as a family.
THE END… well, technically more like, THE BEGINNING!
Big congratulations to Barb, Rob and Flynn. 🙂
Do you want to share your birth story with us? Email us and we’ll be glad to post it for you!
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