Labo(u)r synopsis

"Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil?"

A short write-up of how labor went, for those who are curious:

Contractions started at 10am Saturday (August 2). We were due to go to a friend's baby shower, but thought we'd better stick around home just in case. Irregular contractions continued during the day and night. I was able to get a few hours' sleep but my waters broke at 4:30am, and when we called the hospital, they asked us to come in. I was 2cm dilated, so they sent me back home and said to come back in when the contractions were more regular.

Thus commenced an excited-but-grumpy rest of Sunday spent bouncing on a ridiculous purple birthing ball in the living room and huffing my way through painful contractions while Bruno read to me. Got maybe 2 hours sleep total that night, for a total of about 4 hours slept between Saturday and Sunday.

Monday midmorning I had a midwife appointment. She sent me into the hospital's assessment unit to monitor blood pressure, but when I got there and they saw I was in active labor, they booked me for an induction that night since my bp was fluctuating/high. So, I staggered away, contracting and sleepy, being watched apprehensively by about 5 different pregnant women who must have felt as if they were tied to a pair of tracks with a distant freight train approaching....

At home, I tried to eat, but couldn't get much down. Contractions varied between every 3-4 minutes and every 10-12 minutes. We went to the hospital an hour early, but it was too busy a night to induce right away. So I spent 7pm-9pm in a wheelchair and a waiting room having contractions, then 9pm to 9am in a private room having more contractions.

By this time the baby had moved back-to-back, so the contractions had turned from frontal pain to excruciating lower back agony. To make matters worse, I had no idea how to use the laughing gas thing. I'd take 2-3 puffs, which weren't nearly enough.

They had to bring some expert person in to stick me with an IV because my veins are apparently utterly horrible. Actually, both hands still have faint bruises on them from the jabbing, and it's been over a week since the labor.

After 2 penicillin drips, I was collected around 9am and brought to another room. I had been able to snatch maybe an hour's worth of sleep in between contractions, but it was fragmented. After so long, I wasn't able to relax into the contractions, so my muscles kept seizing up, especially in my thighs/back region.

Thankfully, they gave me an epidural around 10-10:30. I think I told the person who administered it that I loved her. I don't know, I was pretty out of it. It was at this rather anticlimatic point that I finally got shown how to properly use laughing gas (gas and air/entonox, they call it here).

"Take the tube and breathe in and out throughout the entire contraction."

Oh. Right.

Anyhow, the epidural worked, and apart from a bout of uncontrollable shivering/shaking, I was actually able to doze somewhat. They put a monitor on the baby's skull in order to keep track of his heartbeat. If it had shown distress, they would have done an emergency c-sec.

Fortunately, I progressed faster than they thought I would, and by 5:30pm or so I was 10cm dilated and ready to push. He came out after 40 minutes and flopped onto the bed. His first sign of life was to curl up slowly, his fingers turning into fists, his feet crunching inward. Then he let out a bellow of utter rage and unloaded, erm, both ends, all over the doctors who rushed in. Quote from one of the attending doctors was: "Don't be surprised if he doesn't have to go for another day or two, because that was a lot."

After all that, I spent the night on the ward and went home 24 hours later. I didn't get much sleep there, either, but hey, what can you do?

That's all for now.