Jean, worried since she didn't hear from us all night, gave us a call in the morning. Although I was tired from not sleeping for more than 20 minutes here and there all night, I felt pretty good. Which I knew was not good. She asked us to come in for a check. I'm convinced nothing has changed because I'm still able to joke around and talk and have yet to hit that serious stage of labor, but I hold out hope that I am wrong. We find a McDonald's and all I can force myself to eat is a bite or two of a hash brown and some orange juice. I know that I need to eat but I'm just not hungry. As luck would have it there was a burglary/shooting on the road we needed to exit on to get to the birth center and they were looking for a suspect in the area and several blocks were shut down. Fantastic. We only know one way to get to the birth center and it's not an option. Eventually, we make it to the birth center where Jean checks us out again. At 9:30AM (after a full 24 hours of contractions) we were only 3cms dilated, but she noted that the baby had dropped 2 inches since midnight. I lost it. I cried and cried. How the hell was I going to do this? I'm only 3 cms? I can't sleep and I'm not hungry and I'm really only 3 cms??
Jean, another midwife, and Jay all talk in the hall while I went to the bathroom and had some of my mucous plug come out. They decide to offer me a muscle relaxant shot called Nubain. It would let me get some sleep so I could deal with the stronger contractions that were on their way. There was the possibility that the Nubain would slow or stall the contractions, but they felt it was worth the risk because I was already exhausted and hyper-emotional. They got us set up in the Austin Music Scene room (pictured below, click the picture for a virtual tour of all the birthing rooms at Austin Area Birthing Center South). At 10:00AM Midwife Vicki gave me a nice shot in the butt and I asked how long it would take to kick in. By the end of my question I was feeling better.
I slept goooooooooood! I still had contractions every 10 minutes, some of which I would wake up for and have to moan through, but some I just slept right through. I got a few hours of rest and was able to handle the contractions much more effectively. After I woke up and walked around, the contractions came right back to that steady 6 minute pace. Around 5:30PM I was checked again. 5cms dilated 100% effaced, bloody show, not going home without a baby!
Every hour or so they check your vitals and the baby's heartbeat. One of these checks happened to come moments after I had back to back super-duper contractions which led to a mini panic attack and my second freak out. When they checked my pulse it was almost 190 beats per minute. They prefer it to be under 100. Vicki told me we had an hour to get my pulse under control or she would have no choice but to take us to the hospital. My blood pressure was fine, I was feeling fine, but my pulse was ridiculously high. Unfortunately, that meant 2 of the worst possible things for me. 1) I may end up in the hospital with no health insurance and no mental preparation for that kind of birth. 2) I was to work this labor on land until my pulse was stable. No hot water for me. No calming bath. No soothing shower. Water was a big part of how I planned on handling this birth. This news was very upsetting. But what could you do?
So we continue to work through each contraction with that end in sight! Jay was an amazing coach. Whatever I needed, he was right there. We slow danced through many of them. I tried our new birth ball we brought for a few. I sat on the ball and Jay applied counter pressure on my low back. We put the ball on the bed and I leaned on that while Jay massaged my back. I had a real hard time sitting into the contractions. Seemingly every time, I would pop up and away from them, clenching my shoulders, and pretty much the opposite of what you're supposed to do. Every time Vicki came in to check on us I would ask if I could get in the tub yet. Pulse check, 120. No tub for Donna. My pulse stayed between 100 and 120 and with no other signs of distress to me or Corbin, we were able to avoid the hospital route for now. She eventually agreed to a very tepid bath and squatting in the tub was my new favorite position, even though it made my feet fall asleep.
Around 8:00PM it was time for a shift change and our new midwife Roswitha came to see how we were progressing. Internals suck by the way. As soon as I changed position to lay on the bed, I would get hit with a new contraction and once laying down all I could do was suffer through it. I did not like having contractions on the bed. Roswitha does the internal and wouldn't you know- 6cms?!?!? Really??? 3 hours of nothing but pain and only one stinking cm?? After all that?? I thought by the amount of pain I was in I was around the corner from transition at this point. Only 6cms??? Roswitha assures us 6 cms is great progress and we are doing great! Baby is doing great, Mommy is doing great. This is where I start the doubting. Mommy is not doing great. Mommy is now thinking this can go on for another day and a half.
Everything I learned about childbirth said to only focus on one contraction at a time. Think about each step and eventually you'll climb the whole mountain. If you look at the whole mountain you'll freak yourself out. Well, guess what I did. I took a big old mental picture of this whole freaking mountain of the labor we had left. Terrible idea. Very, very bad. If you're pregnant and reading this- don't do that! Or at least if you are going to freak yourself out, have the decency to let everyone around you know what you are doing so they can correct you. I, on the other hand, kept this all to myself and allowed it to build over the next few hours.
And so it went, contraction, rest, contraction, rest, for hour after hour. Early on I had asked Jay to play my ipod. We listened to a John Legend album, then Norah Jones, then the same Jason Mraz playlist for 5 hours. When I finally asked him to put it on shuffle, the second song that played was a Jason Mraz song. Enough with the Jason Mraz already! After the birth we laughed about how much crap we brought with us that we didn't use. I asked Jay to bring his laptop so we could watch dvds, we brought several seasons of the Office, puzzle books, and a journal to keep track of the milestones. We touched none of it. I didn't want to do anything but breathe and rock in a circle.
As my pulse steadied itself around 100 I was allowed to start using warmer and warmer water. Which was fantastic news! Fantastic until they have to pull you out to do an internal and you can't regulate your body temperature and you are shaking so uncontrollably you look like you're having a seizure. But, in my mind I had no choice. I could not cope with the pain on the bed. I did not like Jay seeing me sit on a toilet. I wanted that tub.
As the memories fade, I can't be sure of the time but sometime late in the night Roswitha did another internal at said I was still 6-7cms, but that my water bag was bulging and if we wanted she could break it and that would surely speed things up. She was very confident the water bag was keeping the baby from descending. Well, what has two thumbs, is exhausted again, and has been quietly staring at a mental labor mountain for the last 4 hours? That would be me. You want me to agree to make these worse?? I am barely dealing with them as they are now. I'm stuck at 6-7cms?? I can't do this. I'm done. Call the hospital. It's just going to get worse when my water breaks. I want an epidural. I don't care if I'm in labor for another week as long as I don't feel another ****ing contraction. And for the third time in this labor, I lost it. I lost it bigger and louder than the 2 freak outs before. I knew all about transition and the self-doubt phase, but this was serious. I didn't think I could not do this- I knew I could not do this. Not with what I was working with at the moment.
This is about Jay's breaking point, too. He is just as exhausted as I am, maybe more so having worked all day Thursday and he didn't get any Nubain to help him sleep. Jay and Roswitha talk. She listens to me freak out, takes it all in, and makes one small suggestion. How about that Nubain? "We give you another little shot of Nubain, pop the water, and it will take the edge off of the contractions enough to get you through." Jay asks if I can get the Nubain, try and take a nap, and then pop the water when I wake up. Maybe the rest will give me enough strength to deal with the stronger contractions on my own. She says that's perfectly fine. And if we give the Nubain a chance and it doesn't help, we can always go to the hospital then. I was really trying to avoid the hospital setting so I said okay. It would have been one thing if my water had popped on it's own. I think I would have faced the contractions that followed just as well as the ones before. But knowing that if I had Roswitha pop it with a hook prematurely, that I was the one responsible for however bad the following contractions were, that was too much pressure. I'll take the Nubain induced nap please.
I slept goooooooooood! I still had contractions every 10 minutes, some of which I would wake up for and have to moan through, but some I just slept right through. I got a few hours of rest and was able to handle the contractions much more effectively. After I woke up and walked around, the contractions came right back to that steady 6 minute pace. Around 5:30PM I was checked again. 5cms dilated 100% effaced, bloody show, not going home without a baby!
Every hour or so they check your vitals and the baby's heartbeat. One of these checks happened to come moments after I had back to back super-duper contractions which led to a mini panic attack and my second freak out. When they checked my pulse it was almost 190 beats per minute. They prefer it to be under 100. Vicki told me we had an hour to get my pulse under control or she would have no choice but to take us to the hospital. My blood pressure was fine, I was feeling fine, but my pulse was ridiculously high. Unfortunately, that meant 2 of the worst possible things for me. 1) I may end up in the hospital with no health insurance and no mental preparation for that kind of birth. 2) I was to work this labor on land until my pulse was stable. No hot water for me. No calming bath. No soothing shower. Water was a big part of how I planned on handling this birth. This news was very upsetting. But what could you do?
So we continue to work through each contraction with that end in sight! Jay was an amazing coach. Whatever I needed, he was right there. We slow danced through many of them. I tried our new birth ball we brought for a few. I sat on the ball and Jay applied counter pressure on my low back. We put the ball on the bed and I leaned on that while Jay massaged my back. I had a real hard time sitting into the contractions. Seemingly every time, I would pop up and away from them, clenching my shoulders, and pretty much the opposite of what you're supposed to do. Every time Vicki came in to check on us I would ask if I could get in the tub yet. Pulse check, 120. No tub for Donna. My pulse stayed between 100 and 120 and with no other signs of distress to me or Corbin, we were able to avoid the hospital route for now. She eventually agreed to a very tepid bath and squatting in the tub was my new favorite position, even though it made my feet fall asleep.
Around 8:00PM it was time for a shift change and our new midwife Roswitha came to see how we were progressing. Internals suck by the way. As soon as I changed position to lay on the bed, I would get hit with a new contraction and once laying down all I could do was suffer through it. I did not like having contractions on the bed. Roswitha does the internal and wouldn't you know- 6cms?!?!? Really??? 3 hours of nothing but pain and only one stinking cm?? After all that?? I thought by the amount of pain I was in I was around the corner from transition at this point. Only 6cms??? Roswitha assures us 6 cms is great progress and we are doing great! Baby is doing great, Mommy is doing great. This is where I start the doubting. Mommy is not doing great. Mommy is now thinking this can go on for another day and a half.
Everything I learned about childbirth said to only focus on one contraction at a time. Think about each step and eventually you'll climb the whole mountain. If you look at the whole mountain you'll freak yourself out. Well, guess what I did. I took a big old mental picture of this whole freaking mountain of the labor we had left. Terrible idea. Very, very bad. If you're pregnant and reading this- don't do that! Or at least if you are going to freak yourself out, have the decency to let everyone around you know what you are doing so they can correct you. I, on the other hand, kept this all to myself and allowed it to build over the next few hours.
And so it went, contraction, rest, contraction, rest, for hour after hour. Early on I had asked Jay to play my ipod. We listened to a John Legend album, then Norah Jones, then the same Jason Mraz playlist for 5 hours. When I finally asked him to put it on shuffle, the second song that played was a Jason Mraz song. Enough with the Jason Mraz already! After the birth we laughed about how much crap we brought with us that we didn't use. I asked Jay to bring his laptop so we could watch dvds, we brought several seasons of the Office, puzzle books, and a journal to keep track of the milestones. We touched none of it. I didn't want to do anything but breathe and rock in a circle.
As my pulse steadied itself around 100 I was allowed to start using warmer and warmer water. Which was fantastic news! Fantastic until they have to pull you out to do an internal and you can't regulate your body temperature and you are shaking so uncontrollably you look like you're having a seizure. But, in my mind I had no choice. I could not cope with the pain on the bed. I did not like Jay seeing me sit on a toilet. I wanted that tub.
As the memories fade, I can't be sure of the time but sometime late in the night Roswitha did another internal at said I was still 6-7cms, but that my water bag was bulging and if we wanted she could break it and that would surely speed things up. She was very confident the water bag was keeping the baby from descending. Well, what has two thumbs, is exhausted again, and has been quietly staring at a mental labor mountain for the last 4 hours? That would be me. You want me to agree to make these worse?? I am barely dealing with them as they are now. I'm stuck at 6-7cms?? I can't do this. I'm done. Call the hospital. It's just going to get worse when my water breaks. I want an epidural. I don't care if I'm in labor for another week as long as I don't feel another ****ing contraction. And for the third time in this labor, I lost it. I lost it bigger and louder than the 2 freak outs before. I knew all about transition and the self-doubt phase, but this was serious. I didn't think I could not do this- I knew I could not do this. Not with what I was working with at the moment.
This is about Jay's breaking point, too. He is just as exhausted as I am, maybe more so having worked all day Thursday and he didn't get any Nubain to help him sleep. Jay and Roswitha talk. She listens to me freak out, takes it all in, and makes one small suggestion. How about that Nubain? "We give you another little shot of Nubain, pop the water, and it will take the edge off of the contractions enough to get you through." Jay asks if I can get the Nubain, try and take a nap, and then pop the water when I wake up. Maybe the rest will give me enough strength to deal with the stronger contractions on my own. She says that's perfectly fine. And if we give the Nubain a chance and it doesn't help, we can always go to the hospital then. I was really trying to avoid the hospital setting so I said okay. It would have been one thing if my water had popped on it's own. I think I would have faced the contractions that followed just as well as the ones before. But knowing that if I had Roswitha pop it with a hook prematurely, that I was the one responsible for however bad the following contractions were, that was too much pressure. I'll take the Nubain induced nap please.
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