Well as you all probably know... my Baby Girl is HERRRRRRRRREEEEEEE. OMG... talk about obsessed. All I wanna do is snuggle her. About a month before she was due I was convinced she was going to be early. Like, not really early but maybe a week before her due date. So the days came and went... no baby. My due date came and went... no baby. Then, five days after my due date I started having regular contractions. I was so excited and embraced the contractions knowing that they would bring me my baby girl.
But after about five hours of contractions they waned and became further and further apart, and about 24 hours after they started, they stopped completely. Ok fine... so no baby yet.
The next day I was 41 weeks pregnant and I had scheduled an NST, a non-stress test, at 10 am where they hook me up to monitors and make sure that the baby is doing ok. These are fairly routine to perform when babies go past term as the chance for stillbirth rises significantly past 40 weeks gestation. Normally the machine is just hooked up for 20 minutes so I did think it was weird when I had been monitored for about 30 minutes and no-one had come to send me home.
The doctor came in and said that she didn't like some dips in the baby's heartbeat and she recommended me stay and be induced. I didn't like the idea of being induced, but ultimately my baby girl's health is the number one priority so I said ok, let's have a baby today!
Well apparently my body did not like the idea of being induced either, because right when she made that suggestion to me I had a contraction... and then about 5 minutes later I had another one, and before I knew it they were coming about every 3-4 minutes and getting stronger. The doctor checked me and I was 3 cm dilated so while I still had a long way to go, I was progressing nicely. They wanted me to take Pitocin (an oxytocin synthetic which causes contractions) but I pushed back saying that since it seemed I was progressing naturally that we wait to see if my contractions stall.
They never did.
Y'all... there is NOTHING that can prepare you for the intensity of labor. I always felt like I had a high pain tolerance but this kind of pain is so different. I feel like every other time in life when we get hurt we fight against the pain. We brace, we grit our teeth, we hold our breath, and we bear down. So basically everything that you don't want to do in labor. During labor you want to submit to the pain, breathe into it, and try to relax. This isn't so hard in the beginning but the pain becomes consuming and it takes every ounce of your concentration not to lock up your entire body.
The protocol at my hospital is they let you labor the way that you want to, and about every four hours they check your progress. At my first check I had dilated to 5 cm so they were happy to let me keep laboring and not give me Pitocin. My ultimate goal was to go completely natural, and not have any drugs administered. After my first check is when things started to really ramp up and feel more intense. And I just wanna say, God bless the nurse who lied to me when I asked if the contractions were going to get much worse.
Pain is weird like that. Like just when you think you can't take anymore, it ramps up just a little bit and then will back off, and then ramp up a little, and then back off, until a new pain threshold is met. And labor kept going like that. I remember looking at my hubby several times after a contraction had passed and saying, "I don't think I can do this," and he would just calmly reassure me that I could. When the anesthesiologist came in (mandatory in my hospital) to let my options known to me (epidural, etc.) it took a LOT of will power to not ask for an epidural. Even though I knew it was something that I did not really want I was in such pain that I seriously debated it. I just never let myself say it out loud. I felt like I could think about it but that if I said it out loud it would be real so I just kept it to myself.
Around 7 pm my contractions were coming about one minute apart and at the time I would have told you that they were a 10/10 on the pain scale... had I known what the pain was going to ramp up to, I would now rate them as a 7/10. They checked me again and I was 6 cm... I was furious and so discouraged. I felt like I had just done the hardest 4 hours of my life to have only dilated one more measly centimeter. My nurse was just about to leave (shift change) and she told me that she thought once my water broke that I was going to dilate fast so to not worry. Her encouragement gave me something to hold onto and I kept going.
Around 9 pm I felt like I was going to be split open from my belly button down. I asked when the doctor was going to check me next and they said 10 pm so let's try and hold out till then. I am good with goal oriented things so I focused on crushing the next hour. A little before 10 my water finally broke and so they called the doctor in to check me. I was 8 cm dilated... so good progress but still not to the part where I get to push the baby out.
The next hour was a whirlwind of pain and sweat. I was trying to breathe into the contractions still but could only manage to do that for about half the length of each one. The other half I would gasp and sometimes even push. It's weird, the body all of a sudden just tells you what to do. Even though I technically wasn't supposed to be pushing, I felt the overwhelming need to and did anyway. Around 10:30 pm I felt like she was really low, and the instinct to push was overpowering. I told the nurse, she checked me, and sure enough, she could feel the head.
It was time to push.
They called the doctor and got me all set up in bed to push. They explained to me that when a contraction came on I was going to take a deep breath and try to push for a count of ten, and that I would try and do this three times each contraction. FINALLY something that I could really grasp onto - I mean this is basically just sets and reps. Pushing feels good, and you are so focused on pushing that you don't really feel the contraction much at all.
When the baby is about to crown there is something that they call the "Ring of Fire", which is exactly what it sounds like. A very acute burning sensation, which is very uncomfortable but also motivating because you know that the baby is close to being born so it makes focusing on the push almost even easier.
On the fourth contraction my baby girl entered the world and I was overcome by relief, joy, and peace. She was healthy and gave some robust cries as they placed her on my chest. I just remember staring at her and starting to cry because I was so happy. She is such a blessing that we have waited three long years for, and now she is here.
She looked up at me and I was overcome by the fact that I am now a mother and this defenseless little creature will be depending on me and her father to protect and care for her for many years. My heart swelled with love and I knew in that moment that I would do anything to fulfill that duty.
Joellen Kay DuVall
Born August 5, 2019, 10:59 pm
6 pounds, 9 ounces
20.5 inches long
And as perfect as can be <3
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