LIFE JUST GOT A LITTLE WILDER: BIRTH STORY
Wilder Ray! She is finally here and she is more perfect than I could have ever imagined. She has light brown hair, the brightest blue eyes, a button nose, heart shaped lips, and some big footsies. Speaking of big… I have no clue where all 8 pounds of her were hiding inside of me. An actual quote from the nurse as I was pushing…. “she just keeps coming…she’s so big!” After giving birth, the nurse even re-weighed her because she looked so much bigger than she weighed. Wilder arrived on March 19th, 2019 at 4:20 pm weighing in at 8 pounds 8 ounces and measuring 21 inches long.
The week prior, I had my 39-week checkup appointment where my OB stripped my membranes. I was already 90% effaced and about 2-3 cm dilated. She really thought I would go into spontaneous labor within 24 hours of that appointment… so much so, that she laid out one of those pee pads for me to change back into my clothes and sent me off with one just in case my water broke on the car ride home. So off I went, waddling through my doctor’s office with a large pee pad in hand.
My whole pregnancy baby had been measuring a week ahead, so she scheduled me for an induction the following Tuesday as a back up if I didn’t go into labor before then. For the next three days, I (im)patiently waited for labor to begin…questioning every single kick and squirm thinking it was a contraction (boy was I in for a rude awakening). I kept scaring my husband and my mother in law with false alarms when Wider would kick a rib and make me moan. I did all the things – drank pineapple juice, ate Chinese, bought a ball to bounce around on…NONE of it works… Old wives are full of shit!
It was Saturday morning and I felt a little bit of fluid leaking. I called the on-call OB and she advised me I could wait it out or go on in to L&D just to be on the safe side. I knew I wouldn’t get ANY sleep and would be constantly on edge if I didn’t go in to get checked. I’ve read far too many horror stories in my FB mom groups. So we got to triage Saturday evening and they tested to see if I was leaking amniotic fluid. I could barely feel them but the machine was catching contractions while I was there. The amniotic fluid test came back negative. Reed made sure to point out that apparently I was just peeing on myself and not leaking fluid. Aren’t husbands the best? So we were discharged and back home to Padme (my boxer fur baby) we went. My induction was scheduled for Tuesday morning and at this point I was sure I’d make it until then. I knew she wasn’t coming until she was good and ready. She gets her stubborn nature from her mama.
Sure enough, Monday night was here and of course I wasn’t finished packing our hospital bags. Y’all, I’m an enneagram 7…it’s a constant struggle. I probably ended up packing 10 too many bow headbands, seeing as we were only going to be in the hospital for 36 hours. I knew I needed to get sleep Monday night, but that definitely did not happen. Hello Tuesday morning… My alarm went off at 3:30 AM. I am NOT a morning person, but seeing as I never went to sleep because I was so anxious I popped right up and got myself ready. Hubby made me a delicious breakfast sandwich around 4:00 AM…It was like a last supper, but really a last breakfast. Then we gave Padme a big ole kiss and told her she would have a baby sister the next time we saw her.
We got to the hospital at 5:00 AM and checked in at the nurses station. SO. MANY. FORMS. Even if you pre-register, you have to sign a TON of forms. We finally got to our room and our nurse came in to get us all set up. They gave me my weirdest compliment to date – “you have beautiful veins!” Um, thanks? She started my IV drip around 7:30 AM and of course, the damn machine just kept beeping and NOT working. After switching out the machine TWICE, she ended up starting my Pitocin by manually doing the drip because none of them were working apparently. About 20 minutes in there was a shift change and my new nurse came in. It was kismet. Her name was LACY…spelt EXACTLY like mine. And she got the IV machine working in about 2 seconds. She was super awesome and I’m so glad that she ended up being my labor and delivery nurse.
Around 8:00 AM, I started to have normal contractions that were spaced 2-3 minutes apart. I remember thinking to myself, I got this…This aint no thing! HA! My sister and mom got to the hospital around 8:45 AM. Having them there with Reed and I definitely helped the time pass. My OB came to see how I was doing at around 9:30 AM. She decided she would wait a while to see if my water would break on its own and be back to check on me in a few hours. At around 11:30 AM, my OB was back to check on me and I was 4 cm dilated. She went ahead and broke my water…Things got real, reaaaalllllll quick. Within 20 minutes my contractions got brutal and were spaced 1-2 minutes apart. I didn’t want an epidural and was going to try my hardest to push through. The nurse asked me every time she came to check on me if I wanted an epidural and I kept saying no. She told me that even if I was in the worst pain of my life, it would take at least 45 minutes to get an anesthesiologist down to give me one.
Something you get VERY familiar with VERY fast is rating your pain on a scale of 1-10. I have a pretty high pain threshold…and my pain rating at this point was a solid 8. Every time a contraction hit I could not move or talk. I would just throw my head back and take a deep breath in and then slowly breath out. The only thought in my mind would be breathing out as if I was trying to slowly blowing a feather along… weird, but it worked for like 2 seconds. The nurse warned me that Pitocin makes contractions much more intense…she wasn’t lying.
At around 1:00 PM the pain was SO bad. Not only that, but now, there was absolutely no space between the contractions. It was like a constant contraction. I threw my mom and sister out of the room because I was angry at the world. I even yelled at the poor lady who came in to offer her photography services. After hours of pain I opted for an epidural. The nurse noticed that I was having too many contractions with no space in between so she lowered my Pitocin. A man dressed as an angel, I mean as an anesthesiologist, was already on my floor for someone else so he was able to be in my room and stick a needle in my spine within 10 minutes. My butt went a little numb and the epi ended up only having a minimal effect. I could still feel the contractions badly and I made my sister check to see if a hand or something was popping out of me. The nurse was putting the catheter in (quick side note: catheters are awesome) and I told her that I was still in a lot of pain and felt a lot of pressure. She checked me and to everyone’s surprise I was 9 cm and the baby’s head was quote unquote really close – which is why I had been in SO much pain…. I still regret not asking her to check me prior to getting the epidural because if I would’ve known I was already 9 cm, I would have been able to push through. I went from 4-9cm in 30 minutes. The nurse said she was going to call my OB and tell her to get here because I was having the sudden urge to push.
At around 3:00 PM I was 10 cm and we were just waiting on the doctor. I’ve never been more fed up with Austin traffic. My OB got there around 3:30 PM and I was SO ready to get this show on the road. I was shaking like a leaf and nauseas as all get out. Apparently, the shakes and severe nausea can happen when your hormones start surging right before you start pushing. Let me tell you what, absolutely NOTHING prepared me for this part. In between contractions, it was great. We all talked about awesome Netflix shows, I kept quoting baby mama, my sister was snapping approximately 3,435 pictures of my hooha…GOOD times! BUT hot damn, during the contractions when I was pushing, talk about brutal.
After several rounds of pushing they could see the baby’s head. They soon realized I had shoulder dystocia. This is a complication that happens when the infant’s shoulders get lodged in the mother’s pelvis. Most of the time it happens because the baby is too large for the birth canal. All I know is it hurts like hell! But let me tell you what, there is nothing like a room full of nurses, a doctor, your husband and your sister cheering you along. I could not have kept going and kept pushing without their encouragement. They seriously made me feel like superwoman. Towards the end of pushing the nurse told me my pelvic muscles were so strong it was almost restricting her from coming out, so not to push too hard because she was worried the baby might shoot out once her shoulders were passed my pelvis. During that last push, I remember almost giving up until they told me to look down and I would see her. Sure enough, we got those shoulders out and the nurse said, “she just keeps coming…she’s SO big!”
She was so terrifyingly purple and she wasn’t crying. Talk about a scared mama. I remember them immediately putting her on my chest for skin to skin and the nurses surrounding me, rubbing her down to stimulate her. And sure enough, she started crying and lifting up her head to look at me. I just kept saying “Hi. Hi. Hi baby. Hi Wilder. I love you” in total shock and awe. Now that I think about it, I was superwoman! I pushed with all my might for 50 minutes and finally my sweet girl was in my arms. She was SO beautiful and SO strong. I remember those little eyes peering up at me. I couldn’t believe she was already lifting her head. After about an hour they took her to the little bassinet so they could weigh, measure and check her out.
Wilder Ray was born at 4:20 PM Tuesday evening. She was 8 lbs. 8oz and 21 inches long. She has her mom’s dimple and basically her dad’s face. By 5:00 PM I was basking in Chik-Fil-A and we were preparing to spend the rest of her birthday staring at the new human in our lives. It was pure magic with a side a painful bliss. They say you forget how much it hurt…I’ll let you know in a few months if that’s accurate.
XOXO,
Lacy
