Birth Story - Part 1 (of 40 million, it seems)

I figured if I dont start this - at least Part 1 - it will NEVER get written, so here we go...Izzy is down for her post-dinner-nap and W and I are zen-ed out to one of our favorite crime dramas..so here we go...

Phase I: Natural Labor

Sunday (Jan 30) 7pm: W and I are sitting at home, eating a late dinner (late for those days..ahh those were the days of 8pm bedtimes!) and talking to our donor on the phone. We were complaining about the fact that I had had mild contractions all weekend and still no "action" AND THEN....I felt like I had peed in my pants..literally that is all that occurred to me. So I got up and went to the bathroom. At which point, W figured out what was going on, and we both got really excited. We called our midwives (green fluid = come in), W's parents (will they dog-sit for us) and rushed out of the house...and so it begins.

At this point, I was CONVINCED we would be having our January Baby -- after all, it was the evening of the 30th..labor certainly couldn't last more than a full day, right.right? (HA -- WRONG)

After we got settled in our room, our midwife checked my progress (1cm) - boo - and given the meconium in the fluid, they wanted to "move things along" so --- enter pitocin. Now, I should remind you at this point, that we had taken a hypo-birthing class and read 101 books on the "Birth Experience" and the importance of "exercising our voice" and all we knew about pitocin was going to make the contractions MUCH stronger - and should be avoided. But in the moment, what are you going to do..so YUP to pitocin, YUP to speeding this along..and YUP to our January Baby...

and we are off....or so we think.

January 31 - 7AM -- 10 hours of pitocin later, I am exhausted, but the contractions were still manageable. The next midwife shift starts and I am checked again, and find that I am progressing - 3cm. So she decides to let me labor naturally (bye-bye pitocin) as I am starting to make progress on my own. Next comes roughly 8 hours of what we think are VERY PRODUCTIVE contractions. They are getting stronger, I am on the birth-ball, I am in the tub, I am out of the tub, I am walking around. We are doing some breathing, we are watching Modern Family episodes that we had saved on hulu for just this occasion. There is one 3 hours stretch where I am laying in the bathtub, the midwife is pouring water over me and I thought - I can actually do this, this is great!

THEN....at around 4pm, I am checked again and SURELY I must be close now, the contractions have gotten more painful, I FEEL stretching..but no, only 3cm still..AHHH -- and the midwife gently tells me I have to go back on higher doses of pitocin. Cue panic from me "How can I do this for 12 more hours" - and then she gently suggests that it might be time to consider an epidural and that is what I really start to panic. Not because I was so VERY against the epi, but because I knew NOTHING about it. Every time I got to "that" section of the Pain Management part of the book, I skipped it (hello hubris) as I figured that I would be hypnobirthing-it-out. At that point though, W and I had been awake for nearly 36 hours, we were exhausted and I was worried (despite the fact that they never threatened this)that if I didnt start progressing faster, they were going to bring in "bigger guns" (um, wasnt the 24 hour mark only a few hours away???).

So begins Phase II -- The JOYS (and I mean that literally) of the Epi.

--- I'll have to stop the story here for now, as the next two phases are MUCH longer, I guess not longer time-wise but certainly more detail-rich.

At this point the birth feels SO LONG AGO. As I think about the last month -- well 5 weeks nearly -- its been a whirlwinds of ups and downs. As my facebook status reported at 3 weeks out -- Sleep Deprivation IS the most potent type of torture. But in the past two days, Izzy has become more of a little person. She is more alert, and more "fun" -- The rash and gas days are not over, for sure, but the rash is fading -- thanks to the MAGIC of wedela calendula diaper cream (run out and buy some, this stuff is gold) and the gas stress is dwindling (sort of) after we discovered a crazy cocktail of gripe water and mylicon (yes, we are perfectly happy drugging up our daughter, if it means she is not writhing in pain). AND we even took her out to a "fancy" non-kid-friendly restaurant last night, where she slept peacefully the whole time -- yes we did eat at 5:15, just in case....

anyways, Part 2 to come soon!