C & B + R: A Birth Story

I know, I know, you can't believe that I am just now getting around to posting this. Honestly, I have had time to write this post, but if I am not hanging out with Reed or doing something for Reed I just want to be a couch potato. That is starting to change, thank goodness! Chris and I are both getting more and more used to our new routine with our baby boy. I am sure things will continue to get easier and easier and the posts will become more frequent again. I have tons to tell you about already, so be on the lookout for more posts in the near future.

Okay, onto our birth story. I know a lot of you followed the labor and delivery process on the blog on Friday and Saturday, but here is the remainder of the story that we weren't able to post on Saturday.

After Chris' last post at 4:30 pm, things got a little interesting. Reed's heart rate was dipping so they had to put me on oxygen and give me more fluids because something was putting pressure on Reed's umbilical cord. Thankfully it ended up not being wrapped around his neck and the extra fluid helped alleviate the pressure and get his heart rate back to normal.

Then, the doctor came into examine me and Reed and discovered that Reed wasn't in the best position for labor, so they tried positioning me in a variety of ways to get him in a better position.

During all of this, I was in tremendous pain! More pain than I have ever felt in my whole entire life. It seems that the drugs administered via epidural don't really do the trick for me. Here's my epidural story:

12:30 pm: 1st epidural is received and works for a little while. It was nice to no longer feel the contractions, but then it wore off.

Unknown Time: Additional drugs are administered via my epidural line. This time, the drugs work for a pretty long while and I started to feel good about the labor and impending delivery.

Unknown Time: Drugs wear off and another doctor gives me additional drugs directly into my epidural line. I get no relief whatsoever and the contractions are starting to get extremely intense. At this point in time they started giving me the excuse that I was merely feeling pressure that I needed to feel in order to push. I have to say that I didn't believe them one bit. That was much more than pressure.

Unknown Time: Due to the extensive pain that I was in, the nurse called another anesthesiologist who came in and inserted a new epidural line into my back. Again, I felt no relief.

Unknown Time (You may notice all of the unknown times in the epidural process....well, this is because who really wants to check out the clock when they are in so much pain, lol!): The same anesthesiologist who administered the second epidural line came back in and gave me additional drugs into my epidural line (He said, "I gave you the good stuff."). He promised that if I gave birth within an hour that I wouldn't feel a thing. Boy, was he wrong! It didn't work again.

Unknown Time: The anesthesiologist comes back in and is baffled that I am still not getting any relief. He offers to insert a third epidural line into my back, but, because I was so nervous that having another line inserted into my back could potentially cause me long-term problems, I decided not to chance it. Looking back, maybe I should have tried it.

Ugh, just going back through it makes me a little nauseous! I honestly think that the pain of labor was magnified by the fact that I went into the hospital thinking that the labor and delivery process would be mostly pain free. The fact that I had to endure most of the labor and delivery process naturally was a complete shock to me.

The last hour of labor was pure torture. I know that women have babies naturally all the time, but I did not want to be one of those people. I hope I never have to experience that again. I will have another child, I promise, but I will definitely talk to the doctor beforehand about my body's lack of acceptance of the pain meds. I cried like a baby everytime a contraction would start. I couldn't bare the pain. I think I would have much preferred the old way of doing things, which consisted of the mom being knocked out during labor. I would have preferred anything to the pain I felt. I think the pain was somewhat magnified by the fact that I did not have any expectations for it....I never dreamt the epidural would not work! Who thinks that? How does that happen?

Once the doctor finally came in and said that I was 10cm dilated and ready to push, I was extremely relieved. I ended up only pushing for about 25 minutes before Reed joined us in the outside world. The doctor was extremely impressed by my pushing abilities. I swear, if he knew what every contraction felt like, he would be an impressive pusher as well, lol!

After all the pain of labor and delivery, I finally delivered our baby boy at 7:10 pm on Saturday. He was absolutely perfect! He did have a major conehead though and looking back at the video, I think he could have definitely gotten a part in the Coneheads movie, haha! Most people say that once you have the baby, you forget all the pain. I have to admit that this hasn't happened for me. I know this post isn't the joyous birth post that it really should be, but I really wanted to get it all written down so that we can recall all the craziness of Reed's birthday and tell him about it one day. I am already laughing about the crazy day that we had just one week ago. But that day, gave us our little Reed and it couldn't have been a more wonderful day!

So, enough about the pain. Because really, it's all about Reed, perfect Baby Reed! Chris and I feel so extremely blessed to have him in our lives. I couldn't be happier as a mom and I would go through the pain of labor and delivery all over again to have him in our lives. He was most definitely worth it!