Ava's Birth: Part 2

...Once they wheeled me into our labor & delivery room and we met our nurse, we had a moment alone while she went to gather some paperwork, and I got a bit emotional (as I knew I would.)  It just felt very significant to me that we had learned we were pregnant with Ava the morning of my Dad's funeral... and now here we were about to deliver her.  It felt like the real ending of his life in a way.  Up til now, that pregnancy kinda linked me to him because, even though during his last days he didn't know she was in there, she was, and she was his grandbaby.  He wouldn't get to meet her... she wouldn't get to meet him... but they had co-existed on this Earth for a brief time, unaware of one another.  And now the 9 months were over.  I don't know... it was just hard.  And I knew it would be.

Anyway, after that, the nurse strapped a monitor onto my belly and Ava's heartbeat was nice and steady.  She also took some blood from me and sent it to the lab, and she checked my cervix.  I was at a 6, woohoo!  (But on the downside, it was SO uncomfortable having my cervix checked... I knew I wanted to do that as minimally as possible that day.)  My contractions were still a regular 5 minutes apart... and decently bearable as long as I could sit on my exercise ball.  I changed into a gown and we just worked through the contractions as peacefully as possible for the next few hours.

My sweet husband french braided my hair that morning to keep it out of my face.  He is so talented! :)

Harrison and Kelly arrived not long after that and stayed in the room with me and Chris for the whole birth! (What a blessing to have them both there.)  Those few hours were quite peaceful, like I said.  The contractions definitely intensified, but I felt so much relief while on the ball compared to any other position, that sometimes I wondered whether I was really progressing.  My water still hadn't broken and they had kept on at a pace of 5 minutes apart for quite awhile.  My nurse was very helpful, in that she allowed me to completely "do my thing" during that whole time and there was never any feeling of pressure about how this thing "should" be going.  Anytime I expressed my nerves about why my water hadn't broken yet or why my contractions weren't speeding up, she and Chris would remind me that everything was happening just right.  (And to tell the truth, all I had to do to reassure myself that this labor was, in fact, progressing, was try and stand through a contraction.  The increased discomfort compared to when I was squatted down on the ball was enough to remind me that things were definitely moving along!  Just something about that ball relieved enough pressure to make the contractions more bearable.)

I had expressed to the nurse early on that I wanted to be much more patient this time around about when I started pushing.  (I believe I started much too early when delivering Elsa… and the pushing was the most difficult part of that experience the first time.  It took a loooong time, and it felt very unproductive at times.  I had read that pushing can actually feel like quite a relief if you wait until you’re really ready, so that’s what I was hoping for this time.)  But honestly, it was a bit confusing trying to clearly identify that “urge to push.”  There were lots of moments I felt intense pelvic pressure and would ask, “Do you think that means I’m ready to push?”  Of course, it would have made it a lot easier to tell if I’d been more willing to let the nurse check my cervix… but I was very opposed (haha!)… it was just soo uncomfortable to me.  Plus it almost always caused me to have a contraction right after.  At one point, she promised me she could check me in two seconds or less, so I let her, and she said I was around an 8.  Not quite ready to push yet.  Ok… so we kept plodding through contractions, which were definitely intensifying.  I got to the point where being squatted down on the ball was getting too tiring for my legs and hips.  (Plus I was getting sleepy.)  I SO wanted to curl up on the bed, but it just was NOT a workable position during the contractions.  So for those last few centimeters, I sat on the bed kinda cross-legged and would hold Chris’s hands and sort of rock/sway through the contractions while the nurse supported my back. 

I also remember that during this time I requested some Zofran and some sort of drink to calm my heartburn (which was still raging, like it has done the whole pregnancy.)  It was around the time I drank that heartburn drink that I threw up just a bit.  (It could’ve been from the drink, but I think it was just the natural next step of labor.)

I remember that during this whole portion of the labor, I felt pretty impatient.  When laboring with Elsa… I had spent all this time gearing up for the labor experience and had no idea what it would be like afterward.  So in a sense, it was easy to devote my mental energy to the task at hand.  But this time, with Ava, I kept inwardly longing for “the end” because I knew it meant relaxing in my recovery room and holding my sweet baby.  I think it was just much harder to be patient and work through the labor part because I was so ready to get to the other side.

Ok, so finally we’re getting to the finish line.  I continued to deal with contractions sitting up on the bed and I could tell they were finally coming more frequently (like every 2-3 minutes.)  I was having to groan deeply during them instead of just breathing.  It was around this point that the nurse mentioned that she had noticed my cervix seemed to be directed a bit “posterior” when she had checked me and I was an 8, a bit earlier.  She said, “If you can bear it… I think it would help to lean forward or get on all fours, to help her shift forward a bit.”  So I got on my knees, facing the back of the bed, and held on to the headboard thing.  The contractions felt SOOO much worse in that position, uggh… I honestly feel like this is where things started to get craaazaay.  But I wanted to stay in that position since she thought it would be helpful.

I again questioned whether it might be time to push, and since the nurse knew I didn’t want her to keep checking my cervix, she suggested I try pushing lightly during the next few contractions and see if it felt good to me.  It did!  Not great… but much better than trying not to.  So when I told her that, she thought it’d be a good idea to check my cervix before calling for the doctor.  I didn’t want her to, so I kinda started pushing  “in secret” during the next few contractions, without telling her I was doing it.  Sneaky me!

Well sure enough, after just a few contractions with me lightly pushing, my water broke.  I actually thought I was just peeing, so I was calling out apologies to the room behind me… but Chris and the nurse both said, “Nope, we’re pretty sure that was just your water breaking.”  “Finally” I thought, “We can get this ball rolling!”  And indeed we did.  The contractions got even more intense and I told the nurse, “I’m pushing!”  (And I kid you not… these few moments stand out to me more than any others of the day.  The contractions were so intense, I felt like that girl from The Ring, freakily climbing up the well, only I was climbing my hospital bed.)   My nurse  hurried to call the doctor in, and in the meantime they scooted another doctor in there to be ready, just in case Dr. Brenniman didn’t make it on time.  The doctor told me to go ahead and try to turn around so that I could get my feet into the stirrups and push more efficiently.  I let out a few screams during the next contraction/push and Chris told me, “You’ll get a lot more power out of a push if you don’t scream out all your energy” (or something like that.)  So I called up my knowledge from the last birth and told myself to hold my breath and bear down good and hard during those pushes.  And then during my breaks I went ahead and let out a few good screams.

Dr. Brenniman got in there in time, and I only had to push 5 times or so (compared to over an hour with Elsa… yay!)  And it was so wonderful because even though it was crazy intense, I could tell that these pushes were actually doing something!  I was pushing with my contractions (unlike with Elsa, where I was kinda just pushing aimlessly.)  And when Dr. Brenniman would say, “Keep coming with that one… it’s working!” I could tell that it was, and so it made me want to keep pushing even though it’s such an extreme force of energy and it’s so hard to keep going.

So yeah, five or so really good push sessions, and WooHoo! her head was out!  I could tell right away that I had torn though (bummer!) and I was kinda hung up on that and had stopped pushing.  But the doctor told me I needed to push out the rest of her, so I did. J  And she was bright pink and screaming beautifully, right from the start.  Her head was really nice and round, and she looked SO tiny.  (But she wasn’t, she was 7 lbs. 10 oz.  Bigger than Elsa was!)  She was born at 2:41pm.  And what a feeling in the room!  Chris was spontaneously laughing and crying at the same time, Harrison was laughing, Kelly was crying, and I was just thinking, “Yay! I did it! I’m done! She’s here!”

They gave her to me for some skin-on-skin time, and she continued to exercise those awesome lungs!  I could really feel the pain in my “bottom” area… even the whole time the doctor was stitching me up (even with the Lidocaine!)  The reason for this was that, unfortunately, Ava had had a hand up by her face during the whole delivery, and that extra diameter (in addition to her head coming out) is what cause me to tear (off to the side a bit… Owee, not fun!)

So although it was wonderful to be holding her and loving on her… it was also pretty rough to be feeling so much more pain from the “aftermath.”  During that time, I took some pain medication through my IV to help with that, but it didn’t really kick in well for about half an hour.  Also during that time, my legs were shaking pretty violently, although I didn’t really feel cold.  The doctor told me it was a totally normal reaction, due to hormones.  (Weird.  I don’t remember it happening with Elsa.)

And from there it was just awesome!  We hung out in the room together, held Ava, took pictures of her, eventually weighed her and cleaned her up a bit.  And we weren’t rushed into the recovery room for quite awhile.  There were some other (more stressful) situations happening on the floor at the time and my nurse had gotten called into the OR to help with a surgery.  So we were free to just hang out for a few hours in our room with our new little one!

A few visitors came in to see us (and Ava) during that time.  Also, I couldn’t stop just re-living the past few hours in my mind.  I wanted to know what moments really stood out to Harrison, especially.  And I personally just couldn’t stop re-living those last few stages of the labor (from around the time my water broke, onward.)  It was just so intense… I couldn’t quite move on mentally.  I was pretty amped up.

Warren, Suzanne and Elsa showed up a little after 6:00, just in time to help us get all our stuff transferred over to the recovery room.  (But I think I want to save all my recollections about Elsa and Ava's first meeting for another post.)

Ok, so technically I guess Ava’s “birth story” ends there, but I have to also note that throughout this day, my cousin Emily (who was due just a few days before me) also went into labor and came to the hospital!  She even came into our recovery room (while in early/active labor!) to visit with us a bit, because she was waiting to progress a bit more before they admitted her.  She ended up having her baby the same night (although it was 13 minutes after midnight, so the cousin-babies have different birthdays.)  And then we were next-door to each other in the recovery hall.  It was SOOO cool!  We couldn’t have planned it better if we tried.

All in all, like I said, the day was so blessed.  My hopes for the Ava's birth were beyond exceeded.  And even though it was no “walk in the park”… it was GOOD.  We are home now, enjoying doing nothing with our little one.  Elsa will be home from her grandparents' house to join the party tomorrow.  I'll be sure and post again soon to show a few pictures from the day and journal about Elsa and Ava's first meeting... sooo sweet. :)