The Miracle of Birth part 1

And now for the story of Lily's birth...

On Memorial Day I woke up at my usual time (7am) and took a shower. When I got out I noticed I was still dripping wet no matter how much I toweled off. Yup, you guessed it... my water broke.

I woke up Jeff and we were out the door and at the hospital by 8am. They checked us in, tested me and said I was definitely in labor. The funny thing was that I didn't feel any contractions. They put the sensor on me and the monitor showed my contractions but I didn't feel anything.

Hours passed. I ate. I watched soccer with Jeff. I watched my long-planned-for birth movie Undercover Brother (I figured I'd laugh so hard that she would just pop out.) My parents visited in the afternoon and then hung out in the waiting room. I texted my sisters and waited waited waited...

I started to question whether I really needed an epidural because they checked my dilation a few times and I was progressing but still not feeling contractions. Eventually I started to feel pretty uncomfortable and decided to get the epidural after all. Within minutes the anesthesiologist was there explaining the procedure to me. He made it sound very complicated but all I felt was them numbing my back and that was it. I felt better pretty quick.

Not long after that the nurses came in to do some practice pushing. I didn't realize they did that but whatever. Breathe breathe breathe push push push... Okay, seems simple enough.

An hour or two later I told the nurses I was feeling nauseous and they all came in with their equipment and had me pushing again. I thought it was more practice but eventually figured out that it was the real thing. The head nurse was really really loud when she counted to ten and could be heard down the hall. I pushed and pushed for a while and the nurses came and went. Eventually it was just Jeff and one nurse and he was the one counting so loud my family could hear him in the waiting room. He was great, I thought he would be hanging out by my head and wiping my sweaty forehead down (a "Northerner" is what this was called in our birth class) but he has apparently watched enough CSI to not be bothered so he hung out by my legs and watched everything (a "Southerner"). It was about midnight at this point and I kept falling asleep between pushes.

Finally, the doctor came and explained that it's taking a while and the baby wasn't getting past my pelvic bone. She said that if she didn't move past it soon they may have to do a C-section. I had refused to even consider this a possibility during my pregnancy (my mom told me she would just fall out like her children did) and was scared - I've never had any kind of operation before. So I pushed with all my might for almost two more hours and - nothing. So my doctor made the call for the C-section.