Max's Birth Story: Part Two

They kept saying that I was progressing really slowly, but that the baby would be born anytime... certainly sometime that morning or early afternoon. But that didn't exactly happen...

I literally slept pretty much all day from 8:30 a.m. until about 8:00 p.m. The times I would wake up is when a nurse or doctor would come in to check on me and need to talk to me, when the medicine would start to taper off, and I could feel contractions again, or I wanted to talk to Mr. D. The doctor came in to break my water at about 10:00 a.m - what a weird sensation. Felt like I took the biggest pee ever all over the bed. TMI alert... Throughout the day, I also bled a lot... the nurses kept saying it was bloody show. I guess I thought that bloody show was just a little blood, but if what I saw was truly bloody show, there was a LOT.

We took some pictures of us in the labor room, but because I looked like absolute hell (pale, no makeup, baggy eyes, drained face, etc.), I'll refrain from posting :) I will, however, now that Max is here, post a family pic soon. I have never posted a picture of myself on my blog (for a long time, I intended to remain anonymous), but feel that now is the right time to share pics of our family. Soon to come :)

Anyway, throughout the day, I was checked numerous times, and little progress was being made. Around 11:00, my doctor finally explained it to me: during labor, the cervix is supposed to open (duh). Two things were happening to mine: first, mine was getting harder and thicker (the opposite of effacing). He had seen this before, but wasn't sure why mine was doing this. In addition to my cervix doing the opposite of what it was supposed to, with every contraction, Max's head was bumping up against my cervix instead of gradually applying more and more pressure to open it. This was resulting in my cervix becoming swollen, and poor Max tilting his head and trying other positions for his head to come out. Eventually, his forehead/eyebrows/eyes were the parts of his head that were trying to come first, when it is best when the top of their head comes first.

Throughout the day, I SLOWLY progressed off and on. As long as I was technically progressing (meaning, dilating further), they wanted me to continue laboring. Every time a nurse or doctor would come in, they would say something to the effect of, "Oh, this won't be long... soon, you'll start dilating really quickly and the baby will be here. Just you wait!"

But by 8:00 p.m. - almost 24 hours after my contractions started - we were losing faith that it would really happen naturally. 8:00 is the last time I remember the nurse saying, "you've progressed" - and at that point, I had made it to 5 centimeters. At 9:00, the doctor came in, checked me, and said that I was still at a 5 and that it was time to start talking about a C-section.

I was really sad. I had just spent almost a whole day in painful labor only to result with a C-section. But there was really no choice. Had there been anyway that I could have delivered naturally, I would have held on hope and continued trying, but my cervix was starting to close. Since my water had been broken, we had a few hours to keep trying, but the doctors said that there was really no way that the baby would come out of a closed cervix.

So, I was given until 9:45 to continue laboring to see if any additional progress could be made. And at 9:45, when I was still at a 5 and my cervix was even more swollen, the decision was made by the doctors, Mr. D and me to go ahead with a C-section.

Within 10 minutes, my doctor, about 7 nurses, 2 anesthesiologists and I were in the operating room. I was given numbing medication and prepped for surgery. They kept Mr. D out of the operating room until I was cut open (not exactly sure why - I am sure there's a policy or something about this), and I kept asking for Mr. D. He finally came into the room in scrubs with the biggest, excited grin on his face. Up until this point, I was exhausted and kind of sad about needing a C-section, but seeing Mr. D so, so excited at that moment completely re-energized me.

Mr. D stayed at my head with the camera and talked to me. I remember him saying how he was so proud of me and how excited he was to finally be a Daddy.

And then I heard, "Okay, you're going to feel a little pressure..." (up until this point, I hadn't felt a thing), which just felt like a little rocking motion in my belly. They told Mr. D to stand up and watch them take our baby out of me. I watched him as he looked over the blanket covering my stomach, and smiled as I saw his expression of complete amazement.

And then I heard the most wonderful sound I have ever heard in my life.

Screaming. It was Max. He was alive, I was a Mom, and he was here.

Mr. D gave me a kiss before a nurse quickly rushed him off to the scale to take pictures of Max being weighed. As they were pulling him out of me, I heard a couple nurses say something to the effect of, "Wow, that's a big baby!" and "He's a healthy, big boy!" I thought for sure that meant he was a 12-pounder. But I soon heard the nurse call out: "Time of delivery: 10:12 p.m. Weight: 8 pounds, 5 ounces. Length: 21.6 inches. Baby Boy."

And then the waterworks started. I cried the whole time as I was being stitched back together. Max cried, too, which made me cry harder... complete happiness. I didn't see him for about 5 minutes as the nurses performed the AP.GAR tests, and I kept asking Mr. D questions from across the room: Does he have all 10 fingers and toes? Does he look healthy? Did he open his eyes? Is he breathing?

Finally, Mr. D came over to my head, and the nurse untied my left arm so that I could put my arm around my son. As soon as I put my arm around him, I stopped crying, and so did Max. We locked eyes and just stared at each other. It was probably the most surreal, amazing moment of my life... this little baby was just pulled out of me, and the second we laid eyes on each other, it's like he knew exactly who I was. Mr. D and I confirmed our name choice of Maxwell within about 5 seconds... we always said we wanted to wait to "see what he looked like," but Max was always our first pick. And after looking at him, we both knew this little guy was a Maxwell.

He was a perfect, healthy little baby boy... just what we had prayed for.