I can’t believe a month has blown by and I still haven’t recounted the gory details of my labour and delivery, updated on Bubble, moaned about my setbacks and generally glowed about my little wonder bundle of joy.
Let me start off by, well, going back to the start.
It was a cold dark Friday night at 2 am when I was wrenched from sleep by what I thought were pretty bad cramps. Period like. Painful. Coming every 15 min or so, pretty regularly. Hmmm? Labour?
I couldn’t sleep through them so headed downstairs to watch TV, contemplate life as I used to know it and let the husband sleep. Figured we were in for a long haul and he might as well sleep while he could.
I watched girlie TV shows and paced back and forth through the cramps in our small TV room, watching the clock as they got progressively closer together.
About 6 am, Husband came down to find me pacing and the pain lasting about a min every 7-8 min. By this time I was really, really tired and was able to catch a few hours of sleep.
This pattern of cramps continued till we reached the magic point – 5 min apart for more than a minute each for more than an hour. We called Labour Triage and headed in to get checked out and have the baby.
Yeah – right. We spent a couple of hours there, getting poked and prodded. I was 2 cm dilated (same as at my OB checkup the day before) and thinning – but not thin and my ‘contractions’ were not strong enough to be considered active labour – so they packed me up and sent me home. Boo.
The cramps – offended by the brush off, petered off through the afternoon and ended up as smaller occasional pangs. Nothing to do but wait.
Sunday morning, had some twinges here and they were neither regular nor worsening in intensity. I figured I would be waiting a long, long time.
So I had an afternoon nap. I woke to a rather sharp cramp. It was about 5:30 pm. I had a few more of these over the next hour and a half. Then BAM. Those ‘contractions’ I was having late Friday night? A cakewalk. I went from the occasional twinge to contractions 3 min apart with no warning. No growing intensity. No 6 min then 5 min then 4. I was making dinner when it happened and was unable to eat it. Called Labour Triage after an hour of keep track (on my iphone – there’s an app for that) and reported that I was three min and thought this was the real thing. Oh – and I might have mentioned that they might as well find room for me because I wasn’t going home again until it was over. The nurse on the other end had no sense of humour about that.
So off to the hospital (again) at 9 pm. Checking, poking, prodding, contracting every 3 min – ouchy, painfully contracting. Some people are the kind of people who plan for and achieve a natural childbirth. I am not those people. I am ‘where did you say that epidural was’ kind of people and I was already wondering just that when they told me I was still 2-3 cm (at about 10, maybe 10 30) and should walk around the halls for a couple of hours. A COUPLE OF HOURS?
I made it about 25 min (about 7 more contractions) then went to find the nurse to see if maybe we could speed things up a bit. She put us in a lovely labour room with a lovely nurse named Mary who let me take my mask off (SIDEBAR: forgot to tell you about the mask – had a horrible cough for a week before this, went to emerg, my GP and my OB about it. Not H1N1, just a cough. But in heightened security times, any cough is a bad cough so up to this point I was wearing a mask- yuck.)
Mary took all my vitals – got the OB to check me again, started my IV and went to find the nice man with the epidural. The OB told me once the epidural was in they’d break my waters, give me about 3 hours then come and check again. She thought she’d need to do a Pitocin drip to get things going and she’d see me soon.
About 12:30 am the epidural was in, working very well and soon after they came, broke my waters, told me I was at about 3 cm and went on their merry way.
I tried to sleep but mostly chatted with the nurse and watched the clock. Around 3 I started to feel the contractions despite the epidural and waited for the nurse who was with me while my main nurse was on break to double check what I was supposed to do about that – push the little button – so I did.
At that point she thought maybe she should check me. When she asked if I felt the urge to push, I realized there would be no pitocin for me. After I said no, she told me three things. 1. It was funny that I hadn’t felt that urge yet. 2. He has hair – which she can tell because he’s only a knuckle away from the world. 3. She’d be right back with the delivery team.
Now they weren’t expecting me to deliver till sometime around noon the next day. My nurse was on break. The OB was nowhere to be found. And Husband was having a hard time waking up – not understanding what all the sudden fuss was about. I was 10 cm and fully effaced 3 hours after being 3 cm. I’m really glad I wasn’t feeling the contractions through that progress.
The team was all there and in place by 4 am. Little Bubble was in quite a hurry and after about 25 min of pushing made his entrance into the world at 4:31 am.
I wish I had the words to describe what the next few hours felt like. I wish I could remember every single second. It was just the most magical thing to see this little Bubble finally real and safe in the world. All the waiting. All the worry. Done.
To have known about him since he was just a little Bubble being shot into me from a catheter on the day of the transfer and finally see him, touch him, look into his eyes. I get a little choked up every time I think about it.
So one month today the Bubble shot into this world. It really has been a blur since. So little sleep. The demands of breastfeeding. An infection in the stitches from the tearing (yuck. pain. inability to sit. or walk. antibiotics for 10 days.). The approaching holidays. It seems every day flies by. And every one is another day I can’t live again. Every little toe wiggle and hand grasp and now smile is gone for good. He’s growing like a weed and though each day brings new pleasures I can’t believe my little man is never going to be that sweet little thing I met a month ago today ever again.
It’s like that aerosmith song. “I don’t want to close my eyes. I don’t want to fall asleep ’cause I’d miss you, and I don’t want to miss a thing.”
