Today is my son’s 4th birthday. He is my cautious child. An observer. I love watching him grow and discover new things.
I think it’s easy to get a false sense of confidence during a second pregnancy. At least that was true for me. I have been pregnant twice, and both pregnancies were pretty similar when it came to how I felt (although I wasn’t an extreme pessimist the second time like I was the first time around), so I had this idea that I knew what my labor was going to be like this time since I had already been through it once. My plan with this pregnancy was to continue working until I went into labor like I did with my daughter, but that didn’t happen.
There was a point during each of my pregnancies where I was done— mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausted. Unfortunately, this time I hit my limit about three weeks before my due date. It was August in Oklahoma, and it was over 100 degrees every single day that year. Just walking into work every morning was tiring. My sweet baby was running out of room and had positioned himself in a way that had permanently pancaked my bladder which meant I was constantly peeing on myself all day everyday. My due date was September 5th but I made it to August 26th (I think) before I gave up and started my maternity leave early. It was the best decision I had ever made. I got to spend the next few days in my air-conditioned home with my two-year-old daughter just getting ready for my baby to arrive. I was so unbelievably ready for him to be here. Each morning when I woke up, I just knew I was going into labor that day. I was wrong a lot.
Disclaimer: This part of the story gets a little graphic.
I was incredibly uncomfortable for the last week or so of this pregnancy. I mean constantly uncomfortable— sitting, standing, walking, laying down, it didn’t matter. I’m sure every woman who is nine months pregnant feels uncomfortable, but my body ached all the time, and I couldn’t understand why. I knew I was carrying a big baby so I attributed most of it to his size; there were many times when I can only assume he was trying to stretch and I could feel him push on my bladder and kick me in the ribs on my back at the same time. But that wasn’t the only reason for my discomfort. After several days of feeling this way, I realized there was another issue that had previously gone unnoticed; a separate but related issue… I had not pooped in over a week. It was one of those lightbulb moments. After a couple days of trying more natural methods to remedy this situation, I got the OK from my doctor to try an enema. Without going into too much detail, I will just say this—it worked. I went to bed on the night of September 2nd feeling better than I had in a long time… but that feeling didn’t last long.
At 2:00 am I woke up with a back ache, but honestly, that was nothing new. I was able to roll over, get comfortable, and go back to sleep. About 20-25 minutes later I woke up again with the same back ache. After a minute or so, the aching stopped, but I wasn’t able to fall back asleep as easily this time. As I was laying in bed, almost asleep, the aching started again. I looked at the clock, it was 2:45. At that moment I suddenly realized, this could be more than a backache. Looking back, this should have been a bit more obvious to me, but in my defense, this entire situation was very different than my previous experience. (When I went into labor with my daughter, my water broke first, and my contractions didn’t start until after I got to the hospital. So, this was all very new to me.)
At this point, my daughter was asleep next to me, so I decided to get out of bed; I went to the living room and started writing down every time I had a contraction and how long they were. They went from 15 minutes to 12 to 10 minutes very quickly; I woke up my husband to let him know what was going on, and then I called my parents to come over and stay with my daughter while we went to the hospital. My parents about 2 miles away, but they got to my house in no time. I called them around 3:30 am and they were there by 3:45.
The ride to the hospital was nice. My husband turned on the seat warmers in my car before I got in, which really helped with the back pain. (I don’t remember much else about the ride there, but I will always remember how nice the seat warmers felt.) At this point I really wished I had packed a heating pad in my hospital bag. I knew the back pain would return as soon as we got out of the car. Unfortunately, this is one of the few times I was right. We arrived at the hospital around 4:00 am and the first thing I had to do when I got there was fill out paperwork. It was only 1-2 pages, but it stands out in my memory because I filled-out the form by writing as fast as I could between contractions. It didn’t take long. So much of my labor this time was a blur, maybe because I was tired and in pain. I don’t remember much until I got to my room and hooked up to all the monitors. The labor and delivery nurses were all amazing. They had delivered a few babies that morning already, but they were still so friendly.
By 5:30 am I was dilated to about 6 cm. I was still having contractions, but things weren’t getting intense as quickly as they did last time, so there was more time to relax. My husband and I talked a lot, we texted a few family members and friends to let them know what was going on. The contractions started getting quite a bit stronger shortly after that. At about 6:30 I got an epidural. There was no internal struggle this time, I knew for sure I wanted one. This time the epidural was a little different, the anesthesiologist handed me a button and told me to push it for more medication if it started to wear off. How convenient! My doctor came in at 7:00 and we talked for a little while and he broke my water. I was his third delivery that morning. Poor guy, but he was still in a great mood. After he left I got to relax for a while. My sister came by to visit, I was comfortable (and I had my epidural button) and things were great. Until they weren’t.
By 8:45 am labor had progressed quite a bit. My contractions were two minutes apart and I was feeling a lot of pressure down in the baby-delivering region of my body. No worries, I thought to myself. I’ll just push my epidural button. I pushed the button, but it didn’t seem to do anything. Strange. I pushed it again and it just beeped at me. I was very confused. I asked the nurse if the button was broken, but she assured me it wasn’t, “You just pushed it two minutes ago. You have to wait 30 minutes between each time.”
I won’t lie, I felt betrayed.
I tried working myself into a more comfortable position, but nothing was helping. At that moment, one of the nurses walked in with what looked like a 2-foot-tall yellow inflated peanut. (Yes, I know how strange that sounds.) It was supposed to help me get in a better position. Whatever, I’ll try anything. I adjusted myself onto my side, the nurse put the giant peanut between my knees and .0002 seconds later, I felt a feeling that’s almost impossible to describe... it was like that feeling you get when there’s a change in the barometric pressure before a storm, but it was very sudden and it was all concentrated in my lower pelvic region. I alerted one of the nurses, “Heyyy. Can you check down there? I think something is happening.” (I have such a way with words.) Something was, in fact, happening down there. The next 30 minutes went by very quickly. All I really remember was that my doctor showed up, and I started pushing. I could feel so much more this time than I could when I delivered my daughter. It was intense, but a different kind of intense than what I felt before. I have never felt that much physical pressure on my body in my entire life. There was nothing voluntary about pushing at that point. This baby was coming out and my body couldn’t have stopped him even if I wanted it to. At 9:27 am on September 3, 2015 (his lucky number has to be 3) my sweet Shane entered the world. I had déjà vu the first time I saw him. He looked so much like his sister. Just much bigger, he was 9 lbs 8.5 ounces, and he was perfect. So, so perfect. Someone (probably a nurse) laid him on my chest and I just got to enjoy the next hour with him, and it was absolutely perfect.
