Post if your wife is pregnant
01-15-2008
, 08:02 PM
My wife had started to have small contractions on January 11th (Friday night) around midnight. She'd been having cramping all day. We suspected that this was the real deal as a few days earlier she had lost her mucus plug (eww), which generally means that the baby is just about ready to show up.
She didn't get much sleep on Friday night, and the contractions were slowly getting worse all day Saturday. By Saturday evening they were 10 minutes apart, and causing her a fair amount of pain. However, she still wasn't completely convinced that the baby would be arriving soon, as she had read a great deal about false labour, and felt that the contractions were too sporadic to be "real" labour.
However, by midnight her contractions had gotten to be a lot stronger, and were happening every 7 minutes or so. She tried to get some sleep, but the contractions made it completely impossible. She was already exhausted from not having slept the night before, and was dreading the idea of going into labour in her exhausted state.
By 3AM, the contractions had gotten very strong and were starting to hurt her back a great deal. The contractions were still only 5 minutes apart, and we had been told not to go to the hospital until the contractions were 3-4 minutes apart. However, she was starting to feel a great deal of pain so she decided to call the hospital to see if they thought that it might be a good idea for her to come in.
Her water broke as she was on the phone with a nurse at the hospital. The nurse was in the middle of telling my wife to wait a few more hours before coming in, but as soon as my wife told the nurse what had happened, the nurse told us to come right in.
Luckily we had packed the car ahead of time, so it was only a matter of throwing our coats on and heading out the door. The hospital is about 20 minutes away, and I drove carefully the whole way as it had just finished snowing and the roads were slippery. The last thing I wanted to do is to end up stuck in a ditch with my wife in labour.
We got to the hospital and they hooked her up to a machine to monitor the baby's heart-rate and the strength and duration of the contractions. The contractions were still only 5 minutes apart. My wife was also only 1 cm dilated, which meant that the baby was nowhere near close to being born.
We were eventually moved into a "birthing room" and she was hooked up to a bunch more machines. By now her contractions were causing her fairly severe back pain, but since they were only 5 minutes apart, she was able to rest between them. She took a jacuzzi bath and this seemed to ease the pain in her back a fair amount. However, once she was done with the jacuzzi, they hooked her up to an IV, which meant that she wouldn't be able to easily leave the bed again -- and she wouldn't leave the bed until the baby was born 13 hours later.
After her jacuzzi, the doctor came by and announced that she was not dilating quickly enough, and informed us that she would be put on drug that would speed up her contractions (the name of which escapes me now as I'm still extremely tired). It sped up her contractions all right...and also made them about 100 times more intense. I've never seen a human being in as much pain as my wife was experiencing. She was having what is called "back labour" -- which is where all of the muscles in your lower back spasm and seize up. She said it felt like someone had placed her back in a vise and just kept squeezing and squeezing and squeezing.
For the next 3 hours, my wife was in a world of pain. We were told that she should wait until she was 4 - 5 cms dilated before getting an epidural as the epidural tends to slow down the contractions. Plus, the earlier you receive the epidural, the more likely it is that it will have started wearing off by the time the baby arrived. My wife toughed it out for 3 hours. It was absolutely horrible watching her being tortured like that. The worst part is that there was very little that I could for her. I just had to sit back and watch helplessly.
When the epidural was finally put in, my wife started feeling better almost instantaneously. She even made a few jokes about what she had just gone through. It was now noon and she was 5 cms dilated. The doctor came by and told us that it would probably be another 5 hours before the baby was born.
For the next 3 hours I fetched my wife water, I went and grabbed a coffee and a bite to eat, and called each of our parents to let them know what was happening. My wife could feel the contractions happening inside her, but wasn't feeling any pain whatsoever.
By 3:30pm, she was fully dilated. However, her contractions had become much weaker -- which would make delivering the baby very difficult. The nurse told us that my wife would eventually start feeling an overwhelming urge to push. However, another hour went by and that feeling never came. My wife told the nurse that she could feel "pressure" inside her, but she didn't equate that as a "urge to push". In retrospect, this is probably where she should have been pushing.
Eventually her contractions became very weak, so they upped the dose on the drug that had been inducing the labour. However, it didn't seem to have much effect.
At about 4:30pm, the nurse announced that might wife should start pushing whenever she felt a contraction. She pushed and pushed, but nothing seemed to be happening. This went on for about an hour.
At about 5:30pm, the doctor arrived and gave more detailed instructions to my wife as to *how* she should be pushing. This seemed to help a bit, but the baby still wasn't moving along.
By 6:00pm, the doctor announced that she would have to use suction to get the baby out. The baby's heartrate had increased, which meant that it was under stress. It needed to come out soon. The doctor brought out a vacuum-looking apparatus that had a suction cup attached to the end of it. I'll spare you the graphic details, but it suffices to say that the suction cup was attached to the baby's head.
The doctor told my wife to start pushing as hard as she could possibly push. I could see the doctor straining to pull on the vacuum, and it slowly moving out towards her. When the vacuum came close to the "end of the tunnel", the top of the baby's head appeared! However, by this point my wife was so tired that she wasn't able to push hard enough to get the baby out the rest of the way.
The doctor kept asking my wife to push, but her pushes were pretty weak. After a minute or so, the doctor told my wife that if she wasn't able to push hard enough to get the baby out, that she'd need to perform an episeotomy -- which is where they cut a "large opening" for the baby to come out. This seemed to be enought to spur my wife into action, and she gave a massive push and the baby came flying out.
The baby was squealing and crying -- which was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard in my life.
My wife and I had agreed not to find out the sex of the baby beforehand. Most of our friends had predicted a boy, but I had predicted that it would be a girl. I was right -- Samantha Michelle came into the world at 6:20pm on January 13th.
We came home at noon today. The baby is doing great -- she has slept most of the day and only wakes up when it is time for feeding. My wife has managed to get a few naps in, and I have managed to get the baby's room cleaned up and ready for her.
It was a long, gruelling experience, but something that I will never forget for the rest of my life.
Samantha Michelle with mommy:
01-28-2008
, 07:43 AM
01-28-2008
, 05:25 PM
02-09-2008
, 11:25 PM
Ballzack - Congratulations! You make cute babies 
William Love and dcasper -
Loved your videos! Those were awesome. Ephraim's video almost made me cry (I think it was the music), what a little cutie he is... and Leah's steps were great. Very cool you filmed her doing that. Sooo sweet.
Aww, babies
William Love and dcasper -
Loved your videos! Those were awesome. Ephraim's video almost made me cry (I think it was the music
), what a little cutie he is... and Leah's steps were great. Very cool you filmed her doing that. Sooo sweet.Aww, babies
02-14-2008
, 12:16 PM
03-08-2008
, 12:15 PM
baby girl is moving around a lot. usually, i can only feel random bumps and pushes. yesterday, i felt a whole leg pretty clearly. it was awesome .
most current advice from the dr. has us waiting until the very end of april to induce, so more like april 28th. it's getting close ..
.most current advice from the dr. has us waiting until the very end of april to induce, so more like april 28th. it's getting close ..
03-10-2008
, 10:43 AM
The one we had at our regular doctor did look like that. The ones I posted above are from a specialty clinic that does 3D/4D imaging. Put the whole session on a DVD set to music also. Was pretty cool.
03-10-2008
, 06:09 PM
03-21-2008
, 08:47 AM
Wow that picture of Gabriella is so cute!
Brought a smile to my face on a tough day at work. Thanks for sharing.