Sophie's Birth Story | Part Two
If you haven’t had a chance to read Part One of her birth story, make sure you do that! Or else this post won’t make much sense!
Picking up where we left off…
Monday, May 25th
After a bigger leak around 9pm on the 24th, I went to bed, slept wonderful and woke up to Knox yelling at 6:15am.
Because we now had guests with us, I ran in there to get him so he wouldn’t wake up everyone else in the house. The minute I picked him up, I felt a small gush of fluid. I knew what it meant. I told Joel. We turned on a show for Knox and just laid in bed for a while. Once my sister and her family woke up, I told her about what happened. Without even saying it, we all knew what this meant.
I started to pack a bag. I showered. I changed the sheets. I cleaned the house. We gave instructions about Knox and the house and all the quirks that come with an old house. I made a smoothie. I cried. We definitely lingered longer than we should have, but I was having a hard time leaving. Around 10am while I was sipping a smoothie by the pool and watching my nieces swim, my sister looked over and slowly said “shouldn’t you be leaving…?”. She was right and we took a picture as a family of three and then we left with tears streaming down my face. I was scared & I didn’t want to leave Knox.
We checked into the hospital and almost immediately after giving the nurse a run down of what had happened in the last 36 hours, she said that we would be staying and when we left we would have a baby. I had a feeling this is what would happen, but her confidence in making that statement made it feel real. We talked to a doctor and she said the same thing--it was time to start preparing to have this baby.
At this point, I was more mentally prepared to hear that and was now more anxious about if the baby would be okay and how we would actually get her out. I wasn’t have contractions and wasn’t leaking a lot of fluid, so it was a confusing situation for both the doctors and nurses.
The plan moving forward was to get me admitted in a labor and delivery room, get an IV in and start antibiotics (for a few different reasons), and get a steroid shot. For pre-term babies, the goal is to have two steroid shots, 24 hours apart. So, I got the first steroid shot at noon on May 25th and would get a second one 24 hours later. This was Memorial Day, so my doctor was still not working. The plan was to be monitored for the remainder of the day and then talk to him first thing in the morning on Tuesday.
When I say “being monitored” it sounds a lot easier than it actually is. My experience was that I had two monitors on my belly at all times. I had to be disconnected to even go to the bathroom. One was monitoring the baby’s heart rate and one was monitoring my contractions. My temperature was checked every 2 hours. In addition, I had two IVs and every 4 hours I was getting antibiotics and also getting my IV flushed. I absolutely HATE needles, so this was especially uncomfortable for me. One IV in each arm was incredibly uncomfortable and painful. At this point, I had also had multiple tests performed that were...uncomfortable. I felt 100% “done” with this process before it even began. I was mentally, emotionally, and physically completely fried.
From the time of the first steroid shot until the next morning, there was really nothing to do. So, we watched a lot of TV, texted with some friends, and basically just rested as much as we could. We were exhausted, grieving, and scared.
Tuesday, May 26th
My doctor came to check on me and discuss a plan for moving forward. His plan was to not check me to see if I have progressed (I was 1cm at this point) because I had a ruptured water since Saturday, so we didn’t need anything else happening that could increase my risk for infection. I would then receive the next steroid shot at noon. The next step was to induce labor, but since I was going for a VBAC, I was unable to receive prostaglandins for induction. This basically means that the only way to induce me was by using Pitocin. The plan was to start Pitocin at 6pm and increase it every 30 minutes until midnight. Then take a break until 6am and restart it.
So, more waiting.
If you know me at all, my goal and prayers for my labor is to have no medication, intermittent monitoring, and limited medical care in general. However, I am very grateful for Western medicine when it comes to situations like this. My water was ruptured, yet I wasn’t going into active labor. I needed help and the clock was running out. Yet, it was so emotionally hard for me to go through with it this way. Everything was going different than I wanted. And that is hard.
After I got the second steroid shot at noon and before we started Pitocin, we had several people come to our room to discuss the “potentials” about having a preterm baby, what procedure was for when she was born, and also what induction would be like. Around 4pm, after the NICU nurses came and then my doctor came to check on me, I completely lost it. This was truly one of the hardest things to go through. I felt completely out of control. I was scared. I was scared about whether or not my baby would be okay. I was scared about what induction would be like. I missed Knox and wanted to go home. I just wanted everything to be different. This was vulnerable, and messy, and exhausting.
We started Pitocin at 6pm on Tuesday and not much happened. I had small contractions, but nothing that made me progress much. The nurses still weren’t checking me to see if I dilated more, but I knew that a lot wasn’t happening. I ended up falling asleep from 10pm until midnight, so you can probably guess that the contractions weren’t that uncomfortable.
Wednesday, May 27th
They stopped Pitocin at midnight, so I was able to get a little break to try and get some sleep. We slept for a little bit and then by 5am nurses and my doctor were in the room to check on me before they restarted Pitocin at 6am. Every thirty minutes the nurse increased the Pitocin. For the next 6 hours, not much happened. I walked around the hospital for an hour, tried a bunch of different positions to help start labor, I did a bunch of squats, but not much happened. I was definitely having contractions, but nothing that caused me significant discomfort. I was able to talk through them, text friends and family, etc. During all of this, my water started to really break even more. Since the initial leak on Saturday, I continued to have small leaks, but at this point, they were much bigger. At one point I was bouncing on a ball and stood up and it was like what you see in a movie, just a big gush of fluid on the floor. Around 12:30pm/1pm, I started to feel a shift in the contractions and also in my demeanor. I was more focused, quiet, I didn’t want to talk, and felt the need to go more internal. If that makes sense. Shortly after that, the contractions got really intense and really close together. They were about 3 minutes apart and horrible. I had naturally labored with Knox and wasn’t induced and the contractions with this labor just felt so different. With this labor, I felt out of control and the contractions were crazy intense. I was nearly constantly in tears and feeling completely lost. This was not normal for me. With Knox, I was so focused. So mentally strong. By 2pm, the contractions became nearly unbearable. I was fearful every time a new one began. Again, these contractions were SO different than they were with Knox. I hated it so much. I was so angry with how this was all playing out. So different from what I had been praying for. So different from what I begged of God.
To remind you, by this point, I had been at the hospital since Saturday night essentially. I hadn’t slept much for nearly 4 days, was incredibly anxious about having this baby 5 weeks early, was worried about my family, and was grieving so much about what I wanted for this labor. I never ever wanted to be induced, especially early. I was mentally DONE. If you’ve gone through labor, you know that so much of it is mental. You have to mentally “stay in the game.” I had no mental energy. The previous days exhausted me mentally and emotionally.
Before we left for the hospital on Monday morning (after we had been discharged for a short time), my sister said this to me: “I want to give you permission to get an epidural. I know that is 100% against everything you want for this labor or your story, but this situation is really different. Having a baby at 35 weeks is a lot different than having a baby at 40 weeks. At 40 weeks you are so mentally prepared to get that baby out. That’s not what’s happening here. You aren’t mentally ready for this baby yet and that’s okay. You’re also grieving and you don’t have to do this on your own. You don’t need to be a hero. You can get pain medication to help you and there’s no shame in that. There’s nothing wrong with that.” Her words made me cry and I actually appreciated them so much.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m pretty “crunchy.” I like to take a holistic approach to pretty much everything that relates to medicine or my body. Plus, I had naturally labored with Knox so I never questioned if I would do it again.
But around 3pm in between horrific contractions, I talked with my nurse and Joel about what it would look like to get an epidural. Through tears, fatigue, and feelings of failure, I made the challenging decision to get an epidural. For me, I felt like it was the ultimate failure (this is just me: I don’t think this of anyone else! I’m extra hard on myself). One more thing going different than planned or desired.
My nurse was amazing and she knew I was disappointed in myself, but gave me so much encouragement and support. As did Joel. She knew that I was holding onto so much stress and anxiety that my body wasn’t able to do the work it needed to do. I needed to be able to relax.
Within 30 minutes, the anesthesiologist was there to give me an epidural. Those 30 minutes felt like torture. I finally decided I wanted relief, but still had to wait.
By the time I got the epidural, it was around 3:45pm. My nurse decided to check me to see how far I had progressed (at this point, I hadn’t been checked since Sunday!). I was only 4cm. At that moment, I knew there was no way I could have kept going. My body was depleted. So, now I had some relief and let me tell you...it was amazing. Ha. It felt wonderful to have some peace. The epidural definitely didn’t take all the pain away. I still felt every contraction and had TONS of pressure, but it gave me the option to relax. My nurse told me that whenever I felt a strong sensation like I needed to poop, I needed to let her know. I believe it was 4:45pm when all of a sudden I felt that urge. I called for her and she decided to check me. She immediately felt the head and said “okay!! You’re complete and there’s the baby!!! Let’s get the doctor!”.
I felt so scared in this moment. I had never pushed before (due to Knox’s labor), so it was so scary to me. Plus my legs were shaking. And I just felt out of control. I had one more step in this long labor journey, but I didn’t feel equipped or capable. My nurse and Joel were amazing--they assured me of my strength and ability. She also told me that she’s done this before and even if the doctor didn’t make it, she could do this. We would be okay. So, I started to push. She was coaching me and holding my legs, with the help of Joel. The pushing sensation was so different than what I expected. I kept feeling like I wasn’t making progress, but all the nurses assured me I was doing great and we were so close! At this point, the two NICU nurses were in the room for the baby in addition to a couple extra nurses.
After about 30 minutes of pushing (which felt like 5), the doctor came in. I think at one point I asked “are we close???” and everyone said “yes! You’re so close!!” and then the doctor said “At one point we were days away, then hours, and now you’re minutes away!” I think in 2-3 more pushes, she was here! The final push was the craziest sensation and then all of sudden she was on my chest. I immediately started crying and kept saying “is she okay? Is she okay?”, while everyone in the room kept assuring me that she was perfect! I had been so scared and worried about her, that I just wanted to make sure she was actually okay. One of our friends was the charge nurse that day and she was able to take video for us, since no one else was allowed to be there with us. And I’m so grateful for that! Every time I’ve watched the video I get emotional. I thought she would have to be taken away immediately (due to her being a preemie), but she was put on my chest for the full first hour of her life. Within minutes we decided on her name. Sophie was always one of our top contenders as a name for her, but both of us never felt absolutely IN LOVE with it. But after meeting her, we both knew it was the right name for her.
TO BE CONTINUED. Read part 3 here.