After the midwife stripped my membranes at my 9am appointment labor instantly started, by the time an hour went by contractions were coming but not in a constant pattern. By 11 am I was in full blown labor, contractions every 5 minutes apart. By 1pm I was telling my husband he needs to come home. By 3 pm we were at the hospital and I was 6 cm dilated, I told my husband to call my mom. Luckily we did because otherwise she would have done a few odds and ends at the house and would have missed his birth. Figuring this labor would be the same as the last with being able to take her time but boy was she wrong. My first labor was 18 hours start to finish, it was slow and easy. Well as “easy” as pushing an 7-8 lb. baby out a hole the size of a cheerio can be. But this time around holy hell it was fast and furious, 6.5 hours start to finish.
The nurse took us to a delivery room, where I was breathing and panting the whole way. As my husband and the nurse were helping me into the bed I had a vicious contraction and my hand grabbed and held onto the first thing it could grab. It turned out to be my husband’s shirt collar; I had grabbed him and pulled him to me so far that he was practically lying in my lap. His shirt was so tight in my fist if he would have moved I probably would have ripped the collar off of him. The nurse we had was absolutely fantastic but she tried to get him to move when I had a hold of him and I swear you could hear the devil in my voice when I told her she needed to hold on. Thankfully she took my not so subtle hint and backed off.
The anesthesiologists to do the epidural came in (thank goodness) they got me hooked up to it. The guy that started it was amazing he put two medicines in where one took effect immediately, and then the other took longer to start feeling the effects from but it lasted much longer. While I was incredibly thankful for the sweet relief that is an epidural I might as well not even gotten it because literally ten minutes later my doctor walked in to check me and it was time to push. As she was getting set up everyone was joking around and laughing. My doctor has to tell me to stop laughing otherwise he was going to come right out. Sure enough she broke my water and one contraction later my little man was here, all 8 pounds of him.
Everything was going perfectly for the first hour after he was born. My husband left to go take care of our daughter. My mother stayed to help me at the hospital, my dad, sister, and nephew came to visit me. They all had to step out for a few minutes to get something out of the car, that’s when I felt it, a gush. I looked under the sheets and all I saw was blood, so much blood. Thankfully a nurse walked in at that moment and I showed her. She immediately went to action, calling the doctor and another nurse in. They did that awful squishing on your abdomen for several minutes but the bleeding wasn’t stopping. My body had long since lost that glorious numbness, I could feel everything. Every squish. Every needle. Every stitch that popped. It was horrible, but not as awful as the helplessness of my body not being able to stop the bleeding. Those blue square pads that they stick under people so they don’t make a mess, last number I recall hearing that was filled with blood was 12, I know there was more but I stopped listening. The nurses weighed them so they could guess about how much blood I lost, I hadn’t heard what they had said. I was praying too hard for the bleeding to stop, for the medicine to work and for the two medicines after that to work, praying that I wouldn’t have to have to go to the operating room for them to fix this. After the third medicine and more squishing and a lot of praying my delivery team finally was able to get it under control. My doctor told me later that if that last medicine didn’t work they would have had to take me to the operating room to fix it. I am incredibly thankful for the doctors and nurses that were there that day, for their quick thinking, and their skills under pressure.
I let my mom, dad, sister and nephew back in after all that and told them I had a bleeding episode but I don’t think I told them to what extent. I didn’t want anyone to worry. My husband didn’t know till after the incident was under control, since he was at home with my daughter and I knew he would be panicking. Thankfully over the next 24 hours it stayed under control and I was able to go off of the medicines and be able to start moving around.
The next morning my husband brought our daughter to the hospital to be able to meet her brother for the first time. At newly two years old she had no idea what to make of him now that he wasn’t in mommy’s belly. She pet him and snuggled with him for about two seconds then was done and wanted to play with something more interesting. Before being discharged from the hospital she saw him a few more times and liked him a tad bit more every time she still didn’t understand he was her brother and that he was staying. The day we brought him home from the hospital was horrible, absolutely and completely horrible. Everyone was crying (myself included, damnable hormones), no one was sleeping, people were hungry it was just a disaster. It was a good four or five hours of hell. After a goodnights rest (yeah right, although it’s still amazing compared to staying at the hospital) some food and lots of cuddles everyone was doing so much better. As each day passed things just started to click, the babies love each other so much now; I think they would be lost without the other. Having babies is hard, messy work but wholly worth it.
Diary of a Mom 