If you haven’t read part one, I suggest you go to the previous blog entry and start there. Where we left off, my husband, mom, and I had arrived at the hospital and found out I was already 5.5cm dilated…

The nurse who checked me in asked me what my plans were for pain management. Here’s where I wish I had been better prepared or had a doula, but it’s hard to know when you’re experiencing birth for the first time…

I hadn’t written a formal “birth plan” and my plan in my head was simple: cope with the pain as well as I could on my own, try to avoid interventions, but ultimately, go for a healthy baby and leave the door open to an epidural if I felt like I needed one.

As I mentioned previously, my labor had not ramped up gently. My contractions were incredibly painful from the start, and there wasn’t really much of a break in between them. I also was feeling a lot of the pain in my back. I found out later that this is known as “back labor” and often makes for more intense contractions that seem like they’re on top of each other. I know from my doula training that this is due to baby’s position and there are movements and positions that can be attempted to try to move baby, as well as counter-pressure coping strategies for the pain, but I wasn’t aware of these at the time.

Knowing that I wasn’t in the dreaded “transition stage” yet (7-10cm), so the pain would be intensifying, I inquired about my epidural options. The nurse told me she would send an anesthesiologist in to discuss my options and place an epidural when I was in the delivery room.

In my childbirth education classes, there was something called a “walking epidural” mentioned by the doula that was teaching the class as an option that was a lighter form of epidural, which might allow for movement and greater control of my muscles during labor. I asked about this option, but was pushed away from it by the anesthesiologist. “It doesn’t really do much for most people and they end up requesting a full epidural,” he said. I was in pain and out of my element, so I listened to him and opted for the regular epidural.

The placement of the epidural wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be. My husband and mom had to leave the room while it was placed, but the nurse who stayed to help was exactly who I needed in that moment. She was very motherly, but direct and her presence was grounding. Because my contractions were fairly frequent, I had to weather one or two during the epidural placement. I sat on the edge of the bed, and the nurse stood in front of me, basically hugging me to keep me in the right position for the anesthesiologist to place the epidural. It didn’t hurt nearly as much as I thought it would, probably because I was already in pain. It was just a small sting and then within seconds I started to feel relief from the contractions as the numbing effect took hold.

I didn’t feel the contractions at all after that. I was able to relax and rest a little bit, though I didn’t really fall asleep. I just sat and relaxed with my mom and Sam for a few hours. Since I was now numb from the waist down, the nurses would help to move me around and occasionally adjust my position to help labor baby down and get him in a good position. I had a button I could press to increase the amount of pain medicine being given by the epidural, but I never pressed it because I never felt pain during this stage.

Meanwhile, my in-laws, dad, and sister arrived. They came back to support me. I was lucky that my hospital allowed this. I had attended my sister-in-law’s first birth the year before and had loved the experience. Being part of her birth began my journey into being a “birth nerd” and inspired me to have a somewhat large team of family for my own birth. I know it’s not for everyone, but for me, especially during the pushing stage, it was comforting to look up and see the faces of so many people that I loved supporting and encouraging me.

After a few hours, I started to feel some pressure, but it wasn’t easy to feel with the epidural. It definitely wasn’t as intense as everyone made it seem like it should be, but I asked to be checked to see how things were going. It turns out I was 10cm! The nurses told me I could wait until I felt more pressure or start pushing. I waited a little while to see if the feeling of pressure increased, but was impatient. With the epidural, I honestly just felt numb. Maybe baby would have eventually labored down a bit more on his own, maybe he wouldn’t have, but after a bit I said I wanted to try pushing.

This is where things went south for me. Not in a major way—everything turned out fine. But the experience of being a first-time mother attempting to push with an epidural that made it hard to control my muscles made for a very frustrating, exhausting, and slow experience. The nurses helped me “practice push,” by checking to see if I moved the baby at all while pushing. This was my first indication that just because I couldn’t feel the contractions, it didn’t mean everything was numb… It was very uncomfortable for the nurse to have her fingers inside me while I pushed.

I continued to push every time a contraction would happen, doing the classic “push for 10 seconds” during the contraction while my team supported my legs, which they held up, the way they would be if I were in stirrups. I felt like I was exerting a ton of effort and getting no traction. At some point during as I was pushing, baby boy started having some concerning heart rate patterns during pushing and contractions, so they put an oxygen mask on me and had me take a break. Luckily, his heart rate tracings improved during this break, but this was one of the scariest moments for me. I felt helpless. Like my pushing was ineffective and I shouldn’t have gotten the epidural and now it was leading to stress for my baby.

After the recovery period and once the nurses felt better about how baby was doing, I started up with pushing again. While I still felt no sense of control over what I was doing, I eventually started getting some exciting encouragement from my team: “We can see his head!”

This is around the time that the doctor came in, so I knew things were getting close. But I was dealing with a new problem in my mind: the ring of fire. You may have heard of it—it’s the aptly named incredibly painful stage of the baby’s head trying to exit your vagina. I thought I would have escaped this pain because of the epidural, but nope! It was the worst pain I have ever felt. The doctor was doing perineal massage to try to help my skin stretch to accomodate baby’s head, but this only added to my agony.

After what seemed like forever feeling this intense pain, it suddenly dawned on me—the only way out was through. I knew it would hurt, but it would be over. After that realization, I gathered myself up and pushed as hard as I could and he was out within a few minutes. The relief was immediate.

The pain was gone and my baby was here, crying and red faced! They placed him on my stomach for me to look at him for a moment, while they waited for the cord to stop pulsing (delayed cord clamping) and for my husband to cut it. Since they had been concerned about his heart rate for a bit while I was pushing, they needed to take him to the isolette to check him out. My husband went over with him. He was weighed and measured: 8lbs, 4oz and 19” long!

I felt thrilled and exhausted and so many other things. My placenta slipped out with very little effort from me and I needed some stitches for some tearing, which took longer than I would have liked, but I was focused on my baby and helping him latch on to nurse for the first time.

Thus recovery began. There’s a lot to say about the rest of my stay in the hospital and my recovery, but I’ll leave it here for now, since this has been such a long post.

I’ll be back with more blog posts soon!