Our nurse [Lateshia] whom we LOVED, gave me a super trendy-one size fits most – smock that tied in the back and had the largest breastfeeding flaps I have ever seen. I ended up taping the holes together because it was completely unflattering no matter what way I moved. My mother arrived shortly after we did and we just hung out in the room until about 8:30am when Lateshia came in and had to hook me up to an IV full of Pitocin [ouch]. At 9am my midwife Lindsay arrived and checked me. I was 3 cm dilated and 70% effaced. I was also hooked up to external fetal heartbeat monitors at that time.
Fast forward to 1pm because in between then, I was just having a ton of Braxton Hicks contractions, and nothing much after that. I was able to eat…..er, drink my liquid lunch at that time and then Lindsay came in and offered to break my bag of water. By this point I was 4 cm dilated and 80% effaced, so I obliged. She grabbed her handy water breaking crochet needle and went to town. She broke my water and all hell was released from that point on. I seriously had the largest bag of water in the world it seemed like. I soaked through 3 full sized towels, balled up at my lady parts. I am so happy it did not break in public, because that would have seriously been embarrassing, and definitely not a Kodak moment. It only took one hour from breaking my water until I was getting the epidural. Lateshia mentioned that my demeanor had changed so much in an hour, and that I was no longer a happy camper so the epidural was being ordered immediately. At this point I could no longer focus through my contractions due to the fact that they hurt so badly [this was the only part of the whole day that I cired]. The lady with the big epidural needle entered the room and I was scared to death. I knew I needed to hold still, but it was nearly impossible to be still during contractions. Lateshia helped me breath through them, while the anesthesiologist told me what she was doing word for word, which helped me focus more. Just for the record the only part of the epidural that even remotely hurt was when she numbed the area where the epi was going to be placed. Seriously, the epidural was shear BLISS. I cannot even explain the instant relief I felt. I had feeling in my legs, but no pain anywhere else. I even had an epidural button that I was able to release more medicine as I needed it. I love being in charge.
Fast forward to about 6pm. All was well until then. Lateshia had since gone home [boo] and we had a new nurse. She came in and told us that the baby’s heartbeat was jumping all over the place and was going to need to insert an internal heartbeat monitor on her via my lady bits. They also made me wear oxygen for the remainder of the laboring process in order to help with the heart issues, if I did not comply or the heart rate did not stabilize, a C-section was going to be in my future and I was going to try everything possible to avoid that. I was promptly told to lie on my left side where my butt decided that it was going to fall asleep every 15 minutes. CJ, my brother in law and myself decided to play a game of scrabble in the meantime to pass time, CJ won… like always.
Before I knew it, it was 9pm and Lindsay, my midwife came in and proclaimed that it was time to start pushing [freak out mode set in]. So, I assume the “position” and start pushing. CJ conveniently decides that he needs to pee and asked Lindsay if he had time? She said “yes” and this is not what I wanted to hear, I wanted the baby to be crowning and I had only been pushing for about 10 minutes. Ha. Well, little did I know that it was only going to take about 6 more pushes before our baby girl Vegas Landry was born at 9:38pm on Monday October 19th, 2009.
Here are the stats:
6 pounds / 13 ounces, 20.5 inches long.
14 hours of labor and 24 minutes of pushing.
When people tell you that they cannot explain the feelings that overwhelm you when your child is born, they are not lying. There are simply no words that I can find that would do justice to the way I felt when I saw her for the first time [her eyes were WIDE open when she came out!]. It’s a love that you have never experienced before, and one that no one other than a mother could ever understand. I had so many emotions, but no tears were involved, just sheer amazement at what CJ and I had created. She is perfect in every way.
