My First TMI Thursday Post–The Birth Of My Son

I’ve been following LiLu’s blog for a few months now and I love her TMIT or “Too Much Information Thursday” meme. It looks like fun and I’ve been deciding on what to give you too much information about. I have plenty of TMI stories (stuff that will gross you out, disturb you, reveal something really messed up, or all of the above) but I finally just decided on a great “educational” TMI story to post and I hope you enjoy.

This is the story of the birth of my son. If mental images of blood and gore disturb you, maybe you shouldn’t read it (I won’t go into graphic body part descriptions!).

I went into labor promptly at midnight on March 31st 2008. The Dr. said to time the contractions and if they were 5 minutes apart for about an hour, to go to the hospital. So we went and they checked me out, and I was only dilated 1 by centimeter. They basically told me to go home and not come back until I was in excruciating pain, because by then I was probably dilated by 4 centimeters and then they could admit me. Yay.

So we went home and I was up all night huffing and puffing (I never went to Lamaze classes, I just winged it and it helped a little) so I didn’t really get any sleep and neither did Jess. He decided to go to work a little late and sleep in a little, so at about 10 am that morning he was on his way to work and I was taking a warm bath to try to relax. I got out and the contractions were 10x worse. I called Jess (who was just walking into work) and told him the contractions were pretty bad and I wanted to go back to the hospital. So he waved Hi and then Bye to his supervisor and said his kid was on his way. Gotta go!

It wasn’t until about 3 or 4 in the afternoon that I broke down and asked for an epidural. The contractions were already half killing me and they were about to give me something in an IV that was going to make them a lot worse to speed up the dilating. They offered the epidural to me, so I took it since they were about to make it worse! I also figured that if I was going to have enough energy to push, I would need to be able to rest. Epidurals are not pleasant when they’re being poked into your spinal cord, but man… I highly recommend them. I got to take a nap while my contractions were breaking the Richter scale.

So then at about 10 pm, they checked me again and I was finally dilated 10 centimeters–enough to start pushing. They asked me if I wanted a mirror near the foot of the bed so I could see when he came out and I said yes. They got me in the position and we did a few practice pushes. I can’t fully remember the whole thing at this point but I’ll tell you what I DO remember.

The Obstetrician on call came in (after helping to birth several other babies in the maternity ward, also not my regular OBGYN), they turned the epidural drip down and we got down to it. It didn’t take her long to come to the conclusion that I was going to need an episiotomy, which is basically a cut the Dr. makes to make you bigger so that you don’t tear tissue down there while the baby is coming out (you can control a cut, you can’t control a tear). When she told me that they need to do one I almost cried. I already knew what it was.

My mom and and Jess were in the room on either side of me. They gave me a local anesthetic and I happened to look down at the mirror as she took a scalpel and a pair of huge-looking scissors to my nethers. It was surreal because I could see myself being cut but I felt nothing. I looked up at Jess and my Mom and they both had looks of horror on their faces. The memory of their faces amuses me to this day.

So after 2 hours of excruciating pain and the hardest work I’ve ever done in my life, out popped my little boy, covered in goo and attached to me by a funky-looking blueish tube. The mirror didn’t serve its original purpose very well because at the second he was coming out, I had my head back and my eyes squeezed shut in a massive push attempt. Jess got to see him come out and also got to see the umbilical cord, which he said was bright blue and coiled like an old telephone cord.

All I remember after that is squealing “He’s so cute!!” when I looked over and they were wiping him down on the cleaning table (I startled the MA wiping him down). I was also very impatient for her to finish stitching me up so I could hold my baby. I went from being in the worst physical pain of my life to being deliriously happy. I felt like superwoman and I had a beautiful baby boy.

Oh, and even though they advised against it, I insisted on getting up and taking a shower directly after I fed him for the first time. I know you probably already knew this, but… other stuff comes out when you’re doing all that pushing. I needed a fucking shower, pronto.

The next few days in the hospital I was extremely sleep deprived, in pain still from being cut open, bleeding profusely (you have a wicked, 3-week-long period after giving birth) and doped-up on pain meds. After about a month things were much better and my hoohoo wasn’t sore anymore. Aiden was even sleeping through the night after that and Jess and I could finally get it on again.

Happy ending. THE END.

| Posted on January 28, 2010 | Filed under Diary, Scrap Book

16 Responses to “My First TMI Thursday Post–The Birth Of My Son“

Kylie

January 28th, 2010 at 1:52 am

This made me cry! I love birth stories.

My son was 2 weeks overdue so I was scheduled for an induction, but I went into labor just as I was getting to the hospital, haha. (I was technically in labor for three days before that, but my contractions, although PAINFUL, were really random.)They checked to see how dilated I was & I was at 4 centimeters so they wouldn’t have to do the induction. They said I could go home & rest some more or I could stay, it was up to me. BUT since I wouldn’t have been able to eat anything if I stayed, I decided to go home. We stopped at hardee’s on the way and then my contractions sped up like BAM! so we basically just went to hardees and then back to the hospital lol. Oh my gosh.

BUT he tricked me, and it was still like 12 hours before he was born.

On the day we were supposed to go home, there was a tornado warning so allllll of the mommies with their newborn babies had to move out into the hall. It was freakin’ crazy. We sat out their for about 45 minutes until the warning was over.
Kylie´s last blog ..5 Mini-Transformations To Make Today

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My First TMI Thursday Post–The Birth Of My Son

16 Responses to “My First TMI Thursday Post–The Birth Of My Son“