Finally -- Liam's birth story!

After an unusually restless night of sleep (I've been sleeping like a champ throughout my whole third trimester), I woke up at 5 am Saturday morning to feed the cats. When I stood up, my water broke. The only problem was I didn't know if was my water breaking. It wasn't a huge gush like I expected, and being only 38 weeks and one day pregnant, I knew it could be a number of things. I lay back down to relax and began having what I could tell were contractions – they were painful and felt nothing like the BH contractions I'd been having for the past few weeks. But they weren't too bad and they didn't seem to be coming regularly, so I decided to wait until Brad woke up to do anything.

I've been following the blog His Boys Can Swim for the past few months and kept thinking about Jane's “false labor” experience. I don't know why, but I was CONVINCED I was in false labor. I just didn't think there was any way he could be coming this early. Brad had to be at work at 6:30 and when he came down the stairs I greeted him with: “I might be in labor. But please go to work.” (Nice way to start the morning, eh?) He was supposed to go to Detroit for a video shoot with his boss, and it would have been impossible to find someone to replace him on such short notice. I was so afraid of having him bail on his video shoot if this was a false alarm. He ended up leaving, but told me to call immediately if I changed my mind.

As soon as Brad left, I called my mom and asked her to come over and sit with me “just in case.” About 30 seconds before she got to the house, the door opened and in walked Brad! As soon as he told his boss what was going on, he got sent home immediately – false alarm or not – thank goodness. ;) I spent the next few hours “false laboring” on the couch with Brad and my mom. The contractions got a little more painful, but they still weren't coming with any regularity. I called Labor & Delivery and the triage nurse told me I could come in if I wanted peace of mind, but it didn't sound like this was the real thing.

The second I hung up, I suddenly felt a HUGE gush. I still wasn't sure if it was amniotic fluid, but there was no question that something really weird was going on and my instinct kicked in and said, “GO.” My mom left, and Brad loaded up the car with a few necessities (toiletries, pillows, baby car seat, etc.) On the ride to the hospital, my contractions actually slowed down, but the gushing continued. I was about 75% sure I was getting sent home.

We got there and they sent us to a triage room, where I undressed and waited for the nurse. She came in to check me and did a quick test to determine whether I was leaking amniotic fluid. To my complete and utter shock, the test came out positive. “What does that mean?” I asked her. “It means you're not leaving this hospital until have your baby!” she said. I still couldn't believe it! Because my water had broken, though, they didn't check me to see if I was dilated because of the risk of infection, so I was told I'd be left to just labor on my own for as long as possible. At this point I was having contractions about 4-5 minutes apart, but they were very manageable.

Brad helped me pack up and we moved into our private room. The room was REALLY nice – fridge, TV, wireless internet, private bathroom with a shower, etc. I told our nurse I wanted to be able to get up and walk around for as long as possible, so she held off on starting an IV and didn't hook me up to the monitors. Instead, she came in about every 30 minutes to check the baby's heartrate during a contraction (as opposed to having me hooked up to the heartrate monitor constantly). As the contractions began to get stronger and longer, she showed me what she called her “bag of tricks” to get through them. I spent the next 5 or 6 hours walking the halls, sitting on an exercise ball, squatting, having Brad press on my back and hips, etc. All of the “tricks” worked for awhile, but around 7 pm (14 hours of labor later) I was starting to come unraveled. I was exhausted, tense and terrified and it made the contractions feel worse. Brad was really amazing and did everything he could to stay calm and get me through each one, but it wasn't going well.

I really, really did NOT want an epidural. Not because I thought I'd get some sort of medal for having a drug-free birth, but because, honestly, the thought of an epidural scared me too much. I thought it would completely numb me from the waist down and that was just terrifying. But the pain had gotten so bad I didn't think I had a choice. The resident came in and checked me finally, and I was 5 cm dilated and 80% effaced, so I was past the point where epidurals generally slow down labor. So I gave in and decided to do it.

Long story short...the epidural was WONDERFUL. Getting it was really scary, but I would do it again in a second. It didn't numb me from the waist down. I still had good control of my legs and could still feel the contractions, but they didn't hurt anymore. My mood improved instantly, and I even dozed off for 30 minutes or so. I wasn't afraid anymore and was able to be present in the moment rather than scared of what was to come. Brad and I talked, laughed and watched part of Beetlejuice on TV. At 11 pm the resident checked me and I was already at 10 cm! It wasn't quite time to push yet, though, because he said there was still a bit of cervix left, so he left the room and said he'd be back in about 45 minutes.

Brad and I knew these were the last moments of our lives as a childless couple. We turned off the TV and talked about our fear and excitement and said our “I love yous” before the intense part of labor started. It was so amazing to have him there with me and I couldn't have done it without him.

I started feeling some intense pressure, so I paged the nurse. She came back with the resident and a med student, and the five of us spent the next two and a half hours in the room while I pushed. I won't get into the gory details, but pushing was a fairly traumatic experience for me. It took an hour and a half before I was making any progress at all, and there was hushed talk of a C-section (which I found out the next day). They turned down my epidural so I could push more effectively, but nothing seemed to work. The pain wasn't actually that bad, but I felt this intense sense of frustration – I was screaming, crying, yelling at Brad, you name it, I said it. Finally, after nearly three hours, the baby started crowning and they paged the attending. At this point I just wanted this baby OUT, so when they told me to wait, I completely freaked out and started screaming at them to hurry up – I think they get this a lot. When the doctor showed up in the room, the bright lights came on, I gave two or three final pushes and out came his head, followed by the rest of his body.

They threw him up on my chest immediately but I was so dazed and exhausted that the thought “this is my baby” didn't really register, I just remember that he was kind of purplish-blue and slippery and wasn't crying. He was breathing and whimpering, but no real cries. They swept him away to clean him up and gave us the bad news that he had to go to NICU to make sure his lungs were OK (due to the lack of crying). But first they wrapped him up and gave him to Brad. When I looked up at Brad, he was holding our son and had tears streaming down his face. I will never forget that moment as long as I live. That was when we officially named him Liam Robert (we'd been planning on it, but wanted to make sure he actually looked like a Liam). Then the doctors put him back in the bassinet and took him away.

Honestly, the thought of my baby going to NICU didn't upset me that much in my dazed mental state – I felt like I was dreaming, and all I could think about was getting some water and food (I hadn't eaten anything in over 24 hours). While I was eating, a resident came in to tell us that Liam was fine, and they'd bring him back to us within an hour or two. I tried to get some rest, but that was when chaos ensued – the sink in our bathroom overflowed, so we had to move into a new room immediately, and by the time we got settled, a nurse brought him back to us. No longer on the verge of passing out, that was when I really looked at him for the first time and completely fell in love!

That's not where the story ends – it's where it starts. Brad and I are so happy to be parents and we can't wait to spend the rest of our lives with this little guy.