Justus' Birth Story-Part 3

I apologize for the super lengthy-ness of this birth story but some friends enjoy every detail and it helps me record it so I can remember the day. And hey, if you have 16 hours of labor, you have 16 hours worth to write about!

(Continued from previous post....)

Getting the epidural was scary for me. I’m sure as I bent over the little side-arm table next to the bed and was getting it my mom and King Jo probably thought it was hurting me a lot. I think I was trembling, crying slightly, and doing relaxation-breathing more because I was anticipating pain than that there actually was any. I kept repeating in my mind that my cousin had told me it just feels like a bee sting. Sure enough that is all I felt. While I was holding still for him to finish putting it in, I counted over and over to 100 to focus my mind and kept picturing my kids, smiling and playing as I counted. I was amazed when it was finished. You see, I’m very afraid of needles and have always been totally freaked out at the thought of one in my spine. I’ve often told many of my friends that I would much rather go through natural childbirth than take a needle in my spine. So, like each birth I’ve been through in the past, I discovered something new and came through something I never thought that I could. Getting the epidural was nothing! Getting blood drawn hurts much worse!

The anesthesiologist was such a WONDERFUL guy. I’m sure he had things to do that Saturday night (it was around 5 pm) but he refused to leave until he was absolutely sure my epidural had taken effect. He would come in every five or ten minutes and ask how I was feeling. For about an hour I continued to feel contractions and kept asking the nurse if I could push my button. They said it usually takes 10 minutes to start losing sensation and getting tingling. Since my body didn’t take to it in 10 they gave me a little more and little more until it finally all kicked in at once and gave me a super hefty dosage that left me exactly as I wanted to be: comatose from the waist down! I had one “window” where I would feel the bad contractions in a little 4 inch by 4 inch square on my left side of my lower belly so I had to lay on my side and that helped the medicine somehow fill in that window.

Once the epi took full effect I closed my eyes and was almost relaxed enough to sleep. My mom and King Jo enjoyed the machine that tells you when you’re contracting and how much. They watched it eagerly and would report to me that I was having big ones and they were coming faster. At around 6:30 he checked me, and I was at a full 10. They decided to turn off my epidural at that point since they knew it would be soon. I remember King Jo saying that I could have this baby by 7pm! I was so amazed at how fast the last part had gone and that I was feeling absolutely nothing. They got me into a pushing position and would tell me when I was having a bad contraction so that I could attempt to push. Pushing was so strange with the epi because I was sooooo totally numb. I did my best to do what I knew to be pushing but I felt like I was really faking it and just squishing up my face and leaning forward just to make everyone happy but I didn’t think it was actually doing anything. However, the nurse told the doctor that I was pushing well and things were happening. He was out of the room for a while and I began to fear he wouldn’t make it in time. But that was because in the past I hardly had to push. With my first, it was only 20 minutes and with Jer I didn’t really push at all, he was just an explosion shooting out in less than 10 seconds. The nurse would check to see if the baby was moving down and report to me. I’d rest between contractions and then push as much as I could on the contractions. I kept asking them to break my water so I wouldn’t have to push against it and so they finally did. The thing that really motivated me to push even more was when the doctor popped in and checked for progress and finally said, “Well, she’s so dead from that epi that we might need to just have her rest through a lot of contractions and wait for some feeling to return so she can work with the “urge to push.” That freaked me because the main reason I got the drugs was so that I would be numb specifically for pushing out the baby part! So, I got down to business and was bending over, grabbing the handholds for pushing and huffing and puffing and thinking, “I have got to get this baby out before the epidural wears off!” I even tried to push when I wasn't having a contraction!

My mom and King Jo each grabbed one of my legs and would push them up, bent against my body and I would try to grab my legs and push. It felt like I was touching someone else’s legs and my body felt like it weighed four hundred pounds. Though I felt absolutely NO PAIN whatsoever, I was still working my upper body and exhausted and just dying for it all to be over and done with. Seeing the baby nurse come in and lay out all the things for the new baby and hearing them all say encouraging things really, really helped. Hearing them say he was only a finger tip away or that they could see the head or that 3 more pushes and he would be out was great motivation for me. Some of it ended up not being true, since the baby seems to go back some for every centimeter gained but knowing I was close to the end of this long, tiring ordeal was an incredible feeling.

I figured I would feel a big release of pressure when the baby came out because all of my friends had told me about that and that though they felt no pain, you would feel the baby in that way. On the last push or two, the doctor had me try laying flat instead of hunching over my belly, which was causing the baby to slide back. While lying flat, King Jo and my mom pushed my legs up all the way to my chest and I looked at the doctor and saw him grab the blue bulb syringe and heard a sucking noise. I couldn’t believe the head was out as I still felt nothing, and no release of pressure. I decided I’d better give one last push to get the body out but as I started to the doctor stopped me and said he would do the rest. And there was my squalling, round, healthy baby boy in my arms! I was crying tears of joy and relief that it was all over and I was getting to meet my son! It was absolutely amazing! This was the first birth that I could actually enjoy because I wasn’t reeling from the trauma of excruciating pain. They let us hold the baby and look him over for a long time. They did all his check-up stuff right there on my belly and we marveled at him in all of his purple glory. (Yes, he looked very, very purple to me!)

The doctor was so awesome about following my birth plan and preferences. He knew I had a history of hemorrhage and that I wanted a slow placental delivery so he took his time, and didn’t rush it and waited on the placenta. My placentas are always very stubborn and my water sacks always stick to the uterus so with the last two births I have had placental fragments remain inside. With Ali’s homebirth my midwife had to really do everything she could to get my placenta out and it took around 45 minutes. With Jer’s birth, I believe they jerked the cord to get it out way too fast, (it was out within about 4 minutes) and that is the main reason I believe that I hemorrhaged. This doctor probably had mine out in a half an hour to 45 minutes. He was so careful to make sure that I was given pitocin in my IV as well as oral pills to cramp my uterus and prevent excessive bleeding. He decided to put a couple of tiny stitches in a “skid mark” that I had and I felt nothing. In my previous births I’ve had just tiny tears that have healed without stitches, but Justus was my biggest baby and has a huge head!

I began to shake around 8:30pm as my epidural was wearing off and continued to shake for about 2 hours. It didn’t hurt, and some warm blankets helped a little bit but it was just a minor inconvenience for having the epidural. I nursed the baby a lot during this time and he took to it right away. My dad came up with food from McDonald’s, which was the only place in town open that time of night. We all ate in the delivery room and my friend Amy brought Ali up to see her new brother.

I regained enough feeling to move to a recovery room about an hour later and they brought the baby to us right away and said he was so healthy he could stay with us all night. King Jo saw that I was comfortable in bed and then ran home to get some snacks and fleece blankets (the rooms are sooo cold!). I had to sleep with my IV in as a precaution against bleeding and had to take pills to help my uterus cramp every four hours. My legs tingled but were still mostly numb all night and into the early morning. Being numb was nice though since I didn’t feel much of the cramping pain from all the pills/IV/nursing. King Jo stayed with me all night in the recliner in my room and he would bring me the baby for nursing. None of us slept well with all the vitals checks and with Justus fussing all night to be fed and held.

The next morning I was fully able to walk and get up on my own and got to take a hot shower which felt amazing. I felt absolutely no pain and no soreness from the birth except for sharp lower back pain. Whether the lower back pain was from the super hard contractions I never felt or soreness from the epi needle, I don’t know but it diminished each day until 3 days post-partum it was totally gone. Jeremiah came up with my folks and Ali and got to meet his little brother that morning right after Justus had been circumcised. Justus didn't even cry during the circ, as his daddy watched the whole thing, and I found that to be such a relief since he usually screams bloody murder at just the touch of a cold wet wipe!

I was shocked at how little bleeding I had compared to the last birth! Since we were both doing so well they said we could go home Sunday afternoon, less than 24 hours after delivery!

And that concludes the novel! Hindsight is so much better because looking back on everything I praise the Lord for His mercy and strength through it all and I would definitely call it a beautiful birth experience and sooooo worth it all! It was my best delivery yet!

My hubby could have told this story in one sentence: Justus was born!

(Stay tuned for a post on my comparisons of water birth, non-medicated, and medicated birth!)