Birth Story – Part IV

Okay everyone, final installment. I’ll also post another entry with the whole thing all in one go, in case anyone prefers to read it that way.

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My midwife was sorry, but she had to go. The other midwife I hardly knew was on call now. I didn’t blame our midwife for leaving, I thought she was incredible for sticking it out with me for so long.

I should mention that our poor parents were in the waiting room the ENTIRE time I was in labor. We updated them few and far between because Jared couldn’t leave me. He was my rock and I depended on him and felt a touch of panic every time he had to go. Even though I knew in my mind that he had to eat (thank goodness Jacie reminded him and forced him to go get real food), I really disliked it when he had to go. So, hours would go by with no update for our parents and they grew more worried as the days passed. They were infinitely pleased when Jared was able to announce I had consented to an epidural and was resting.

Since I was no longer allowed to eat anything but popsicles and ice chips, I asked the nurse to make sure I got a big ol’ IV bag of some type of sugar water so I’d feel energized enough to keep going and I slept. I finally slept. I woke up when the epidural had worn off a bit and I felt a big contraction. The nurse said this was the happiest baby she had ever seen. He was strong and doing great despite the Pit drip and he was actually getting in position now that I was no longer clenching my gut up in pain. The few hours of rest did me a world of good. I felt ready to finish this up and have the baby. It wasn’t long before I felt the urge to push. I wanted to breathe through the whole process and squat and try different positions, but that was no longer in the cards for me. Even though I could totally still move, I was told to get into a position that hurt soooo much worse than just staying on my knees. The on-call midwife said I was making way quicker progress in a side-lying position than I was on my knees. I remember that I kept saying that I wanted them to get the baby out of my butt. That is totally where it felt like he was. I had a mirror there that I had asked for. However, I didn’t really want to see my butt at that moment so I asked them to take it away. As the pushing phase continued, I was encouraged and told that they could see the baby’s head and I should just keep going. This is where I felt like getting impolite. I did tell them all, “OK!” and “I KNOW!” when they told me for the 4th time that they could see the head. That totally didn’t matter to me. I could feel the head in my canal. DUH! I knew they could see it. Stop telling me about it. I was so angry that everyone was telling me what to do. But I listened to them.

I was also super hot. Jared was sweetly caressing me and put his forehead on me. OMG he was like a furnace, but a furnace of love. He got me cold compresses when I said, “too hot” and went to put one on my neck, but I stopped him and asked him to use it on himself. That gave everyone a good chuckle. And the midwife kept sticking her fingers in there and I kept telling her to quit it. Then at a certain point, I said, “Get your fingers out of there!” and was told that there were no fingers in there and it was just pressure from his head. Damn. That was the worst pain ever in the world. And they kept telling me to push, but I wanted to take it slower even though I had so much pressure in my butt and it hurt like hell. But I pushed the way they told me to and held my breath even though it felt wrong to me. And finally, his head passed through and stopped hurting so much. When they said “here come his shoulders,” I braced for more pain, but didn’t feel anything. He was just suddenly out. It was nearly 44 hours from my water breaking until he was born. Everything after this is incredibly hazy.

They handed him to me and he made tiny noises, but started to cry when they toweled him off a little, so I put him to my breast. I think Jacie coached me to do this, but can’t remember. He started eating immediately (and never stopped). The cord stopped pulsing soon after and Jared cut it. The placenta was delivered. The unfamiliar midwife sewed up a 2nd degree tear in my perineum. I remember asking her questions about it, but don’t really remember anything she said. Jacie needed to go home and we thanked her profusely for staying so long with us. Nurse Patty came in and did something I don’t remember. And even though we originally planned to have no visitors for 2 hours, I ok’d bringing our families in. He had eaten so well and so fast, there was no reason to stay by ourselves for 2 hours waiting for him to breastfeed. A lady came in and did the weight/measurement (8 lbs, 20 in. length,14 in head). Later, Patty inked his surprisingly large feet (they look exactly like his daddy’s) in our baby book. Our families came in and brought us steak dinners from Outback. I ate the whole steak and loved every bite. That was what I had planned on eating as my first meal after birth as a kind of reward for getting through it. It was the perfect choice. They all held him and took many pictures while Jared and I ate our fills. Everyone was relieved and happy.

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So that’s it! Or at least that’s it for now. We also had a bit of an adventure a few hours later that one or both of us will write up soon.

Any new news other than that? Well Gryff continues to grow like mad. We’ve got him in his cloth diapers as much as we can, but he plows through three dozen of them in far less time than we’d anticipated. We’d buy more but it seems like he’s getting almost too big for the yellow ones already. We’re hesitating to invest in too many of any one size of prefold just because he’s getting so big so quickly. We’ll probably have to buy another 3 dozen of the next size, and hope for the best. The nice thing is that those prefolds will be useful for our next baby, for sure, and they also make great burp cloths, which I know I’ve mentioned before. When we’re out of cloth, we go to our shiny new Costco disposables in size 1-2. They say they’re good up to 15 pounds, but it seems like he’s too big for them. That’s a shame because we have a truckload of them. I got one box, and they were crazy cheap, but it’s just a ton of diapers. It’s good, because he goes through probably 15+ per day, still. Nice thing is that they don’t go bad, so We can store them for the next baby if we don’t get through them before he’s completely outgrown them.

On a note of intense growth, you should probably watch this:

Now whenever i talk about how quickly he’s growing, I just say something about “Crown of Flames” because that’s exactly the mental image I have of him. So there you go. Thanks for reading!

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