Baby girl is here!

On Wednesday morning at my weekly obgyn appointment I asked for a membrane  sweep. I remembered being offered one around this time when I was pregnant with Matthew and it seemed to help. He was born 4 days later. But this went much quicker! 

All week I had been having painful inconsistent contractions. I even went to labor and delivery on Sunday after the contractions lasted for a full minute every 5 minutes for over an hour, but once I was resting in the bed they petered out. The nurse told me Braxton Hicks can be just as painful as real contractions. 

So... in the end I waited too long to go in! I had contractions all day long on Thursday, but they weren't totally consistent. 25 minutes apart for a couple hours, then an hour pause, then 20 minutes apart, then another break. By dinner time they were about 10 minutes apart. I really started to wonder if this could be it. 

Then all of a sudden they went from 10 minutes to 3 minutes apart and they were so painful! I called Mom to pick up Matthew. During breaks between contractions I slowly made my way out to the car. We left our house just before 9. By the time we got to the hospital (just 5 minutes away), the contractions were 2 minutes apart and lasting at least a minute. So basically every other minute I was in excruciating pain. Trevor had to push me in a wheelchair up to labor and delivery and sign all the paperwork for me. 

They hurried me back, I threw on a hospital gown, and they checked me to discover I was dialated to an 8 or a 9. By this point I was screaming a lot and begging them to get me back for an epidural. They pushed my bed out of triage and straight to a delivery room, where I needed to transfer to another bed. That's when I got the urge to push. They told me to wait until they got my IV in, and could I please relax my arm? But I couldn't resist pushing and relaxing any part of me was practically impossible. I will admit to lots of screaming and begging for an epidural (too late!). So much fear that I couldn't handle an unmedicated birth. That was not my plan. 

But the poor nurse managed to get the IV in.  Thank goodness the doctor appeared right away. Now it was okay to push. My first attempt involved a lot of screaming and flailing. The doctor told me I needed to stop all of that and concentrate all my energy on pushing. Get angry at that pain and push hard, and all the pain would end. I did my best, scared to death that I wouldn't be able to do it and forgetting to breathe half the time, which made things difficult. But a good 3 or 4 pushes later, they were handing me my beautiful baby and it was over. It was amazing how quickly that overwhelming pain dissipated. 

I think I was a little in shock? It all happened so fast it really took me a few hours to process that she was really here and the hardest part (of pregnancy, anyway) was really over. We left home just before 9 and she was born at 9:36.

The funniest part is when I apologized to the nurses for screaming like a maniac, one of them told me I was the most composed person she has seen during an unmedicated labor. I'm sure she was just being nice because there was absolutely nothing composed about how I behaved. 🤣 I don't think I have ever screamed so much in my life.

At any rate baby girl is here and it is already so fun to see that her little personality is so different from her brother's. Matthew is coming by to meet her with my parents later today. I hope that goes well!