My Daughter's Birth Story

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My daughter turns 3 this Saturday, and I've found myself reminiscing about the day she was born. That, coupled with the fact that 5 of my friends have had babies in the past month, made me want to document her birth story. Added bonus? This way she has it forever.
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I began feeling contractions on June 11th at about 3:30 in the afternoon. They were in no way "progressing" (doctor speak for getting stronger in order to actually push a baby out), but I was eager to meet my daughter and, quite honestly, I was done being pregnant.

So I did all the things they tell you to do to speed labor up. I went on a long walk. I took a shower. I ate spicy foods. Finally, an hour later, I decided I was ready to have my baby girl, regardless of the fact that she was not "progressing."

My husband came home from work and we loaded up the car to go to the hospital. We were quickly admitted, I changed into one of those horrible blue hospital gowns, and I was strapped to a monitor. And we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

I think my contractions stopped.

Finally, a nurse came in and told me that I was only a half a centimeter dilated, but after reviewing the monitor print out, she told me that I was in the early stages of labor. The sent me home and told me I would probably be back by midnight.

At home, we ate some chicken noodle soup and my husband, after waiting with me for 5 hours, asked if he could go to bed. Sure, I said. I wasn't feeling much pain (you know, the kind you see on TV when a woman goes into labor? Yeah, that was what I was expecting). I was just uncomfortable.

So my husband went to bed and I didn't. Couldn't sleep. Too uncomfortable. So I decided to walk. I grabbed my IPOD and my cell phone, threw on my sneakers, and walked around my neighborhood for an hour.

Oh, did I mention that it was 1 in the morning at this point?

My husband called me, panicked, at 2 when he woke up and I was not in the house. I went home, more and more uncomfortable. I decided that I should start keeping track of my contractions and their duration, but I didn't really know what I was doing, since we were Lamaze dropouts.

Finally, at 4:30 in the morning, after a 4 mile walk and 3 lukewarm showers, I shook my husband awake and told him we were going to the hospital.

"Are you sure this time?" he asked groggily.

I deserve a medal for not smothering him at that moment.

At the hospital, I was told I was two centimeters dilated and they were going to keep me. YEAH! The nurse then made me walk around the damn hospital for two hours. At that point, I demanded an epidural; I was so tired of being uncomfortable. (I am mildly ashamed to admit that I was only 3 centimeters dilated at this point.)

Dr. Wu (may God forever bless this man) showed up and gave me my epidural. I was immediately happy and pain free.

And allergic to the epidural.

I'm not entirely sure what happened, but I know that I suddenly got chilled, started shaking, alarms went off, and everything went gray. My one clear memory is the terror on my husband's face. Still, two doses of IV Benadryl later, I was good to go.

I was also asleep.

I slept until the epidural wore off at 3 pm when I woke up crying. They gave me another epidural and more Benadryl, and I went back to sleep.

At 9:30 pm, my kind day nurse of the pain free epidural and sleep-inducing Benadryl was gone and had been replaced by evil Nurse Ratched. She abruptly informed me that it was time to push. My room was suddenly full of people - my nurse, baby nurse, Dr. Wu. My OB wasn't there, but since he hadn't been there for much of the pregnancy, I wasn't too surprised. The lights came on. The stirrups came out. My husband was drafted to fold me in half.

I started pushing. And pushing. And pushing.

Nothing happened.

"You aren't trying," Nurse Ratched barked at me. "Push harder!"

I looked at my husband and said rather loudly, because the baby nurse started to laugh, "I do not like this woman!"

She then told me, "You aren't pushing right. We are turning off your epidural."

I think she said that just to punish me for my comment about not liking her. But I was in no position to say anything. I looked at my husband: Do something, I told him telepathically.

"Wait," he said. "What? Why? We were told we could have the epidural through the delivery."

"She can't feel anything and she isn't pushing hard enough," Nurse Ratched snapped at him. "If she was doing it right, I could leave it on."

My husband looked at me and shrugged. Easy for him to be dismissive. He wasn't the one folded in half like an accordion, struggling to push out a watermelon.

So my epidural went off.

Oh. MY. GOD.

OWWWWWWWWW!!!!!! is not a strong enough word.

After 45 minutes, I started crying. "I can't do this," I sobbed. "I want to go home."

My husband rubbed my back, and Nurse Ratched got right in my face. "Shannon," she barked. "If you are going to panic, this is not going to work."

Really?!? What's option 2?!?!?

I think my daughter could tell that I was not happy with Nurse Ratched because just then, my water finally broke all over herand she had to leave.

After that, it was smooth sailing. I vaguely remember yelling at my husband to count faster (his job was to count to 10 while I pushed, so I would know when to rest); my OB finally showing up, talking about basketball; and Dr. Wu shooting me up with something when my daughter crowned (did I say, God Bless that man?). I don't remember much else until I saw my daughter.

The doctor held her up and put her on my chest. There are some moms who say that the world fades at that moment, that all they can focus on is their child. In my case, it's sort of true: I can tell you that Nurse Ratched was telling me to push out the placenta, and the doctor was asking my husband if he wanted to cut the cord. But I ignored them and everything else just wasn't there. I only could see her face; I can't even tell you what my husband was doing at that moment. All I knew is that I had a baby, a sweet, purple and red baby girl who was screaming her head off, and I started to cry.

"Look at what we did," I said to my husband as I gathered my daughter up and pressed a kiss to her purple forehead.

"Hello, preciousest baby girl! Welcome to the world," I whispered, before the baby nurse took her to bath her and give her the APGAR test (which she passed with flying colors, I might add).

My daughter was born at 10:24 pm on June 12, 2007, weighing 8 lbs, 4 oz, and measuring 20.5 inches long after 36 hours of labor.

And she has gone from this:

To this: