I am finally getting around to posting something current on this blog...I've gotten all the old emails posted and in doing that I realized that I haven't emailed anything about this pregnancy since the last ultrasound. In retrospect, I think that was mostly because I was still holding my breath. Really, I continued to hold my breath right up until the first evening that Sam was here. I woke up the morning after he was born and felt like a different person. I calmer person. And a much happier person. :)
So here's the labor story...
I started having contractions Wednesday night - about every 8-9 minutes. They started while Mom and I were at the movies...and after about 45 minutes of timing contractions Mom insisted that we leave and I certainly didn't object. The movie was cute but had become predictable anyways, so neither of us were upset about foregoing the ending. A few hours of contractions later, they began to slow down and were less intense. The doc on call had us go into the family center to be checked, so we did around midnight, and discovered that I wasn't in labor at all :( They gave me a sleeping pill and whispered sweet nothings about this 'false' labor possibly progressing while I was relaxed and sleeping. No such luck.
The contractions continued through the next day and night (with no sleeping pill Thursday night, so no real sleep to speak of) and Friday morning at my regular appointment, we discovered that I was 1.5 cm dilated! Finally! She stripped my membranes in an effort to speed things up, and left us with the hope that we'd deliver sometime before Monday. (And thankfully she was the doc on call all weekend!) SO, Mom and Jenna and I went shopping. Jenna and Austin were slated to have engagement pictures made and she needed outfits...and we made it back home for family dinner with Dave and Denise around 6pm. Ten minutes later, my contractions had jumped to every 3.5 minutes and were so intense that I was reduced to squatting in the floor. Dave and Mom were being funny and plotting the home birth...and Denise was following me around the kitchen as I struggled to get comfortable. I heard her say 'Hey, Shelly's on the floor over here'. Everyone was so busy getting excited about the baby and labor that they completely forgot to keep up with me... Until Mom realized that it was a great photo op...
And I actually said, 'Its not time to go...my contractions aren't 5 minutes apart and there's no blood...' Obviously I wasn't thinking clearly :) But see how excited everyone else was? I was already in enough pain that excitement was most definitely not what I was feeling.
We arrived at the hospital around 7pm - I called Daddy (soon to be Papaw) and sent a text to Angela en route that just said 'Hospital'. It was Friday night, which is usually 'family dinner' night at the Greene's. I had made an appearance earlier and both Ang and Lis commented after I left that I very well could be in labor all weekend... thank goodness that wasn't the case.
I walked into the Family Center at the most awesomest Exeter Hospital to find Dr. Pruna standing at the nurses station (we had also called the hospital and paged the doctor) and she said (in her Romanian accent) 'Michelle, are you in labor?' to which I exhaustively replied 'Yes'. She asked me 'are you sure?' and cracked a smile, and I said 'yes' and she said 'how do you know' and I grunted and said 'because it hurts'. She laughed and a nurse took me directly to my room. At the family center at Exeter Hospital you get one room for labor, delivery, and postpartum care. Its amazing. No moving. And you also get one nurse assigned to you for each 12 hour shift...one nurse, one laboring Mom. Its AWESOME. My first nurse (7p-7a) was Katie (who now feels like part of the family).
I walked into the Family Center at the most awesomest Exeter Hospital to find Dr. Pruna standing at the nurses station (we had also called the hospital and paged the doctor) and she said (in her Romanian accent) 'Michelle, are you in labor?' to which I exhaustively replied 'Yes'. She asked me 'are you sure?' and cracked a smile, and I said 'yes' and she said 'how do you know' and I grunted and said 'because it hurts'. She laughed and a nurse took me directly to my room. At the family center at Exeter Hospital you get one room for labor, delivery, and postpartum care. Its amazing. No moving. And you also get one nurse assigned to you for each 12 hour shift...one nurse, one laboring Mom. Its AWESOME. My first nurse (7p-7a) was Katie (who now feels like part of the family).
We got settled in and Dr. Pruna came in to check the progress of my labor. 2 cm! That's ALL!
Dr. Pruna told me that she was going to prescribe a nonnarcotic medication for pain to take the edge off my contractions and hopefully allow me to get some sleep. She said that I would likely labor all night and then she'd break my water in the morning (around 7am - Katie said after Dr. Pruna left that there was no way were not having this baby until 7am...she said that we'd deliver before her shift was over and that Dr. Pruna was living in a fantasy world where she wanted to get a full night's sleep). I put up no fight, even though I had intended to not take any medications...my contractions were intense and coming quickly enough that I knew I would be junk by morning if I didn't get some relaxation and sleep. Plus, I hadn't really slept the night before so I was already exhausted. Contractions continued as they were until the 2nd round of medication, after which got noticeably stronger likely because my body relaxed. Katie kept telling me that labor would progress painfully slow if I remained as tired and tense as I was...so I put up no fight when Dr. Pruna ordered the 2nd dose. We have most of labor on video, in about 15 minute increments. Before the 2nd dose, I was breathing heavily through contractions, and after I moaned through them. Funny how the 'pain medicine' made contractions more painful. I was pretty uncomfortable. Calm, and strong, but in a bit of pain. I can't even imagine how uncomfortable I would have been without the edge taken off...
I felt like the luckiest gal in the whole wide world... I had my husband, my Mom, my sister, my brother-in-law-to-be, and my bestest friend all with me, helping me labor and encouraging and comforting me. My mother-in-law was there for a while and my Dad, Brother, and Grandpa were a phone call away. The most important people in my life were with me at my most important moments. Angela rubbed my feet, back, hands and talked softly and sweetly to me, keeping me calm. And Jenna turned out to be the BEST labor coach. Ever.
My recollection of time is a bit fuzzy, but I pretty much labored all night. I had one dose of Stadol at around 5cm, which was probably around midnight. After that, I slept between contractions and began to dilate a little faster. By 3am I was in transition (8cm) and Katie paged Dr. Pruna, who came in at 4:30 (when I was asking to push) and told me that I was mostly 10cm dilated but incompletely on one side, and couldn't push for another half hour. I remember thinking 'Ok. 30 minutes. I can do that'...haha! I fell asleep, had a wicked strong contraction, begged to push, and then looked at the clock - it was 4:35!!! I yelled out, 'It's ONLY been 5 minutes??' to which Dave belted out 'someone get that clock OFF the wall'. I think Mom scrambled to pull the clock down...
The next fifteen minutes were gruesome, I really felt like I needed to push but tried hard not to until I literally threw up - Dr. Pruna was walking in at that moment and I heard her say 'Good. Now you can push'. And for the next 50 minutes I pushed. Dave was by my side most of the time, and Jenna and Mom alternately. Especially toward the end, I was holding Dave's hand on one side and Jenna's on the the other, and Jenna coached me right through the most pain I have ever felt. They weren't kidding when they said that there's nothing that can prepare you for the pain of labor... Honestly though, I never got scared. Even when Mom and Jenna stood back pale-faced and stunned, I just gave them a thumbs-up...because I trust my God and I trust my OB. I believed that everything was going to be ok, even if it ended with a c-section. I knew that in a short time I would be holding my son.
He was born at 5:43 am on October 30th. I felt like I screamed through the entire delivery, but everyone has assured me that I was pretty pleasant - I even said please when I asked for things, and apologized when I snapped at people! He had his cord wrapped around his little body three times, but otherwise he was perfectly healthy and normal. He was placed right onto my chest, and he immediately picked his head up and looked up at me, and stopped crying. And all I could think was 'It's you! The whole time its been you!'
20 inches. 7 pounds, 4 ounces. My sweet perfect Samuel Paul.
My recollection of time is a bit fuzzy, but I pretty much labored all night. I had one dose of Stadol at around 5cm, which was probably around midnight. After that, I slept between contractions and began to dilate a little faster. By 3am I was in transition (8cm) and Katie paged Dr. Pruna, who came in at 4:30 (when I was asking to push) and told me that I was mostly 10cm dilated but incompletely on one side, and couldn't push for another half hour. I remember thinking 'Ok. 30 minutes. I can do that'...haha! I fell asleep, had a wicked strong contraction, begged to push, and then looked at the clock - it was 4:35!!! I yelled out, 'It's ONLY been 5 minutes??' to which Dave belted out 'someone get that clock OFF the wall'. I think Mom scrambled to pull the clock down...
The next fifteen minutes were gruesome, I really felt like I needed to push but tried hard not to until I literally threw up - Dr. Pruna was walking in at that moment and I heard her say 'Good. Now you can push'. And for the next 50 minutes I pushed. Dave was by my side most of the time, and Jenna and Mom alternately. Especially toward the end, I was holding Dave's hand on one side and Jenna's on the the other, and Jenna coached me right through the most pain I have ever felt. They weren't kidding when they said that there's nothing that can prepare you for the pain of labor... Honestly though, I never got scared. Even when Mom and Jenna stood back pale-faced and stunned, I just gave them a thumbs-up...because I trust my God and I trust my OB. I believed that everything was going to be ok, even if it ended with a c-section. I knew that in a short time I would be holding my son.
He was born at 5:43 am on October 30th. I felt like I screamed through the entire delivery, but everyone has assured me that I was pretty pleasant - I even said please when I asked for things, and apologized when I snapped at people! He had his cord wrapped around his little body three times, but otherwise he was perfectly healthy and normal. He was placed right onto my chest, and he immediately picked his head up and looked up at me, and stopped crying. And all I could think was 'It's you! The whole time its been you!'
20 inches. 7 pounds, 4 ounces. My sweet perfect Samuel Paul.
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