I don't have this on my blog yet, so I want to go ahead and put it here. And yes, I'm giving it the label "Birth Stories" as in plural, because hopefully, I'll have a bunch more birth stories to tell you. But here's his.
I had a rather easy pregnancy with Cooper. I had zero morning sickness. I had a small battle with an ear infection, but other than that, just the minor aches and pains that everyone gets. Then my water broke at home when I was 37 weeks and 5 days. It was later in the evening, probably about 8:30 or so. It wasn't the big gush like you see in the movies, so at first, I really thought I had peed on myself. Then it happened again, and I just knew.
So I went to wake up Dixie, who had already gone to bed. I said, "Babe, I think my water just broke." And he replied, "Are you sure you didn't pee on yourself?" I said I was sure, and he told me to call the doctor. While I was on the phone with the doctor, I guess Dixie realized it was go time, and he was up out of the bed, running around the house. My dad had just woken up (he lived with us at the time, and works graveyard), so he was there to witness us freaking out a little. I started crying, because I was so scared. By the time I got a call back from my doctor and got off the phone with him, Dixie had already posted on Facebook what was going on. So we load up the car and head to the hospital.
When we got there, they put us in a triage room and checked me. I was only about one and a half centimeters. I wasn't having any contractions yet, and the nurse said they would put me in a room, and induce me in the morning if my contractions hadn't started by then. Not long after the nurse left, my contractions started and they started strong!. I made it through, oh maybe, three or four contractions before I was hitting my button and begging for pain medicine. So the nurse brought me a big fat shot of Demerol and a big fat shot of Phenergan. The Demerol was great, and I was sailing high til the Phenergan kicked in. Apparently, I'm allergic to it. The effect it had on me was like Restless Leg Syndrome, but all over your whole body, and times like, a hundred. I was beyond miserable. Shortly after that I went on and got an epidural, and while I wasn't in pain, I was still miserable from the effects of the other medicine. It was so bad that it took the nurse several tries to get the catheter in because I could be still. I also had several visitors come by the hospital that the nurse turned away because I was so bad. (There were some people that I didn't know had even shown up until after I was discharged.)
I was in labor for nearly 20 hours and stalled at 8.5 centimeters because Cooper was face up and just big. So Dr Reed decided we needed to do a C-section. By the time he said that I was ready to throw in the towel anyway, so I didn't care one way or the other. We went into surgery and Cooper was born at 7:43pm on December 23rd, 2011 with no complications. We stayed a few days and then went right home.
Next time, I will know to go straight to the epidural and skip the narcotics, and maybe it will be a more pleasant experience.
