When I got home from my appointment I decided to try to walk to get things going. I took Cooper for a good long walk and was having contractions 1-2 minutes apart during our walk. But as soon as we got home and I laid down on the couch, the contractions went back to being 5-10 minutes apart. My contractions definitely felt different than the ones I had been experiencing the past few weeks. They were much more painful, but still not to the point where I couldn't walk or talk. I was frustrated with this on and off contractions nonsense, so I decided to try some of the midwife's other recommendations. I went to Publix and bought some fresh pineapple (lucky for me it was on sale!) and I also stopped by CVS and picked up a bottle of castor oil. I ate pretty much the entire pineapple, but was hesitant to try to castor oil because I knew that it would give me diarrhea and probably wouldn't taste so great either. Around 4pm I decided to try the castor oil anyway. The midwife had recommended blending it with 2 scoops of ice cream and some milk to make it a little less disgusting. I did that, and drank most of it, but it was awful! Just thinking about it makes me feel sick.
Around 6pm on Tuesday night I began having contractions about 2-3 minutes apart pretty regularly. Michael had a hair cut appointment across town and I went with him, all the while still having contractions. We went to dinner afterwards because I felt like as soon as we got home and laid down my contractions would fade away like they had earlier. Once we got home, the castor oil's laxative effect kicked in and I literally lost 5 pounds- gross! I didn't have any other real changes so I decided I'd just go to sleep and see what happened. After about 2 hours of sleep, I woke up at midnight to a small gush of fluid and I immediately thought "hum... I wonder if that was my water breaking". It wasn't much fluid so I thought maybe it was just discharge, but I couldn't be sure. I texted the midwife telling her what was going on and that we might head to the hospital if things kept progressing. My contractions were 2 minutes apart and pretty painful, so I woke up Michael and told him I thought we should go to the hospital just to be safe.
We checked into Triage at Winnie Palmer at 1:10a.m. and they checked me and confirmed that I had ruptured my bag of water. I was 5cm dilated at that point. They admitted us and I called the midwife to let her know (since I hadn't heard back from my text messages to her I figured she was probably home sleeping like a normal person!). She said that the nurses from the hospital would probably be calling her soon and then she'd head to the hospital. She got there a little while later and came to see how we were doing in Triage. The nurses tried to put an IV in my hand (unsuccessfully 3 times!) but I ended up with just a saline lock because I told them I didn't want an IV and that I would just drink plenty of fluids on my own.
At 3:30a.m. we were moved to our labor and delivery room. I explained to the nuurses that i was doing this naturally so not to offer pain meds. The midwife started the bathtub and told me to get in there and lean over the edge as soon as it was full. I followed directions and got in the tub. It felt so good to be in the hot water. I stayed in the tub for a while (I think I had lost track of time at this point) but then was ready to try something else. I got out and the nurse checked to see how I was progressing. I was 7cm and she could feel that my bag of water hadn't fully ruptured and so she called the midwife to come rupture it. While she was on the phone with the midwife, I had a contraction and my water broke on it's own. That was the most disgusting feeling and I couldn't believe how much fluid came out. After my water broke things moved very quickly. My contractions where getting so painful. I remember thinking "I don't know if I can do this" and praying for God to give me strength to be able to finish this. I also remember saying to the nurse, "Ok this is way harder than I thought it was going to be". They all kind of just laughed at me because I was doing such a great job and staying so composed. I felt the need to start pushing whenever I had a contraction so the midwife had me lay on my side and try pushing. I remember thinking wow I'm really bad at this pushing stuff... this really hurts. After a while on my side she had me squat at the end of the bed. That felt better but still wasn't very fun. We squatted through five or six contractions and then I got back in bed on my side. I pushed through a few more contractions and the baby's head began to crown and I began to get frustrated because it wouldn't get out! After some more pushing (and screaming "I can't do it!" on my part) the baby's head was out and the next thing I knew she was laying on my stomach. Wow... I had never experienced such intense pain in my life! She was born at 6:11a.m. As soon as she was out I said to everyone "Ok, I don't think I want to do that again any time soon!". I had one small tear and received a few stitches while I held the baby for the first time. But I did it with no drugs!!!
I held her for about 30 minutes before the nurses took her to do all their checks. She weighed in at 8lbs 3.6oz and 21 inches long. She had a lot of facial bruising from going through the birth canal facing the wrong way up (or something...) so she was very purple. Her oxygen levels were fine but when she cried they dropped slightly so they wanted to take her up to the nursery to be monitored for 2 hours to make sure she was ok. I asked if they would let me go with her and they said no because I needed to recover first. I was not happy about that and there was no way I was going to be away from my baby for 2 hours when I hadn't even been able to breast feed yet. Michael was able to go with her instead. The nurse who took over my care after the birth was wonderful and told me that as soon as I could get up and walk and use the bathroom she would take me up to the nursery in a wheel chair. So I quickly got up (well as quickly as possible after giving birth) and made my way to the bathroom. She wheeled me upstairs and I was able to hold and breastfeed the baby while they monitored her. While I was doing that Michael and my mom moved all of our things to our regular hospital room. Her oxygen levels were fine the entire time she was in the nursery but because of her bruising they wanted to monitor her for another two hours. Michael and I took turns staying in there, alternating because the nurses had to check me and we both needed to eat something. Finally around 10:30a.m. she was able to come to our room.
We stayed in the hospital Wednesday night and Thursday night and got discharged to go home on Friday. Little one's jaundice levels were a little high (nothing high enough to be concerned about) so they sent us home with a bili blanket. We had to go to the pediatrician the next day to have him check her levels, but he wasn't worried about jaundice at all. He said she looks great and that the hospital is always way overly cautious about that stuff. He said for us to use the bili blanket until Monday and then we can send it back to the home health company that it came from. It is quite a pain to have her hooked up to a machine while trying to learn to breastfeed and bond with her when the cord to the machine only reaches so far. I can't wait to get rid of that thing!!
Things at home are going well but breastfeeding is a challenge. I am so incredibly sore! It's fine once she's going but the initial latching on is so painful. I'm going to see the lactation consultant at our pediatrician's office on Monday just to make sure I'm doing everything right. I know everyone has told me the first two weeks are hard, but I certainly hope it gets better quickly.
