Having A Baby Is A Piece Of Cake! No that isn't the epidural talking....Walter and I had, had a dry run the the hospital on the 25th of May but after the contractions drifted away laughing quitely to themselves my doctor practically put me on bed rest aside from my normal working routine. I was to lay down as much as possible because I wasn't due until June 18th and he really wanted the baby to be term. We were disappointed though and I was wishing that the baby would be early; I was so tired of being pregnant. On June 3rd, we got our wish.
After counting the contractions for two hours, waking Walter up to make a list of animal duties for the neighbor, and calling the doctor to confirm we should go to the hospital we were on our way. At 3am we rolled into the hospital and after giving me a gown they put us on walking duty to help the contractions along. Boring as it was Walter and I walked the hospital Child Birth Center for two hours chatting and laughing about Bill Cosby's "Self" comedy sketch where he describes his wifes birth experience. The nurses teased us and said I must not really be having contractions because I was laughing. I thought that was kind of rude. I felt I was lucky to be able to laugh especially since as we made our laps we passed two women's rooms where they had chosen to go the natural child birth route and were screaming in pain. And I mean screaming. We pretty much got to be there with them as they went through the last few stages of delivery (As Walter describes it: Oh ma gawd it is going to come out, Oh ma gawd I don't want it out, oh ma gawd I want it out now!). My back was killing me, however, as the contractions got stronger and soon I was back in my room being given an injection of Pitocin. Lovely stuff gets those contractions going but man can make them painful. Even still we talked about how it felt and how cool we thought our nurse was and made fun of the nurse we had had the last time we were in the hospital and who drove us nuts.
It was a fantastic learning experience to me. Here I was soon to be a part of "the mommy club" transitioning from "the pregnant club" and it was so cool to think of all the women before me who had laid in that bed and gone through a similar experience to what I was going through. I got so wrapped up in it that soon I was gasping in pain, telling Walter in the least alarming way I could, I was feeling choked up (meaning any second I'm going to start crying) and found my self thinking "Ok, superstar, what pain threshhold are you going for? You know you want the Epidural Guy to come in so what's up?" I laughed again at that and told Walter what I had been thinking and he went and got the doctor.
Two tries with getting the catheter placed and I was praising the Epidural doctor. My pelvic bones had been hurting me so much for the last month that I couldn't wait to try to turn over without gasping and tears coming to my eyes. I had to hold myself back from rolling back and forth on the bed singing "look at me!!!" because I knew when the epidural wore off I would be one sore cookie.
Before I knew it the nurse was telling me it was time to push and my response was a nervous "really?". I was totally excited to do it, but it seemed so surreal that it was really happening; I was about to have my own baby. It wasn't as fast as I thought it was going to be, however, and we were joking again about Monty Python and the Meaning of Life and its representation of Birth between contractions and pushing. The nurse thought we were a crack up but kept us on track. Walter was enlisted to help as he was handed my left foot and at his exclamations at how cool the process was as I pushed I agreed to a mirror so I could see too. I am so glad I did because it really was crazy cool. I had to remind myself again and again that that was me and I just couldn't get over how really cool it was.
At one point Padon got stuck and his heart rate plummeted. Nurses came flying in from every where and our nurse discussed getting me on my hands and knees. It didn't happen but I will always kind of wish they did because I am dieing to know how they would have pulled off getting a 200+ pound, dead from the rib cage down, woman from her back to her front and then onto her knees, to keep her there and not collapsing on her side or off the bed. I'm think'n I would have gone off the bed. Instead they got me on my side and Padon's heart rate started to come back up. Minutes later he was born (no episiotomy or foreceps necessary, yes!).
I say the whole process was a piece of cake (not the third trimester part mind you) because it was so something I could handle. It was a fantastic experience for both Walter and I. We were never afraid, the staff was wonderful, we got to watch cable TV (we can't get cable at home so it is a big treat), and we were madly in love with this baby about to be born. No one was rude to us, the pain was tolerable, I got a kick out of how the wall paper matched the hospital gowns and there was absolutely nothing that made the process difficult. It really did seem easy as we moved from one stage to another and the best way I feel I can sum it up is to say it was a "piece of cake!" I will have no horrible and gorey story to tell young women in the future as was told to me and I will have no warnings to give. People probably will just choose not to believe me when I tell them I think it was a piece of cake...
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