As we waited for our labor and delivery room, I called friends and family to alert them of your impending arrival. By this time, we had finally chosen your name. We couldn’t wait to meet our precious Connor! They finally found a room for us, but it was actually a backup emergency room – the last delivery room available. (We found out later that other mothers were turned away from the hospital, and one brave but unlucky Mom had to deliver in the Triage unit!)
One cool thing about delivering at Memorial Hermann was that I knew one of the nurses, Christa. We had gone to high school together and recently reconnected through other friends. As I was getting set up in the delivery room, I asked if Christa could be my nurse. Between both nurses, Jill and Christa, I felt very comfortable and tended to. By the time I was in my gown, hooked up to the Pitocin (labor-induction medicine), with my bag of water manually broken, it was 11:50 a.m. They asked me if I wanted my epidural right away, but I just felt strange asking for it when I wasn’t in much pain. So I opted to wait as long as I could. That amounted to about 20 minutes. By 12:30 p.m., I was definitely feeling the strong contractions and having to practice my breathing techniques. Soon thereafter, I asked for the epidural, and I was feeling much more comfortable by 1:00 p.m. Contrary to what I’d heard, getting the epidural was really inconsequential – especially compared to the painful contractions I was having. I continued to progress quickly from there. It seemed like every hour I progressed another 2 centimeters. My body reacted easily to the Pitocin.
In the meantime, your MeMe and Grandaddy were driving to Houston for your arrival. They knew I was progressing quickly, but at one point when I had reached 8 centimeters dilation, they were worried that they wouldn’t arrive in time. Your Dad left the room to make some phone calls and walk to the car to get some of our things.
Right at that time, nurse Jill hooked up a temporary catheter to empty my bladder. When she finished, she noticed that your heart rate began to drop. What happened next is a blur. While Jill was working with the monitors, no less than 4 other doctors and nurses began to rush in. Christa was suddenly there and began telling me (in what I would refer to as a “fake cheery” voice) that your heart rate was dropping and she needed to put me in an oxygen mask. She strapped on the mask and turned off the Pitocin while Jill worked with another nurse to insert a fetal monitor (one of those internal heart rate monitors they stick on your head in the birth canal). Previously your baseline heart rate had hovered around 110 beats per minute and at this moment you were dropping into the 70s and 80s. The doctors were talking to the nurses and discussing different options while I just lay there with my mask and witnessed the madness. Of course, during my previous 2 weeks of boredom I had watched enough baby shows to know that “decells” – heart rate decelerations – were not uncommon and didn’t necessary indicate that your life was in danger.
Christa asked me to turn on my side because sometimes that helps babies breathe more easily. I did that, and shortly thereafter your heart rate seemed to stabilize. Around that time, your Dad walked in and had a rather dazed look on his face. He could tell that he had missed some excitement. We caught him up on the events and I was able to remove my oxygen mask. Christa turned the Pitocin back on and we began chitchatting about various things. It was nice to be able to talk with her and catch up – even if it was a bit awkward at times when she checked my cervix and emptied my bladder!
My parents arrived around 3:00 p.m. I was feeling fine with my epidural and enjoyed catching them up on the afternoon’s events. Grand Daddy made some comment about how it seemed odd that I was in the middle of labor while chatting and laughing as if it were just another day. I think his comment jinxed the day, because it was just a few minutes later when everyone’s jovial mood came to a screeching halt.
Slowly at first and then escalating rapidly, I started to feel pain on my right side from the contractions. I had heard stories before of epidurals wearing off, but it never made any sense to me. Surely this couldn’t be happening to me when I had been such a model patient so far! I began to feel intense pain from the contractions, so I asked Christa to page the anesthesiologist. While we waited for him, my contractions were about 60 seconds apart and I was trying to breathe through every painful second.
[It’s hard to remember every moment from this point forward because it became unbearably painful for me. I’ll do my best to recall all the details.]
As I labored through the intense contractions, I remember Grand Daddy sitting there watching some kind of program on TV. I was so ticked off because I was convinced he had just jinxed the whole thing! Finally, the anesthesiologist arrived and checked my epidural. He was just as surprised that I was in so much pain, but he said there wasn’t anything he could do except to remove the epidural completely and re-insert it. Christa had just checked me and I was at 9.5 centimeters, so it seemed futile to get the epidural reinserted at this point. Looking back, I’m not sure why I thought it was futile – I definitely should’ve gotten the epidural because the pain to come was so much worse that I had already experienced. So I made the decision to “power through it” and have the baby despite my increasing pain and discomfort.
I feel the need at this point to explain my “power through it” concept. As I mentioned before, I had been spending many hours in front of the TV watching baby shows and learning all about various delivery situations prior to your arrival. It always annoyed me to see women giving birth who would yell, scream, and whine their way through the delivery. Especially the ones that would moan and complain to their spouses, “I can’t do this anymore… it hurts…I want a C-section!”. Seeing this, I would roll my eyes at the TV screen and think to myself, “Geez, woman, just power through it!”
So, as most people can probably guess, when I tried to apply my “power through it” advice to my own situation, it didn’t work out so well. But I think more than anything, I was just mad that the epidural wasn’t working for me. All during my pregnancy, people would ask if I was nervous or fearful about the delivery. Without hesitation, my answer was always a resounding “No” because I planned to get the epidural, and that would alleviate the pain. Right?
So there I was, 9.5 centimeters dilated and having horribly painful contractions. Christa suggested that I go ahead and start pushing to dilate fully and ease the pain somewhat. So around 4:30 p.m. or so, I started pushing.
For the first 20 minutes of pushing, I was still having extreme pain from the contractions. I quickly dilated to 10 centimeters, but pushing through the contractions was getting harder and harder. I think I always pictured the pushing as the easy part of labor – if you could endure the contractions, you were home free. But this was certainly not my experience. It’s hard to remember what was more painful at that point: the contractions or the fact that you were dropping and I could feel your head lodged in the birth canal.
It felt like I had been pushing for an eternity, and it got more and more painful as the pushing continued. I was pretty close to losing control after an hour of pushing because I didn’t feel like I was making much progress. I kept hearing your Dad and MeMe say, “You’re doing great, you’re almost there!” But they said that so often and I never got the impression that I was any closer to getting you OUT of me. At one point, Christa had pulled a mirror up so that I could see your head before you started crowning, but I had no desire to see that. She had already told us that you had dark curly hair, but she later retracted and said it was brown.
I think at one point I realized that I had been pushing for over 2 hours. I was exhausted, and the pain kept getting increasingly worse (as if this was possible) with all the pressure I was feeling in my rectum. My doctor had informed me that the feeling of vaginal delivery can be likened to “taking a poop”, but as I was going through it, it actually felt like I was pooping a baby. The doctors and nurses kept trying to stretch me to make room for you, and I actually yelled at the attending doctor, “Get your fingers out of my butt hole!” I’m sure it was a big joke to everyone, but I was NOT a happy camper.
There are other details I remember: I screamed that I didn’t want to push anymore and wanted a C-section instead; I asked Christa if I could take a break from pushing for a few minutes, but taking a break made it hurt worse because of the rectal pressure; I told the doctors that I didn’t want them to use the vacuum or forceps; The doctors gave me a local anesthetic since I had terrible pain from my prior vaginal surgery several years earlier. I was crying and screaming from the pain, and I got mad at MeMe for telling me how close I was. “Lauri,” she said, “Look at all the doctors and nurses in the room. Do you think they would all be in here if you weren’t so close?” She was right – there were probably 6 or 7 doctors, nurses, and interns in the room.
Not to be anti-climatic, but with a few more intense moments and concentrated pushing on my part, you were finally here at 7:20 p.m. I remember thinking to myself that I should be feeling so much better now that you were out, but I was truly still reeling from what I had just experienced. Honestly, it was the most excruciating pain I could ever imagine. That was the only word I could come up with to describe the physical pain of your delivery. And what made it worse was that after your birth, the doctors (and interns) continued to work on me for at least 15 minutes (which felt like another hour of misery). More than anything, all I wanted was to close my legs (I was cursing those stirrups) and rest.
Of course, I don’t mean to skip over the most significant moment of that time – your arrival. I remember that when the doctor first pulled you out of me, I was staring at your Dad. (I may have snuck a peek at you first, though). His immediate reaction was, “Look at him! Look at him!” He had tears in his eyes and rolling down his face, and I was finally able to smile when I saw his elation at your arrival. He also exclaimed, “He’s so big!” and I could certainly agree with that (I felt every ounce of you coming out of me)!
They put you on my tummy and began wiping you off. For several moments, we all noticed that you were very quiet and still had not let out that big cry that most newborns make to announce their presence. The nurses took you to the warmer to clean you up better, and your Dad went over there to watch. He later told me that they shook you, rolled you, banged your heels, and continued to poke and prod you, but you still refused to let out a big cry. They finally determined that you were fine but just weren’t a screamer. You weighed 8 pounds, 6 ounces, and measured 22 inches. They wrapped you up and your Dad was able to hold you. He looked down at you with such wonder and amazement that it still brings tears to my eyes to think of it.
As many new mothers experience, I had the shakes from the epidural (stupid epidural, a lot of good it did me) so when your Dad brought you over to me, I declined to hold you at first. To be honest, I was still experiencing some shock over the painful delivery and I just wasn’t ready to bond with you. I was asked several times if I wanted to hold you, but I just needed some time to digest everything and recover from the events of the afternoon.
I’m not exactly certain of the sequence of events that followed, but I remember that the nurses took you to the nursery for the official assessment, cleaning, and other newborn activities. I think I sent MeMe away to get me something to eat, specifically pizza and a Coke. Your Dad wasn’t pleased that you were in the nursery for so long, so he went off to track you down and he promptly brought you back to us. By this time, I was over my shakes and your Dad handed you to me. I examined you closely for the first time.
I don’t remember much about those first precious moments with you. I know at some point your Dad had to run to the car again (or maybe it was to make some phone calls), so he left me alone with you for the first time. I gazed down lovingly at you and said, “So you’re the guy who’s been kicking me all these months!” You were so precious and making newborn cooing noises and looking around at everything with your wide eyes. The emotions finally hit me and I shed tears for the joy I felt at that moment.
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