On August 17th, around 2:30 a.m. I woke up and realized I was wet… I went to the bathroom with a full bladder, and thought to myself this isn’t enough liquid for my water to have broken, so I went back to bed. Around 5:30 a.m. the same thing happened. I decided to call my doctor to see if I should come in. He told me to take my time, but I should come in to get checked. I got a shower, James and I finished packing everything, and we headed to the hospital to see if we would be staying!!! We arrived around 7:15 a.m.. While waiting for the nurse to check me more liquid started to come out, but not a lot. She checked me with a big q-tip that should turn colors if I was leaking amniotic fluid. It didn’t change colors, so she told me my water wasn’t leaking. Luckily the midwife on call came in and really checked things out. She discovered that I was leaking, but that my water hadn’t fully broken. With this we were put in a room to have our baby!!!!
I let the nurse know that I really wanted to do things natural. So we began. Soon after being placed in a room, the midwife came in and suggested that I start on Pitocin. She told me she wanted to get things moving, so that we wouldn’t be there till midnight. Since my water started leaking at 2:30 a.m. and it was now 9:00 a.m., and nothing was happening, so reluctantly I agreed. After about two hours of being on Pitocin the midwife came back and checked me, finding that I was only 2 centimeters she decided to finish breaking my water and upped the Pitocin.
After that things really started moving. I started getting really hard contractions. It was hard to walk or stand, so I got on my exercise ball and started bouncing and rocking. When a contraction would come on I’d lean forward against James and try to relax my body with breathing. Every couple of hours the nurse would come in and check me. I was dilating, but very slowly, and Isaiah wasn’t really coming down the way he needed too. Nonetheless we kept going. After a few hours the contractions started coming on faster and harder. They were happening every 30 seconds and were lasting 1 minute 30 seconds. I’m not sure how long I went like that, but after 7 hours I started to break. I felt like I didn’t have enough time to recover in between contractions, and started talking to James about getting an epidural. He just kept saying are you sure? In between a contraction, I looked at him very calmly and said I can’t do this much longer.
When we finally decided to get the epidural I felt terrible. I wanted so badly to do this without any help from meds. I started to feel like I had failed, but I knew my body was about to give out. The anesthesiologist came and things started to feel better, but I could still feel the pain. I asked the nurse about it and she said I shouldn’t feel anything. She told me to give it a little more time to see if the pain subsides. She came back in a half hour later and asked me if it had gotten better. I said no it’s getting worse. She let me know that sometimes the epidural doesn’t work properly, and they have to completely redo the procedure. They tried giving me an extra dose of the anesthetic to see if that would help, but it didn’t and before long I could feel the contractions strong and harder than before.
They got another anesthesiologist in to redo the procedure. This time it worked perfectly. As bad as I felt in my head my body was on cloud nine. Once the pain had subsided completely I began to talk to James about how I felt in my heart. I felt like I had failed him and our son. I wasn’t strong enough for them. In his honesty he let me know he wanted to do this natural too, but he was right there with me and saw that I was breaking. He let me know that I hadn’t failed him in any way that he loved me so much and was so excited to meet our son. He helped me get my focus back on having our baby.
After all the chaos of the pain and getting the epidural had past we began to wait… James sat in the chair next to me and whenever I needed he fed me ice chips. Ice chips were the best!!!! Every hour or two the nurse would come in and check me. I went from 6 cm to 8 cm in and hour. Around 10:00 pm they told they expected to have our baby out before midnight. At 11:00 they checked me again and I was still 8 cm. The nurse also checked my vitals and found that I had a temperature. Then the doctor came in to have a chat. He let me know that they were going to give me another hour and if nothing had changed they were going to have to do a C-section. They were concerned about my temperature, and let me know the longer they let me go the more risk there was to baby.
The doctor came back in at 12:00am and nothing had changed. He told us that we needed to go ahead with the procedure and had the nurses prep James and I. I was so devastated. I tried so hard not to cry as the nurse went over things with James and I. After she left I sobbed and James tried to help as much as he could to calm me down.
About a half hour later they look me back to the OR and James went to get his gear on. It felt like he was gone forever. They had me all set up and I started asking if he was coming. They let me know they wouldn’t start without him. I cried the entire time. I started asking myself what I did wrong. Telling myself I could have done things differently and I would have had my baby the way I wanted to. Then another voice began to speak to my heart. Letting me know it was going to be okay. I calmed down inside and started searching in my head for a verse from scripture to cling to. I came to Nehemiah 8:10 …”The Joy of the Lord is my strength”. I told myself that no matter how my child came this was going to be one of the happiest moments in my life. I repeated that verse over and over and over again until James came. He held my hand and the procedure began. He talked to me. Reminding me that we were having a baby. Letting me know how excited he was to meet him and hold him. I told him my verse and what the Lord had spoken to my heart and cried. I was so excited and yet still heart broken.
Then it happened I heard my Isaiah, a little cry from the other side of the curtain. In a split second I went from tears of sadness to tears of the purest joy ever. My heart filled up with so much joy and excitement. I was no longer upset. They checked him out, wrapped him up and handed him to James. He put Isaiah as close as he could to my chest and face. I kissed his cheek and met my little one. What a wonderful moment. 9 months 3 weeks and 5 days and he was finally here!
