Birth Stories: Elsa's First Day

When the alarm clock went off at 3:00 a.m. on August 8th, little did we know that we were less than 13 hours away from meeting our baby girl. This was my first induction, and since I wasn't dilated at all and wasn't have any signs of impending labor, I assumed it would be a very long day and a very long induction. Shortly before 4 a.m., we were en route to Good Samaritan Medical Center, 8 miles away. We got a bit of a late start so I was stressing the whole ride over, but we pulled into the hospital parking lot at exactly 4:00 a.m., as scheduled.

As we were unloading the bags from the car, a weird guy approached us and wanted us to help him get to Fort Lauderdale. He asked us to give him either money, gas, or a ride. We told him we couldn’t help him because we were trying to head inside and have a baby. He didn’t seem to think that was a good enough excuse and continued to pester us for help. Finally we just had to walk away from him and go inside because he wouldn't leave us alone! What a moron.

By 4:15 a.m. we were all checked into our room, #253. This is when we learned that the night before had been very busy with deliveries, so our induction was bumped back 3 hours to 7:00 a.m. I was a little relieved because I had only gotten 2 hours of sleep the night before and thought maybe I could sneak in a couple hours of rest before things were underway. Before we could settle in, the bed had to be switched out, because apparently the bed in there was not a "birthing bed". When the nurse wheeled in the bed I was going to give birth in, reality and nervousness started to sink in!

4:24 a.m. - My bed for the day

4:26 a.m. - Last time in maternity jeans!

4:41 a.m. - Last belly picture

4:47 a.m. - Trying to rest up for a long day

For 2 hours, I tossed and turned, but couldn't sleep. The never-ending pregnancy-induced heartburn was killing me and I was chewing on Tums like crazy to no avail. Plus I was hyped up for the exciting day ahead, Elsa was doing gymnastics in my belly, and I was starving! Even though I wasn't supposed to eat anything during the induction, I had a stash of fruit snacks in my hospital bag so I tried snacking on them to keep the hunger at bay. It didn't help. I was miserable! Meanwhile, James slept "peacefully" in an ugly, green chair across the room.

At 6:30 a.m. a nurse named Monica finally came in the room for the first time. She asked a bunch of medical history questions and typed all my answers into the computer. She started me on IV fluids and hooked me to the monitors. Then she left to find out how much longer it would be before my OB, Doctor Sohn, would start cytotec to get the induction underway. I never did get an answer to that question, but it turns out I had a couple more hours to wait.

6:36 a.m. - Future baby spot

6:38 a.m. - A bored James

Shortly after 7:00 a.m. a random lady came in and took several vials of blood from my left arm. After laying there bored for 2 1/2 hours, it was nice to have those 3 minutes of excitement. And then she was gone and the boredom resumed. I kept trying to play on my phone to pass the time, but the IV in my right wrist kept getting in the way and frustrating me. So I entertained myself by watching the monitors, which were very dull. Other than an occasional Braxton Hicks contraction, my uterus was doing absolutely nothing.

7:55 a.m. - A tiny Braxton Hicks contraction that I was very proud of

At 8:00 a.m., James was starving and left to get himself some breakfast. This just annoyed me because I was starving too, but wasn't allowed to eat anything. Throughout the rest of the day, there was contention between James and I because I was doing everything in my power to not think about food, but for whatever reason, every sentence James spoke had to do with food! No matter how many times I told him to stop talking about food, he just couldn't stop. It was ridiculous. He was lucky I was all hooked up to monitors and an IV and stuff or I would have killed him.

8:03 a.m. - 4 hours of sitting in bed, bored and hungry

At 8:35 a.m., after 4 1/2 hours of waiting, Dr. Sohn finally came in to get things going! Since my cervix was all hard and closed and uncooperative, the first step was to insert cytotec up there to soften it up. Sometimes cytotec can induce labor, so we hoped that would be the case, but if it didn't work, there was always pitocin. Dr. Sohn said she needed to put the pill behind my cervix, but my cervix was in a weird position where she could barely reach it, so she had to really cram her fingers up there, for lack of a better description. It was excruciatingly painful! I nearly clawed holes in the sheets during the procedure, but once it was over, I was so happy the induction was finally underway.

After Dr. Sohn left, my nurse for the day, Deena came in for a chat. We talked about pain relief options and I told her I wanted to do this without drugs, but wasn’t sure if I’d be able to handle the pain of pitocin contractions, since I had never been induced before. We agreed that if I needed an epidural early on we would order one, but if I made it all the way to the end, Deena would be “mean” and deny me the drugs so that I could achieve my goal. She was very supportive of my decision to go natural, even though I doubted my own ability to actually go through with it. I really didn't think I was going to make it all day without an epidural, but I was determined to at least try. Plus, I wanted to prove to Deena that I could do it, even though she was a complete stranger. I'm weird like that.

James came back from breakfast shortly after this and resumed talking about food incessantly. I resumed wanting to kill him. But instead, I managed to take a nap.

At 9:45 a.m. Dr. Sohn came back in and saw that I was having no contractions at all from the cytotec, so she decided to break my water to get things going before starting Pitocin. Since she had to reach back up in there and dig around for my cervix in order to do it, this was even more painful than when she put in the cytotec, and took twice as long! Having her up there was the worst pain I had ever experienced in my life. To make matters worse, while she was fishing around, she made a comment like, "This was a bad idea. We shouldn't have induced you." Oh great. Just what I wanted to hear!

After about a million years of Dr. Sohn mutilating my lady parts, she was able to determine that the cytotec had helped me dilate to 2 centimeters, even though I hadn't had any contractions. Then I guess it was once again "ok" that we were doing this induction. Good grief. With my water broken, I expected a big gush or something spectacular, but pretty much nothing happened (that would come later). I felt pretty crampy after all of this, but still no contractions. I hoped the mutilation would jump-start labor, but it didn't really do anything, so pitocin was the next step.

5 1/2 hours before Elsa's arrival...

At 10:30 the Pitocin drip was started and I was officially nervous. I thought for sure once the evil drugs were being pumped into me, I'd never be able to pull off this birth without pain meds. They started me on a very low dose of 1 milliunit per minute. After an hour, the contractions continued to be non-existent, so at 11:30 the dosage got bumped to 3 mU/min. I finally started having contractions 5 minutes apart, but they were very tolerable so I worried they weren't doing anything. I passed the time by goofing off on the Internet and joking around about how the contractions didn't hurt enough. "Bring on the pain!" I said.

Over the next hour and a half, the Pitocin was increased from 3 to 5 to 7 mU/min, and I was still tolerating the contractions just fine. They just felt like strong Braxton Hicks contractions. I assumed this meant I wasn’t dilating at all and I started to worry that the induction wasn’t working! Dr. Sohn's words kept echoing in my head, "this was a bad idea". I thought for sure she was going to get frustrated with my lack of progress and just give me a c-section.

3 hours before Elsa's arrival...

Shortly before 1:00, all I could think about was how hungry I was. Since James couldn't stop talking about food and annoying me, I dismissed him to eat lunch. He met up with his mother and my children somewhere out in West Palm Beach while I sat in my bed and starved. I continued to play on the Internet to keep my mind off the hunger. The only real pain I was having at this point was in my butt. The bed was so darn uncomfortable, my butt was killing me from sitting there.

12:50 p.m. - Still smiling after 2 1/2 hours of pitocin

1:06 p.m. - Lots of big contractions, but not terribly painful yet

1:16 p.m. - Taking happy selfies during contractions to prove they don't hurt

At 1:23 p.m., suddenly, without warning, there was a ruckus in my uterus and I felt a gush of warm fluid between my legs. At first I thought I had peed the bed and was pretty embarrassed. Then at 1:37 p.m., it started to really pour out! My comments on Facebook:

And there's the rest of my amniotic fluid. OMG. It's coming out like a hose.

Still coming

I am completely soaking wet now LOL

I think I need to page the nurse for a towel. That was really gross.

The bed was totally drenched. I did end up paging the nurses station to ask for towels. As I was drying off, the evil Dr. Sohn came in to torture me some more by checking my cervix. As usual, this hurt HORRIBLY! I was shrieking and sweating in pain, and she kept remarking what a very strange cervix I had and how difficult these checks were to do. UGH! The amniotic fluid continued to gush all over the place while she did this, so it felt disgusting. I was hoping I would be at least 3 centimeters, and didn't expect anything more than that since I hadn't had any super painful contractions yet.

It turns out I was 4 centimeters dilated and that the baby’s head was incredibly low. Dr. Sohn was very pleased with this. I guess this induction wasn't a "bad idea" anymore. She said very soon I would turn a corner and fully dilate in a matter of minutes. I had trouble believing her since I didn’t feel like I was even in active labor yet. It had been way too easy so far! She asked if the contractions were hurting yet. I said they hurt, but I was easily distracting myself and not paying much attention to them. She found this surprising and couldn't believe I hadn't asked for an epidural yet.

1:37 p.m. - James was in the hospital parking lot snapping this lovely photo at the exact moment my water gushed out

Less than 2 hours before Elsa's arrival...

While Dr. Sohn was straddling me on the bed with her hands all up in my business and amniotic fluid spilling out all over the place, James and his mother, his brother Patrick, and my kids returned from lunch and tried to walk into the room for a visit. They walked out REAL quick! Once Dr. Sohn got off me and I was cleaned up and no longer panting from the pain, the family came back in. My kids were really excited that their sister would be arriving soon and it was nice to chat with everyone for a bit. Everyone was guessing it would be late that night that I'd deliver, but I told them I thought maybe by dinnertime. (Honestly, this was just wishful thinking on my part. I didn't really believe it.)

2:05 p.m. - A giddy big brother and big sister. Notice Abby stole my slippers!

At some point while all the visitors were in my room chit-chatting, the contractions started to get really painful all of a sudden. I was able to hide the pain from my kids through clenched-teeth, but I could feel myself starting to fall apart and I knew "screaming time" (AKA transition) was about to start at any moment. I told James' mom she should probably leave ASAP. She got the hint and shuffled everyone out at 2:15 p.m. Right after the family left, Deena increased my Pitocin to 11 mU/min, and this is when labor stopped being silly fun time.

By 2:30, I couldn't play online or talk anymore because I needed to focus on breathing through contractions. The contractions were coming one on top of the other, and they were really painful. I put on my headphones and blared drum corps music full blast to try and keep my mind off the pain. It didn't work. Within minutes, I was in full screaming mode. I mentally left this planet and went straight to the seventh circle of hell. I yelled to James that I couldn't do it anymore. I wanted drugs, but even as he went running out of the room to get a nurse, I knew I couldn't get the drugs. I was in so much pain it would have been impossible for me to sit up in the bed and hold still for an epidural. I knew I was out of luck, and I was mentally kicking myself for making this stupid drug-free birth decision!

Less than an hour before Elsa's arrival...

Dr. Sohn came in to check my progress at 3:00 p.m. and I was 7 centimeters, 90% effaced, -1 station. I estimated that I would have to endure this pain for 2-3 more hours, and I didn't know how I was ever going to survive because it was so bad. I remember Deena telling James not to touch me because it would only make it hurt worse. I was grateful that she told him that, because I had lost my ability to talk and I didn't want to be messed with. I just wanted to crawl up into the corner of my bed and scream like a banshee.

Dr. Sohn came in again just before 3:30 and determined that I was already over 9 cm dilated. When she finished checking me I noticed that it gave me a tiny bit of relief to push a little bit during the contractions, so I yelled, “I just want to push the baby out right now!” Dr. Sohn and Deena decided to let me go ahead, because I’d be fully dilated after one more contraction anyway. People started coming in the room and setting up baby stuff and delivery stuff. I was so glad I didn't have to be in "labor" for tons more hours, but I was also totally freaked out that I had reached the end and that it was actually baby time.

According to James, I started pushing at 3:32 p.m. I remember very few details after this except pain, pain, and more pain. It was pain beyond anything I could ever imagine and it felt like there was nothing I could do to make it end. They kept telling me to “push harder, push harder” and I didn’t want to. I just wanted to curl up in a ball and make everyone leave me alone. The sensation felt so much like constipation, I was sure I was about to have a 10 pound poop on the table. I kept trying to warn them that something was going to come out, and they kept saying "just let it come out!" I was thinking poop, they were thinking baby. It was a very frustrating miscommunication. Finally I just got so annoyed with them, I decided to just go ahead and "poop" all over the table just to show them. (Except it wasn't poop. It was actually the baby coming out. But I didn't know that.)

I remember doing a lot of yelling at everyone and protesting and fighting everything they tried to get me to do. They kept telling me to stop yelling because I was wasting my energy, but I couldn’t. They were telling me the baby was coming out, and I didn’t believe them. There were no babies in hell. This was a pointless form of torture that had no end. There was another nurse off to the side setting up an area for the “baby” and I remember thinking that was really stupid of her because the baby was never going to come out. At some point they put a catheter in to empty my bladder, thinking that would help make some room for the “baby” to come through. This just made me angrier and more combative. I told them I needed to have something to grip onto. James offered his hand and I told him I would break his hand. I needed something stronger, so Deena pulled out these handlebar type things. That helped a ton.

When the “head” of the “baby” came out, James and everyone started talking about how beautiful she was and that she had eyebrows and all kinds of stuff. I thought they were crazy. There was no baby, only pain, in my corner of hell. Plus I was still utterly convinced it was just a big poop coming out. After the "head" was out, I remember feeling this horrible burning delivering the "shoulders" and I worried that I had split my lady parts completely in half. I remember thinking, "there goes my urethra". After what felt like an eternity, it was finally over. They set the squirming "baby" on my stomach for a second, and I couldn’t really comprehend where it had come from because I never truly believed I was pushing a baby out! She was born at 3:53 p.m., only 21 minutes after I started pushing. I can’t believe it was that quick. It felt like an eternity.

The relief from having her out was wonderful, but my mind and body were completely spent. I was still in a ton of pain and shaking uncontrollable when the delivery was over. I found out that I had received an episiotomy (I have no idea how I didn't feel that), so they took the baby over to the warmer and did who knows what with her (I was still about 50% in hell at that point) while Dr. Sohn put a bunch of shots of lidocaine in my privates, and then stitched me up. James said Elsa was a little gray when she came out so they gave her some oxygen for a few seconds, and then she was fine.

3:54 p.m. - Elsa, 1 minute old

3:55 p.m. - A very confused-looking baby

After all the pain of labor, delivery, and having the episiotomy stitched up, Dr. Sohn had the nerve to make me deliver the placenta, which may as well have been a second baby! Then Deena came over and started pushing hard on my stomach to get my uterus to contract, which just added insult to injury. It took me a very long time to stop shaking from the trauma. But once the mean people finally left me alone and stopped inflicting pain, I finally was able to come back to Earth and realize that I had just had a baby and she was in a warmer about 2 feet away from me. I couldn’t see her, but James said she was beautiful. I had him take a picture and show me. It was all so strange because I was so out of it.

It turns out Elsa was 8 pounds, 10 ounces and 21 ½ inches long with a 14 inch head. That’s why it was so painful to deliver her. Dr. Sohn was shocked that I had done the whole thing without any pain medication. I felt like I had just won the olympics.

4:04 p.m. - 8 pounds, 10.3 ounces. Big girl!

4:11 p.m. - Perfect baby, 18 minutes old

Once I got the shaking under control, they brought baby Elsa over to me and put her on my chest for skin-to-skin time. I couldn’t believe how cute she was. I thought after all that pain, she would be as battered as I felt, but she was totally flawless.

4:18 p.m. - I finally get to hold her

Over the next hour, the room emptied of the doctor and nurses and it was just James, Elsa, and I. I had watched some videos on YouTube and read a book about how to get the baby to latch on and breastfeed without any assistance during skin-to-skin time, so that’s what I did. I just laid her on my chest, and let her find her way to the breast.

4:28 p.m. - Hunting for the boob

It actually worked! Before I knew it, I had this brand new baby latched on perfectly and breastfeeding. She had never nursed before, and I had never nursed before, but somehow we just did it on instinct! (Thank God, because I had no idea what I was doing.) That’s the point where the trauma and pain started to fade and the miracle of what just happened became clear. The pain was terrible, but it only lasted a total of 90 minutes and it was all worth it for the perfect baby girl at the end.

While I was feeding her, I went online and told everyone I had just given birth without pain medication. I was awfully proud of myself. Elsa nursed for a good hour, which amazed me. In the middle of all that, a giant bouquet of flowers showed up in the room from James' parents. The nurses thought it was funny how quickly after delivery the gifts started pouring in.