This is going to be a long one…sorry!
The Bean’s birth story starts on Wednesday, July 7…the day before the scheduled eviction/extradition/arrival/introduction. I say eviction because we were all so paranoid that the Bean would arrive when we least expected it and that we wouldn’t make it to the hospital in time. Amelia was scheduled to go to school that day, but I was overwhelmed with emotions, feeling the changes coming, feeling the loss of my alone time with my little girl and feeling her losses for her. I was bringing someone else into Amelia’s life and rocking her world. I was taking my time and dividing it. I was changing her life without her permission. I cannot fully explain the guilt I felt. I kept her home from school and scheduled one last fun day alone with mommy; shopping, lunch, a haircut for her and a ride on the carousel…all of Amelia’s favorite things.
We did a little shopping and decided it was time for lunch since it was already past 1:00. She wanted a grilled cheese and I wanted a pepperoni calzone…big surprise since I craved all things spicy during this pregnancy. While waiting for our food I got a few cramps and thought wow, those are uncomfy. Then when we sat down to eat I started noticing that the discomfort was more intense and these cramps seemed to be in a pattern. I got out my iPhone and pulled up the trusty contraction timer that Dustin downloaded and I started timing them.
You see, I didn’t go into labor on my own with Amelia so I had no idea what early labor pains would feel like. Sure, I had plenty of Braxton Hicks and pre-labor contractions this time, but I didn’t know how I would know it was the real thing, how would I know when it was time? So, I relied upon timing them. They were instantly 2-3 minutes apart. I thought to myself, oh my goodness, what the heck am I going to do? I’m 20 minutes from home, 45 minutes from the hospital and I have my 2.5 year old with me and nothing else. So, I did what any mommy with a toddler would do…I stayed the course we went and got her hair cut.
As we waited for our turn I asked the receptionist if we were next and she said we were. I said thank goodness because I’m having contractions and she has to have her hair cut before I have this baby. Yes, I was slightly irrational…remember I was emotional and doing everything I could to enjoy those last moments with just Amelia. So, while Amelia got her hair cut I calmly called Dustin who was on his way home from work to begin his “vacation” (i.e.: paternity leave). I asked him to please pull all of our stuff together and put it by the front door, that we might be heading to the hospital sooner than later.
We finished up Amelia’s hair cut and that left the carousel ride. Never in my life have I been so happy that Amelia doesn’t like to go up and down on the carousel animals. Amelia chose to ride on the swan boat bench versus making her contracting mommy stand next to her as she rode up and down on a tiara wearing zebra. We enjoyed our ride and promptly walked to the nearest elevator and went down to retrieve my car from the valet. I was so thankful it was raining that day and that I chose for the first time ever to valet my car at the mall.
I drove toward home, still timing the contractions and trying to relax. I turned on the radio to one of my favorite stations and the next song that came on was “Come on Eileen.” You see I’m a big believer in fate, in things being present in our lives for a reason. This sense of calm came over me when I heard that song as the middle name we had chosen if the Bean was a girl was Eileen after my grandmother. I was at peace becuase I had wanted so desperately to go into labor on my own, to experience it for myself, to know what it was like and this was it. Now it was a waiting game.
I got home and immediately got a huge glass of water and headed for the shower (yes, still timing those contractions). I took a LONG shower for two reasons; I had to shave my legs and that takes forever when you’re 39 weeks pregnant and because I knew it was the last long shower I’d have for a while. I got out of the shower and started timing the contractions again…they had slowed down a bit and were 7 minutes apart, yay! I rested and saw the contractions slow a bit more varying between 7-13 minutes. They remained that way for the rest of the night and into the next morning which meant I got little to no sleep the night before my intended induction.
We were supposed to call the hospital at 5:00 in the morning to see if they were ready for us to come in, they weren’t. A baby boom had occurred and the hospital was full. They asked that I call back at 8:00 for an update. I called back, again they were full and I was asked to call back at 11:30. Needless to say each time we were delayed I got upset. I had hugged and kissed Amelia the evening before when we dropped her off with my parents and I had expected to be well into my induction by this point, perhaps holding my baby by noon. Because the hospital was full I wasn’t able to have breakfast with Amelia, to spend time with her and that upset me.
At around 8:30 my OB’s office called. It was Kristy, Dr. Bobo’s nurse. She asked where I was, why I wasn’t in L&D. Apparently Dr. Bobo went looking for me and couldn’t find me. I explained to Kristy that we were told that L&D was full and they didn’t have room for us. She told me she was going to call L&D and talk to Dr. Bobo and she’d call me back. Ok, so we waited. Kristy called back a few minutes later and asked if I was still having contractions. I said yes and she said are they still about 7 minutes apart. I said yes, they’re 7-13 minutes apart. She said ok, they’re 7 minutes apart. Pack up and head to the hospital and tell them we sent you and that you’re contracting every 7 minutes. It was a fib, but it’s one I didn’t mind telling since I was more than ready to go. So, we got up, showered and headed to the hospital.
We arrived around 11:00 and by 11:30 I was changed, checked (2cm) in bed and getting my IV. The fabulous part about my OB’s nurse being pushy and sending us in despite what the charge nurse said is that we ended up with one of the two hospital suites that they normally charge an extra $300/night for…but we got it for free. We were told that they were really full still and that they couldn’t start my Pitocin drip until someone delivered as they have to monitor those on a Pitocin drip a little more closely. They got the monitors on me; one to monitor contractions and the other to monitor the Bean’s heart rate. I watched the contraction monitor closely and hoped that my contractions would show up. Thankfully they did…every 2-3 minutes you could see a little mountain peak appear on the strip and then go back down. Yay, I was indeed laboring on my own and my contractions were closer than our “fib” implied. I didn’t feel as bad about going in afterall.
My contractions weren’t strong enough so I was still going to need the Pitocin drip to make them strong enough to progress. At 1:00 they got my Pitocin rolling; 2 mL/minute which then got bumped at 1:20 to 4mL/minute and again at 1:40 to 6mL/minute. My OB came in at 1:45 to break my water which we knew would help get things rolling. It took a few tries, but she got it. I was almost 3cm and would need to be 4cm before I was allowed to have an epidural. We relaxed and enjoyed the Astros game (which they won 2-0 over the Pirates) and waited for the next Pitocin bump and for my contractions to pick up in intensity.
By 3:15 I was starting to get uncomfortable so I asked the nurse if I could stand. I was once again having back labor and standing took the pain down a few notches and relieved the pressure on my spine. I breathed in through my nose and out through my mouth and rocked back and forth through each contraction. I still hadn’t lost my sense of humor and could talk through the contractions so I wasn’t in a bad place yet.
At 3:30 I decided I’d go ahead and get an epidural. I didn’t get to have one while I labored with Amelia and thought it would be a good idea after all. I saw no need to be in pain, to lose all of my strength trying to remain relaxed and if I could still laugh and chat while I labored then I was all for it.
The anesthesiologist wasn’t terribly busy so she was in our room within a few minutes. She started and immediately hit a nerve and said “please remain still”…yea, I would, but a nerve being hit in my spine causes involuntary movements so it’s not my fault lady! I did my best to remain still and let her finish her work. I laid back down waiting for the blissful epidural to take a hold of me. I waited and I waited, pain free bliss didn’t come. I squeezed my little green stress ball man, breathed and prayed it would work. They injected bolus after bolus of every type of medicine they could. I would feel the cold chill go down my shoulder and into my spine, but it would stop there.They put me in different positions, tried everything they could, but it wasn’t working. It didn’t make sense. My blood pressure was dropping with each bolus as they expected, it even went extremely low on one dose, something like 67 over 33. Each time it rebounded as they expected, but the pain relief didn’t come.
I was shaking, my left leg was slightly numb, but my right leg felt completely normal and nothing had touched the pain in my spine. I could still move, I could still walk if they had let me out of the bed…it wasn’t working and now I was stuck on my back in bed with a catheter I could feel. I regretted my decision to get the epidural. It was supposed to take the pain away, it was supposed to relax me and make this experience easy. It was anything but easy. I learned once again that it’s called labor for a reason.
By 5:30 I was 6-7cm dilated and 90% effaced. We were getting there, slowly but surely we were getting there. My contractions picked up a lot going from 2-3 minutes apart to 20 seconds apart. This was exactly what happened when I was laboring with Amelia and it caused me to dilate quickly and my pain reached an unmanageable level. Thankfully our nurse had decided to stay in the room the entire time to monitor my epidural/blood pressure and contractions. She decided that it was time to turn the Pitocin down. It was taken from 8 to 6 to 4 and down to 3 pretty quickly in an attempt to control the contraction strength and spread them apart.
My pain at this point had gone from a manageable 6-7 to a 8-9 and it was getting worse. The anesthesiologist was in and out of my room checking on me. She came back in again at about 6:30 and watched, injected more medicine and pondered what to do. She tried one more medicine and when it didn’t work we all decided it was time to redo the epidural. They could tell that I wasn’t experiencing the pain relief that I should have gotten from the epidural, it was time to try again. They sat me up on the edge of the bed and I once again braced myself for the epidural. It’s not the epidural that’s the problem, it’s having contractions that are that intense and close together and having to sit still during them. By this point my contractions had hit a 10 on the pain scale. I had been here before, I knew this pain. It all came back to me, this is the exact pain I felt right before I was told that I was complete with Amelia. I sat still, waited and prayed that the epidural would take this pain away. The anesthesiologist finished her work and laid me back down. I instantly had a contraction and felt a sensation that I had felt once before. I needed to push.
The room was busy by this point, it was about 5 minutes to 7:00 and it was shift change time. My nurses talked, decided who would check me and figured out the game plan. I was indeed complete; 10cm, fully effaced and +1 to +2 station…the Bean was coming. I was thrilled, in agony and so, so ready to push. I asked if I could push and was told no. I asked why and a nurse said laughed and said “we’d rather wait for the doctor, we could catch the baby but it was a lot more paperwork.” I didn’t find the humor in her statement. I had finally lost my sense of humor.
There was a doctor waiting outside of my door ready to deliver and the anesthesiologist was hanging in there in case she had to catch the baby. The hospital prefers that your OB deliver you so we were going to do our best to wait for Dr. Bobo.
They paged my doctor who was across the street in a meeting. We later learned that Dr. Bobo didn’t get the page, she actually stepped out of the meeting and called to check on me and was told that I was ready for delivery. We waited 15 minutes for her to arrive. She walked in at 7:10 and suited up for the delivery. Somewhere in the 2 minutes of suiting up I asked Dr. Bobo if I could help deliver the baby. Most people would ask “why in the world would you want to do that” and my reason is that I wanted to photograph my baby’s birth, but the pain was so intense, too much for me to focus and photograph it so I went for my other game plan. By helping to deliver my baby I would be the first to hold the Bean in every respect, in my belly and in my arms. Dr. Bobo was game so as soon as the baby’s head/shoulders emerged I would reach down and pull the baby out.
A minute after Dr. Bobo arrived I had a contraction and pushed twice with all of my might and then fell back to the bed to rest. She told me that I was going to have a baby with my next contraction and I leaned up, looked at her and responded by saying “do you promise?” I was there, I was done, I was ready to meet, hold and nurse my baby and be done with this pain.
My next contraction built and I said “ok, it’s here.” I pushed two more times and the baby’s head popped out, then the shoulders and I reached down and scooped my sweet little Bean up under her arms and pulled her onto my belly. I didn’t care about the blood, the “goo” and all of those things. At 7:14pm I delivered my sweet little Bean, Juliet Eileen. I rubbed her back to get her breathing and cried as she let out her first cries. I reveled in the moment and soaked in the fact that I had just delivered my baby, my perfect little miracle.
I was in awe. I have never felt more accomplished, more powerful or more womanly than the moments when my babies were born. I was overwhelmed with joy and I fell to pieces. I praised God for the gifts that were given to me. For the loving husband who stands by me in my weakest moments. For the daughter I have loved and cherished for two and a half years. And for this tiny miracle that was mine to love with everything I have. I would get to experience all of those incredible joys that I had experienced with Amelia with another little girl. My heart felt like it would jump out of my chest. Dustin now had the two little girls he had always hoped for and I had the perfect family of my dreams.
Juliet is now 2 weeks old and is simply a dream. She’s sleepy, snuggly and everything I have ever dreamed of. This evening I laid in Amelia’s bed with Dustin, Amelia and Juliet. Amelia rolled on her side, scooted up next to Juliet and snuggled her. She rubbed her tiny hands and kissed her little head. I cried as I watched my Amelia love her sister. I knew that I had not taken something away from Amelia by having another baby. That our last day together at the mall while fun wasn’t our last, it was the end of one chapter in our lives and the beginning of another more exciting, more beautiful and more love filled one. At 7:14pm on July 8 I gave Amelia something I always longed for, a sister and an instant best friend. I love my family and I love my life. I am so blessed.
