Sunday, March 25, 2018

Here we go again

It's been almost 2 years since my last post. So much to catch up on! Most importantly...the Jemily family welcomed another baby! While it's been almost four months since his birth, I do want to write it down while I can still remember it.

Tristan came early Monday morning right after Thanksgiving weekend. Around 1:40am, I started feeling a lot of pelvic pressure but it didn't feel like contractions so I naively thought I wasn't in labor. However, I was too uncomfortable to sleep so I spent most of the time sitting up, slumped over, waiting for the discomfort to either pass or intensify. It wasn't until 3am that I realized that it was definitely labor, so I should wake Jeff up, call the hospital, and call a friend to come over and watch Lucas. Even though she lives only 15 minutes away, the contractions were coming fast and furious, and I realized I needed to get to the hospital right away. I got an Uber and told Jeff to meet me at the hospital as soon as he could. Luckily, I wasn't contracting when I got into the Uber so the elderly driver wasn't suspicious. However, by the time I got to the hospital 7 minutes later, I could barely breathe, let alone get out of the car without help. He was gracious enough to get me a wheelchair and help me to the front desk on the first floor before leaving.

At that point, I asked the security guard to help me up to labor and delivery - he asked if I should wait for my husband. Had I not been busy contracting, I probably would have been offended that he thought my husband was an elderly man in his 60s/70s. I informed him that was not my husband but an Uber driver, and the security guard was even more horrified that I showed up at the hospital alone. Since I was contracting, I didn't think this was the time to inform him of families that come in all different shapes and sizes and single moms that are amazing enough to go it alone - instead, I told him that my husband was on his way. Luckily, he let it go at that and took me up to labor and delivery.

I will never understand why the hospital has us pre-register when they ask for all the same exact information when you sign in (name, address, insurance info, etc). I think they could tell my patience was wearing very thin so they didn't have me go through too much paperwork and got me into a room as quickly as they could - at this point, I was already 8 cm dilated. The nurse started getting everything ready and said "whatever you do, don't start pushing", which of course is the precise moment when I felt this unbearable urge to push. At that point, I demanded an epidural while all the nurses and the anesthesiologist tried to convince me to just suck it up and go through without it, because the epidural could take up to an hour to become effective and I would need to start pushing very soon. Remembering how my last labor ended with 90 minutes of pushing and an episiotomy, I insisted on an epidural! I'm so glad I stuck to my guns on this, because I was otherwise in so much pain and so fatigued that there was no way I could have pushed effectively. Maybe it was a placebo effect, but it seemed like the epidural started working almost immediately.

Jeff arrived as the anesthesiologist was finishing up, saying that the epidural would not work and calling me really stubborn for insisting on it. He was aghast to hear how unsupportive she was. Thankfully she was wrong because I felt relief almost immediately. Jeff barely had time to catch his breath before it was time for me to start pushing. A mere twelve minutes later, Tristan arrived into the world and into our arms!

I have heard that second time deliveries (and beyond) tend to be shorter and easier. That was certainly true in our case - I was in labor for 8 hours the first time and 3 hours the second time. I shudder to think what a third labor could look like - probably an unmedicated, unplanned delivery on our kitchen floor! It's a good thing we are not planning for a third...our family is complete as a party of four. 😊