My labor and delivery nurse was named Stephanie and she was really nice. I'm sure everyone working on the maternity floor was probably pretty friendly, but I still feel grateful that I ended up having such great nurses and doctors working with me. Aside from me and Matt, my mom, Matt's dad, my mom's friend Kelsie, and my friend Robyn were the ones who stayed in the room with me throughout labor. (Kudos to Matt's dad for sitting through all that. lol)
Around 8:00 AM, Dr. Salley came in to examine me and get the induction started. When I got there I was about 90% effaced and 2 cm dilated, which is what I had been the last couple weeks. He guessed that the baby would weigh in around 8 lbs or a little more. They got the Pitocin going in my IV, and he started stretching out my cervix, which to be honest did not feel real good. :/ After I guess he was satisfied with how things looked down there, he went ahead and broke my water around 8:15 AM. It was a really weird feeling... It felt like I was peeing myself, except I wasn't peeing. I didn't feel anything at all when he did it or afterwards - it was just gross feeling like I was constantly wetting myself. Before Dr. Sally left he felt my belly again and said he changed his mind, that he thought the baby would weigh in the high 7's.
Around 9:30 AM or so, I started feeling the cramps from my water breaking and the Pitocin. I would start to feel a contraction coming on and sure enough, when I looked up at the monitor, the little black line was climbing up again. At first they weren't too bad - like bad period cramps or something, and they would come and go. After a while though they started getting pretty intense, and I had to use the breathing that I learned to get me through them. I was surprised at how much the breathing really did help the pain. I knew it probably would, I just didn't expect it to as much as it did. Even though the contractions were getting stronger, they were still pretty erratic. Some would last for like 20 seconds and others for 2 minutes, and some came one after the other while others gave me a few minutes break in between.
My hormones were going crazy during all of this too. I'd go from being sweating hot to freezing cold. After a few pretty strong contractions, I started throwing up and Stephanie had to give me Alka-Seltzer and Zantac.
By 10:30 or 11:00 AM, the contractions were getting pretty intense. They had basically leveled out so that when I had one it would shoot way up off the monitor, and when it came back down it never actually went down - it just went from being super intense to not quite as intense. I didn't have a break. I was starting to get exhausted fast because even with the breathing, the pain about had me on the ceiling. For some reason the pressure of sitting on the toilet helped a lot, so I kept begging them to unhook me and let me stay in the bathroom... Of course I couldn't do that. I also started asking for an epidural at this point because I needed a break since the contractions weren't giving me any. They slowed down the Pitocin but it still wasn't enough to make a difference quickly. Stephanie called for my epidural as soon as I asked for it, but it took a good 30 minutes or more before the anesthesiologist was able to get to my room because there was another lady in line to get hers before me. That was the only time during the entire experience that time passed slowly.
When they examined me around 11:30 AM when the anesthesiologist got there, I was already at 7 cm. It was really hard to sit still through the epidural when I had a contraction, but the doctor was really good and I didn't feel a thing when he gave it to me. I held on really tight to Stephanie's shirt and Matt sat in a chair and watched because they made everyone else leave the room. I still had about 3-5 bad spikes in my neverending contraction after they gave me the epidural, but after that my legs started getting tingly and the pain gradually eased. Eventually I couldn't feel a thing or even move my legs at all. I was so exhausted from the last hour or so that I dozed off for a little over an hour.
Sometime shortly before 1:00 PM, Stephanie came back in and woke me up so that she could empty my bladder and examine me again. My contractions were a little more consistent but had gotten weaker after the epidural and everything, so they hiked the Pitocin back up again because Stephanie said it was time for me to push already. They shooed everyone out of the room except for Matt and my mom and took the bottom of the bed apart. I started pushing around 1:15 or 1:30 PM.
After pushing for over an hour, I was starting to get pretty exhausted again. I would push as hard as I could, and they could see his head right there, but I just couldn't do it hard enough to get his head to pop through under my pelvic bone. Stephanie went ahead and called Dr. Laffitte, the next doctor on shift after Dr. Sally left that morning. Within a few minutes he came into the room with a whole slew of people. At this point I started crying and shaking. All of a sudden it was hitting me that I was about to give birth and I was exhausted and overwhelmed by all the people buzzing around the bed and setting things up and draping sheets over my legs, etc. Stephanie actually was supposed to end her shift at 3, which is around what time it was by the time the doctor came in to help get the baby out. She was really nice and said she wanted to stay at that point to see him be born, so she stayed right by my side with Matt and my mom. :)
When they were ready I started pushing again, but it still wasn't doing much. The doctor asked if I would consent to him using a vacuum to help pull the baby out, and I said it was okay. He also had to do a midline episiotomy. Before I knew it he was holding a little body up in front of me and Matt was cutting the umbilical cord. It was 3:15 PM. And I was crying again, of course, but this time it was a huge mix of discomfort, shock, happiness, and the biggest surge of unexplainable emotion I think I've ever felt.
After that, everything became a blur. I kept feeling a lot of pressure and tugging and pulling down below as the doctor and nurses worked to sew me back up and get the bleeding moderately under control. They had handed Asher to me almost right away for me to say hello but then took him again with Matt so that he could be weighed and wiped off and lay under the heater to warm up. The only time they took him out of the room was to weigh him. When Matt came back with him I was still being sewn up and Matt said, "Guess how much he weighs!?" I guessed in the 7's, because that is what Matt and I were and that's what the doctors and everyone thought I'd have - something between 7-8 lbs, or maybe a little over 8. I was shocked when he told me 9 lbs, 1 oz! He was 22 1/4 inches long, his head was 14 1/2 inches around, and his chest was 13 3/4 inches around. Compared to what I was expecting, he was huge! I kept looking at him and thinking, "I can't believe that thing just came out of me."
Once I was sewn up and all the doctors and nurses had cleared out except for my new labor and delivery nurse, my mom, and Matt, we tried to get Asher to eat a little. He did really well - he had the idea down but was still having a little trouble figuring out how to suck hard enough to get anything out. We ordered some dinner for me - chicken noodle soup, fruit cocktail, and jello - and let the family come in to meet little Asher.
At around 7:00 PM, some other nurses came in to help me get out of bed. My right leg was not cooperating and waking up so that I could walk on it. They asked when the last time my bladder had been emptied was, and raised eyebrows when I told them it had probably been around 1 o'clock or so. They helped me into the bathroom and could see just looking at me that my bladder was distended, but nothing would come out. They tried pushing down on my abdomen, but still nothing. Finally they had to call another nurse to catheterize me, which wasn't that fun since the catheter was a red rubbery hose the size of a drinking straw. They emptied about 64 ounces out of my bladder. Then we moved to our "nesting suite", where we stayed the remainder of our time in the hospital.
The time in the hospital passed very quickly. We had a lot of visitors come by and got little to no sleep. Even if Matt and Asher would doze off for a little while, I would stay awake and just stare at them. I couldn't believe that all that had actually happened. When I think about it I still can't believe I actually have a child of my own now. It's crazy. I can't believe I'm a mommy. It's definitely one of those experiences that people can try to explain to you until they're blue in the face, but you really don't know what it feels like until you actually go through it.
And that is the story of how Asher David Coppel came into this world. :)
