The last blog post I wrote prior to his birth was the morning of his due date. On that day, Jonathan and I went to the doctor for my 40 week check-up. His ultrasound was good - my fluid was high again, but Little Man looked great. I was only dilated about 1/2 cm... and I honestly am not sure if I really even was dilated at all, but I think my doc wanted to tell me SOMETHING so I wouldn't start crying! :) She attempted to strip my membranes and warned that I may have some cramping as a result, and set us up for another non-stress test on Monday and told us that they would call later in the day to schedule an induction for the following week.
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| 40 weeks! |
We left the office and went out to breakfast and then headed down to Bristol, PA to the Amish market. We had never been, but I wanted to go, and we figured that sitting and staring at each other all day would be foolish and frustrating, so off we went. We had a great time, bought a sweet gift for Little Man's Easter basket, had some tasty treats (and resisted buying many more), admired the gorgeous furniture, and then continued down to Philadelphia. I hadn't visited my grandmother's grave since last Easter, so we took some flowers and had a nice little drive around. On the way home, we stopped at Friendly's for lunch. (Yum grilled cheese and ice cream!) During lunch, the doctor's office called and scheduled us to come in on Wednesday, April 4 at 10 pm to start the induction process. After we were home, we rested a bit and then took a walk. At the recommendation of some of Jonathan's colleagues, we had some curry for dinner with hopes that it would get things moving for me... it didn't.
We had an awesome day and it was really lovely to spend time just the two of us. It made me realize just how fortunate we are to have spent so much amazing time together over the years. We were definitely frustrated along the way at how long it took to conceive, but in the end, I am so incredibly grateful for the 4+ years of marriage that we had to just be selfish with each other's time and enjoy each other. God's timing is better than mine, that's for sure, and I am in awe of how well he timed Little Man's entrance into our lives.
On Friday morning, I woke up feeling like something was a bit different... but I didn't want to put too much thought into it. I was pretty crampy during the morning, but went for a massage and for a waxing appointment. Once home, I started cleaning the house like crazy. That should have been a sign for me that things were going to get going, but I've been a pretty crazy "nester" all along, so it was no big deal. We decided to take a walk around the lake - did 2.2 miles (two laps), hoping to get things moving... no dice. We went to dinner at Bonefish with our friend, Paul, and I had some bang bang shrimp - again hoping that the spice would get things moving! We came home and watched some TV while I bounced away on the exercise ball. Around 9:30 or so, we went up to bed. Jonathan and I engaged in the other "activity" that my doctor had recommended for natural labor induction, and then fell asleep. Around 11 pm, I woke up feeling strange and very groggy, but quickly realized that something was up. I felt a "gush" and realized that it was my water likely breaking. Pretty much every woman that I know who has had their water break on it's own would agree that it is one of the strangest sensations ever. I got up and went to the bathroom to try to figure out if that is, in fact, what was going on. I will spare you the details, but it soon became very clear to me that this was my water breaking. In a scene reminiscent of when I first peed on a stick and got a positive pregnancy test, I went into the bedroom, flipped the light on, and told Jonathan that it was "go time".
Sidenote: there are so many different ideas as to how to get labor started... and on that Friday, we tried MANY of them... walking, drinking red raspberry leaf tea, spicy food, sex, massage, acupressure points, bouncing on the exercise ball... so I really cannot say that any of them necessarily worked or did not work... at this point I would have to say that when baby decides it's time, then it is time.
We called the doctor's office, as per our instructions, and waited for the on call doctor to call back. In the meantime, Jonathan loaded the car up and I paid bills online (what? I wanted to be covered with anything that was due while we'd be in the hospital!). I called my mom and let her know what was going on and we decided that my parents would start driving out first thing in the morning. I called Jonathan's sister, Emily, and let her know what was going on - she alerted his parents (they were all together). I texted my friend, Amy, and she gave me the sage advice to eat something before leaving for the hospital. Jonathan made me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and I bounced on the exercise ball while we waited for the doctor to call back. I had started to have contractions during this time, but they weren't particularly regular... I was timing them using an app on my iPhone. After about an hour, we called the doctor back. It turns out the message was never delivered (gotta love answering services...). This time they put Jonathan straight through to the OB on call and she told us to go ahead and come in. Of course, we knew that going in is what we would have to do, but the "rules" were that you had to call first and wait to hear from the doc. At this point, we headed in to the hospital. It was rainy and gross out. I joked with Jonathan that when I tell Nate about the night he was born, I would start with "It was a dark and stormy night..."
We got to the hospital around 12:30 AM and quickly checked in (hooray pre-registration) and my nurse came out and took us to our room (delivery room #3). I got into my hospital gown and waited to be checked. They had to confirm that my water had, in fact, broken. There was no doubt, but I guess it was hospital policy. I was only about a centimeter dilated, I don't remember at all how effaced I was (50% 70%? Maybe?), and he was at -3 station. In other words, we had a long way to go.
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| Last belly pic! |
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| Excited Daddy-to-be! |
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| All my bracelets (and Nate's pinned to mine!) |
Around 2 AM, they started an IV of fluids to keep me hydrated and such. They also had me hooked up to the monitors to watch Little Man's heart rate as well as my contractions. As time went on, my contractions were not particularly regular, but they were rather painful. My back was in so much pain and I realized that I had some back labor going on. I'm not entirely sure why as Little Man was not in the position to cause back labor, my best (completely non-educated medical) guess is that perhaps it was because I had an anterior placenta, so I didn't have that that cushioning the back? I don't know. Jonathan started feeding me ice chips because I was so thirsty - who knew that ice could be so delicious?! The pain was getting more intense... I tried sitting, I tried walking, I tried lying down, and nothing was making the back labor feel any better... the worst part was that after a contraction was over, the back pain lingered, so I wasn't getting any break even though the contractions weren't completely regular. So, when they offered me some pain medication around 3:45 AM, I accepted. Pain meds weren't really part of the "plan", but I was barely dilated and knew that I needed to be able to rest a bit if I was going to make it through.
Unfortunately, the IV pain meds just made me loopy and didn't take too much edge off the pain... or if they DID take the edge off the pain, then I would hate to have known what they would have felt like without the meds! I tried to sleep and it didn't work. I was so exhausted. I had only slept about an hour before my water broke, and I ran around like a crazy lady all day on Friday after only getting a few hours of sleep on Thursday night. They checked me sometime between 6 and 7 AM and I was only 1.5 cm dilated! What?! I think I was so tense from the pain that I wasn't allowing my body to do it's job and dilate. So, even though I had said all along that I'd like to avoid it if at all possible, around 7 AM I asked for the epidural. I knew that I needed to be able to get some rest in order to get through labor, and clearly my body was not doing what it needed to naturally, so Jonathan and I discussed it and decided that it would be best to get it.
I am so glad that I did.
They checked me shortly after the epidural was placed (which really was not bad at all! Getting the foley catheter placed was worse in my opinion), and I had dilated to 3 cm. Little Man was still at -3 station. At this point, I was able to rest a bit and so was Jonathan. This whole time, we had Jonathan's phone hooked up to the television in the room and had been watching season one of "How I Met Your Mother"... a good distraction for both of us.
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| The monitor that was tracking my contractions as well as Little Man's heart rate |
My favorite OB was the one on call for the entire weekend, so she arrived when the 7 AM shift change happened. That definitely made me very happy. Late morning or early afternoon (I'm really not sure at this point, things were pretty fuzzy), they checked me again and I had stalled at 3 cm, but had become more effaced I think... so we added Pitocin. I knew that this was likely going to happen after the epidural was placed, so I had already mentally prepared myself and was totally okay with it. My body just wasn't contracting regularly on it's own.
A short while after starting the Pitocin, I had dilated from 3 cm to 7 cm... so we thought things were really moving quickly! My nurse started to get things prepped in the room for delivery, and we got excited. My OB ended up having to go into surgery with another patient, so they decided to turn the Pitocin off so I wouldn't go too quickly and she would miss it! Of course, my body decided it didn't want to contract regularly again so I stalled at 7.
This is when things started to get a little scary, if I'm being honest. While my OB was in surgery, another OB came in and they said that Little Man was having some significant decels (decelerations in heart rate) during my contractions. Apparently after having high fluid for so long in the pregnancy, I had lost enough since my water broke that they now needed to give me MORE fluid so he would not be in distress... so they started an amnio infusion, basically putting fluid back into the uterus so he had something to hang out in. They also gave me some O2 to help with his heart rate.
My parents and Emily made it to the hospital and we let them come up for quick visits. A little while later, my OB came out of surgery and came by to see me... this was late afternoon... maybe 5 pm or so? Maybe a bit later. She had been checking out the monitors and his decels were still pretty pronounced. She guessed that Little Man had his cord wrapped around... something. She said it definitely wasn't his neck because of the way he was responding to the contractions, but thought it could be his arm or leg or something. We started talking about doing a c-section which scared the crap out of me. Jonathan was amazing and comforting and made me feel much better about it if that is what needed to be done... our priority was getting Nate here safely.
My OB decided that she wanted me to be rolled all the way onto my side in an effort to let him detangle himself. She said that if he was tolerating that well, then she would start the pitocin again very slowly to try to get me to finish dilating. Over the next 3-4 hours, we did this and by about 10 pm, I was fully dilated and effaced... but he was still at -2 station. Jonathan and I had been joking that Little Man was waiting for the Devils to clinch a spot in the playoffs before he would come join us, so we listened to the Devils game on the radio - they won the game and clinched, and a few minutes later we found out I was dilated to 10! Kid is already a hockey fan! At this point, they topped off my epidural (for the third time that day - remember, I had had it in since 7 am!) and told me to nap and to call the nurse if I felt like it was going to be time to push. Jonathan and I both dozed off as we listened to the playlist I had made on the iPod with NCAA basketball on mute on the TV (Buckeyes managed to choke and lose in the last two minutes of the game - boo!).
I woke up at about 11 to "Party Rock Anthem" on the iPod. At this point I wasn't sure if I was feeling the need to push or not, but I called the nurse anyway. If he wasn't making his way down, then they were going to need to do a c-section since my water had already been broken for 24 hours and we were at higher risk for infection, and I was just ready to have a decision made. She came and checked me and to my surprise and delight, he was ready to go! So we got things ready, I woke Jonathan up, and at about 11:20 or so we started pushing... I had Jonathan take the clock off the wall because I really didn't want to be timing what was going on... not to mention the fact that the clock had been wrong all day and it was driving me CRAZY!
Pushing came fairly naturally to me and he was crowning after the first set of pushes. I did a few sets of pushes and then my nurse (the third one I had had that day - all three were awesome) called the OB to come on in and get things ready for baby. I still wasn't positive that I'd be able to deliver vaginally - I was worried that the c-section was still on the table (and it kind of was because we weren't sure about the cord). Transition hit and I was shaking like crazy - I hated the feeling! After some sets of pushes, I felt fine and totally in control, and after others I felt like I couldn't possibly do it anymore and I was hopeless - thank God for Jonathan and the amazing comfort that he provided. During one of these hopeless times, when Jonathan really got to the point where he didn't know what to say, the best thing possible happened. The song, "Sexy and I Know It" by LMFAO came on the iPod... I started laughing hysterically and it totally relaxed both of us. Right after that the OB came in and we really got the party started. I remember that the Harry Chapin song "30,000 Pounds of Bananas" came on next, followed by Billy Joel's "Pressure" (which Jonathan declared was rather fitting), then Adele's "Rolling in Deep"(which my OB started rocking out and singing along to as she was delivering Nate!). The music ended up being very important to me as it gave me something else to focus on and somewhere else to go while waiting between pushes.
I think it was the second or third set of pushes that I did with my OB present that she had me give one extra push in the set (4 instead of 3), and all of a sudden she was talking to someone - OUR SON! He was halfway out! She coached me through getting him the rest of the way out and just like that, he was born! We were parents!!! I kept saying over and over "He's here? He's really here?" 12:03 AM on April 1, 2012, Nathaniel Thomas Fencik made his debut. His cord was wrapped around his shoulder - the source of our distress throughout the afternoon and evening.
Of course, Nate had his own agenda and decided he wanted to hold his breath for as long as he could upon entering the world. This meant that they couldn't hand him right to me, but had to take him over to the little baby station in the room and suction him and get him to cry. Meanwhile, my OB delivered the placenta (which I was strangely interested in, so she showed me and described each part of it - I was fascinated!) Nathaniel eventually started to cry for us and "pinked up" so they finished cleaning him up, weighed him (7 lbs, 1 oz), and then Jonathan brought him to me. Shortly after this, the song that Jonathan and I danced to as our wedding song came on the iPod - HelloGoodbye's "Oh, It is Love". It was a perfect moment.
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| 7 lbs, 1 oz |
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| Fresh from the oven! |
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| Daddy and Nate! (picture taken by me from the hospital bed!) |
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| Mommy meeting her son |
I had the chance to try breastfeeding, and then Jonathan went down to get our families so they could come up and meet Nate. Jonathan then got to go with Nate to the newborn nursery for his first bath and all of his measurements, and the rest of the family helped get all my stuff packed up and ready to go for me to be transferred to my postpartum room. Jonathan came back and off we went to the room we'd be in for the next few days. Our family left (it was 2:30 or 3:00 AM) and Jonathan and I ate the food that had been left in the room for us (I was STARVING). I had a weird allergic reaction to the adhesive holding my IV in, so the nurses had to retape me with cloth tape. Once Nate came to us from the newborn nursery, we breastfed again and then we all went to sleep... well, I tried to sleep - I was too excited! My boys both slept and I tried to process everything that had happened over the last 28 or so hours. Finally, after years of trying, months of infertility treatments, and what felt like the longest pregnancy ever (let's face it, it started with the start of the IVF cycle - a full month and a half before the embryo transfer even happened!), I was finally a mother. My son was here with us, healthy and safe, and all was right with the world.
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| Me & my boy! |
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| Nate and Grandma |
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| Nate and Grams |
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| Nate and Grandpa |
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| Nate and Dedo |
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| Nate and Auntie Em |
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| Daddy and Nate in the newborn nursery |
So, looking back, did our birth story go at all the way I had hoped or planned? Not even close. Do I regret a minute of it? Not at all. It may not have been all natural, it may not have been perfect, it may not have been the "plan", but it is OUR birth story - mine, Jonathan's, and Nathaniel's, and that makes it beautiful.
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| Our family |
It WAS natural...because it was the journey you three were meant to have. Blessings....
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