I typed up her story in Myspace after she was born but now I don't have it so I'm going to do it again before I have the twins and the two births blend together. I decided before I got pregnant with Emma that I wanted to have babies naturally. I do believe that women are designed to have babies and don't need to be assisted with drugs unless medically necessary. I also wanted to fully experience the birth and know when to push. We went to birthing classes for the Bradley Method which I loved. The classes were great and I felt very prepared to have a natural childbirth. The key to having a natural birth is to stay home as long as possible so that you are not in the hospital very long before it is time to push. This cuts down on the possible medical interventions that can occur. Unfortunately this is not what I was able to do.
Tuesday, October 14th started out normal. I went to work and had a doctor's appointment scheduled for that afternoon. I started to not feel good at school and ended up leaving early. We went to the doctor and I of course peed in the cup and they took my blood pressure. Well, my blood pressure was high and there were proteins in my urine. The nurse said that she had never seen the litmus thing turn that dark before. So, we see the doctor and he tells us to go straight to the hospital for labor and delivery and that I'll have to do some testing. We get to the hospital and they hook me up to a blood pressure cuff that keeps reading my pressure every 30 minutes or so. I'm still not really aware of how serious everything is at this point. One of the doctors comes in and I say something about going back to work and she says that I'm done working. I'm either going to have the baby very soon or I'll be on strict bedrest for the rest of the time. I then called my department head and told her the news which she took pretty well even though I had done nothing to prepare for maternity leave because I thought that I still had time to do it. I spent the night in the hospital hooked up to the blood pressure machine which was torture. They decided in the morning that they were going to do a 24 hour urine analysis and I had to stay in the hospital for it. That day went by fairly normal. The nurses came in every so often and took my blood pressure instead of a machine which was soooo much better. The following morning, Thursday, they analyzed my urine and my protein level was still high. The doctor came in and talked to me and Jay. He said that the level was on the borderline for being induced or being on bedrest. He decided to go ahead and induce me that day and I was not allowed to eat any solids. I waited all day on a bed to open up in delivery which sucked because I was starving. I was finally taken to a L&D room and hooked up to pitocin at 6:00 pm on Thursday. I told the nurses that I did not want an epidural. I was already 2 cm dilated and contracting on my own when they hooked me up so my body was already in the process of getting rid of the baby. I thought that since my body was already working, that things would go fairly quickly and smoothly. They put two monitors on my belly to track my heartbeat and Emma's heartbeat. This made it impossible to get into a comfortable position to deal with my contractions in. I would contract and move and then the nurse would have to come in and readjust the monitors because they had moved off of the heartbeats. During labor a threw up a few times and was not really having an enjoyable time. My water broke at about 4:00 am and my mucus plug came out at the same time. The nurse came and checked my progress around 7 and I was only 5 cm dilated. At that point, I became completely discouraged and emotional. She asked if I wanted an epidural and I said yes. They came in around 8:00 and did it and was crying the whole time and hated it. They put a catheter in at the same time which I was actually happy about because I was tired of using the bedpan. I was able to rest at that point and of course the contractions were easier to deal with. Around 9, I felt the urge to push. I told the nurse and she thought that I was crazy since I had only been 5 cm dilated not long before. I told her no, I'm ready. She checked me and sure enough I was fully dilated. She called the doctor and got the bed ready for me to push. My Mom and Jay were there and Dad and Sandy were on the way. The nurse told me to do a couple of practice pushes and told me how. They said that I needed to have an oxygen mask in between pushes. I'm not sure why. If there was something wrong with my levels or heartbeat they never actually told me. That's probably a good thing because if I had known then I would have freaked out. After a couple of pushes the nurse realized that I was very good at it and told me to stop to wait for the doctor. That sucked to not push when I had the urge. I didn't have to wait long though. Sandy came in at some point and she was by my head giving me the oxygen while Jay and Mom were holding my legs. I only pushed 4 or 5 times once the doctor was there and Emma was out. They held her up and I saw her, and Jay cut the chord. She was then taken across the room to get checked out while I was being stitched up. I had a 2nd degree tear. They brought her back and I finally got to hold her. It was amazing. We were so lucky that she was in such good health even though she was early. She got to stay in the room with us the whole time we were in the hospital and it was a good experience overall.
