Some days it still seems crazy to me that I have baby, that he is finally here; after months of being pregnant and getting ready it seems crazy that in a few short hours everything changes and you are holding your baby in your arms.
For me labor started two days before Mason was actually born, on Sunday evening when I started having contractions regularly. Although we got sent home from the hospital twice (once Monday morning and once Monday night) because I wasn't in "active labor" mentally I had been in labor for 36 hours when I was finally admitted to the hospital (4 days after my due date). Once I was admitted, Mason was here in 9 short hours.
Monday night when we went to the hospital the contractions were pretty painful and I thought for sure progress was being made, but I was wrong. I was slightly more dilated and effaced but very little progress had been made since that morning. We walked all the way around the hospital complex, probably more than a mile, and got checked again, still no change. The nurse recommended that if I wanted to have a natural birth the best place for me to be at this point was at home and said they could give me a shot of morphine to help me relax and maybe get some sleep. I agreed and went home, again. But the morphine did nothing and I spent the night trying to sleep through the contractions. All the pain of the contractions was centered in one spot on my right side, the pain there was intense, I felt it in the front in my very low belly and in my back, making it incredibly hard to find a comfortable position to try and sleep in. Around 5 a.m. I decided to get in the bathtub again to help me relax, I stayed there until 6:30 and then got in bed and snuggled with John.
My doula, Jessica, text me to see how I was doing and I told her I didn’t know how much longer I was going to be able to handle it and that if there was no good news at my doctor’s appointment I was going to be seriously considering an epidural. Jessica was awesome and told me I could do it and to remember why I didn’t want an epidural in the first place (I didn’t want to have to get a catheter and the inevitable UTI that would come with it).
I was supposed to have a non-stress test at 8 a.m. and a doctor’s appointment at 9:20 but when we arrived at the non-stress test they said since I had been at the hospital in the last 24 hours and hooked up to the monitors I didn’t need to be tested again. We didn’t want to go home and come back again in an hour so we went upstairs to see if my doctor could see us early. She wasn’t in yet, so we sat in the waiting room for 30 minutes, John playing on his phone, me half-sleeping as the contractions continued to come, praying that when my doctor checked me there would be progress. I didn’t know how much longer I would be able to handle the contractions if no progress was being made. The news from my doctor was finally good news!! I was dilated to about a 4 and completely effaced. She also thought I was leaking amniotic fluid and thought the baby had already had his first bowel movement, which wasn’t a big deal but something to watch as labor continued. She wanted me to go downstairs to labor and delivery, they would admit me. I was so relieved, we were going to have a baby today!!
Downstairs I asked for a room with a tub, because so far, the warm water was the only thing that made the pain of the contractions more bearable. Since I was planning on having a natural, drug-free birth I needed all the help I could get. I was not pleased to hear there wasn’t a room with a tub available but they could maybe move into one if it became available. We were taken to a room and the nurse hooked me up to the contraction and heart rate monitors. She started my IV line for when I needed antibiotics later and left. By then Jessica arrived, John went to the car to get all my stuff and then ran home to let Willy out and put him downstairs with Nonna. While John was gone, I got a new nurse, Corene. When I asked her about moving to a room with a tub she said, “There isn’t a room with a jacuzzi tub, but there is one with a regular tub.” I was so relieved! I told her, “any tub is better than no tub.” Corene was amazing throughout the entire birth. She let me stay in the tub for as long as I wanted, bringing in the heart rate monitor every so often to check on the baby and the blood pressure cuff to check on me. She even gave me my second dose of antibiotics while I was in the tub. She was also so helpful with doing counter pressure later on in the birth after my water had been broken and when I was pushing. She was so supportive of my wishes to have a natural birth and I think she definitely helped me get there.
Corene checked me about an hour after we’d seen my doctor, I was dilated to a 6, John arrived back from going home and I got in the tub for the first time. The water was a huge relief! The warm water helped me relax and rest, I even fell asleep for a few minutes in the tub. Jessica was so sweet! She sat with me in the bathroom for a while and kept checking to make sure I didn’t need anything. While I was in the tub my mom called John, I could hear her yelling from the bathroom. John told me she was stuck in construction traffic and wasn’t even in Heber yet. She would probably be at least another hour and a half. When my mom arrived I was still in the tub but I got out shortly after that because I was getting hot. Dr. Cracroft came by while I was out of the tub and checked my progress, I was only dilated to a 7 now, so I hadn’t made much progress in 3 hours. She asked me if I wanted her to break my water, my mom said I should, that it would speed things up, but I decided to wait a little while. She told me that the baby was posterior facing and if I could lay on my side and rock or rock on the birth ball, it would encourage the baby to turn and would help speed things up. I tried those things for a while, while having John and Jessica alternate doing counter pressure on my back and knees during contractions.
After a while, I got back in the tub. The water was so soothing and relaxing. I stayed in the tub for a while longer, until just before Dr. Cracroft had said she was going to come back down to break my water. I still wasn’t sure about having my water broken, I wasn’t sure if it would speed things up or just make it hurt more, but my mom encouraged me to have my water broken. She said for her it sped things up quite a bit. When my doctor came back in and I hadn’t dilated any more since she last check, she also encouraged me to have my water broken because my body seemed to have stalled a little and breaking my water could help get things going again, so I agreed. It was around 3 p.m. by now and I was exhausted from not sleeping much in the past 48 hours. When she broke my water it confirmed what she had thought earlier in the day, the baby had had his first bowel movement already. She said most of the time there would be no complications from that but they would have a nurse from the NICU in the delivery room when he was born to make sure. She said as long as he cried healthily when he was born, everything would be fine.
After my water was broken everything got much more intense. The contractions came with seemingly no break in between them and I couldn’t focus on anything but the contractions and preparing for the next one. John was so helpful and cute! At one point when things got really intense and I just kept saying I couldn’t do it anymore he got my iPod and turned on my relaxation track from the hypnobirthing class, I didn’t hear much of it, but I loved that he was so supportive. He kept reminding me to breathe and telling me I was doing great. Going through birth with him was seriously amazing, for as much as he whined about taking the hypnobirthing class, he was so helpful and it made me fall in love with him all over again! It didn’t seem like much time had passed when I felt like I needed to push. Corene said she needed to check me before I could start pushing to make sure I was fully dilated but I had finally found a comfortable position and didn't want to move so I waited until I couldn't control the urge to push anymore and rolled from my hands and knees to my back so Corene could check me. She said I was fully dilated and it was time to push. Up until this point I think I had been fairly calm and tried to breathe through the contractions but the urge to push was sooo strong, I pushed with everything I had, it was such an intense sensation. Through every contraction John whispered in my ear, reminding me to breathe and not hold my breathe. I had only pushed a few times when Dr. Cracroft arrived. She had finished with her clinic patients for the day and had just come to check on me, Corene hadn’t even paged her for delivery yet, but she stayed for the rest of the time. She watched me push for a few times and then told me that I would be more effective if I breathed and pushed a different way. Even though I had originally wanted to push how I felt like it, I was so glad she was there to coach me through it, I don’t know how much longer it would’ve taken to deliver if I had pushed my own way, but I’m glad it didn’t last longer than it did. Jessica and Corene did counter pressure on my knees and John and my mom held both my hands and took turns putting the cold washcloth on my face. It seemed like I had been pushing forever and nothing was happening, “I can’t do it anymore, just pull him out!” I said. Dr. Cracroft was so rational and told me that she could do that but it would hurt a lot more than to deliver him on my own. I asked how much longer, she told me that if I continued to push like I was he could be in here in six more contractions. Six! That seemed like sooo many. I don’t even know if it actually took six more contractions, I lost count after two or three. I could tell things were happening though because everyone was getting excited. Corene had to keep telling them to let Dr. Cracroft coach me instead of everyone else trying to tell me what to do. My mom was amazing! She kept encouraging me when I was pushing and telling me he was so close and that I could do it! I probably squeezed all the feeling out of her hand but I was so glad she was there with me. Jessica didn’t say much throughout the whole process but she was there providing almost constant counter pressure and being so supportive! I know for a fact I wouldn’t have been able to do it without her.
I don’t know if anyone told me how close he was or when it was going to be the last push, but it seemed like all sudden he was here! He came out and first thing I said was, “Whoa, he’s huge!” He just looked so big to me. Dr. Cracroft said he was so adorable, definitely above average for a newborn. Dr. Cracroft held him and cleaned him off a little for a minute before John cut the cord and they handed him to me. He was beautiful, he had so much hair. I loved seeing John’s face when he saw the baby for the first time, he teared up and cried a little and it was so sweet. After a few minutes they took the baby to weigh him, 9 pounds and 21 1/2 inches!! He was huge!! The cleaned him and wrapped him up and handed him back to me. We settled on the name Mason, Mason William Hoffman born at 6:27 p.m. on August 11, 2015. By this time Dr. Cracroft was stitching up my 2nd degree tear, and although she had numbed the area, I could still feel the pulling of the string and the sensations were just too much, I couldn’t hold baby Mason, I had to focus on breathing and getting through the repairs.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the end of the story. Dr. Cracroft had a question about a small tear near my urethra, she wasn’t sure if it should be fixed or if it would just heal on its own. She called in the other doctor from her practice to look. He wasn’t sure what the best course of action was either and suggested they see if the urologist that had been there for a c-section was still there. He wasn’t but I told them Dr. Stout was my urologist and they called her office. She was actually the doctor on-call and was coming to check it out. She wanted to do a scope and while we were waiting for her to arrive I snuggled Mr. Mason and watched as they rolled in several carts of equipment. Dr. Stout arrive and I gave Mason back to John to feed and hold. Whitney had just arrived too and my mom went to let her in so she could wait in the waiting room. The nurse told me that 2 hours after Mason was born they needed to take him to the nursery for some tests and shots and that they would be down to get him shortly.
Dr. Stout and Dr. Cracroft began the scope, I had to ask for extra lidocaine so I didn’t feel anything and the nurse gave me a shot of pain medicine in my IV, the first pain medication I’d had the entire time. Dr. Stout ordered several different supplies from the OR that labor and delivery didn’t have and told me they were going to put a catheter in and that I would need to have it in for a week. I almost cried. I had gone through the entire labor and delivery process with no epidural in hopes of avoiding a catheter and the very likely infection that would come with it and here I was getting a catheter that I would have to have in for a week. 45 minutes later when they were still working, I asked for another shot of pain medication. John and my mom alternated checking on me and holding my hand. When they were finally finished. Dr. Cracroft explained that my urethra had torn and that they had to repair it. She later told me that neither her, her partner or Dr. Stout had ever seen anything like that happen before. She also told me that she thought nine out of 10 women would have needed to been put out for the repairs they did or would have needed a spinal block. “That would have been terrible for you to have this beautiful natural birth and then need a spinal block anyway.” She said I was tough and called me a trooper, which did make me feel a little better about spending nearly 2 hours being stitched up.
Dr. Stout told me I had to have the catheter in for two weeks instead of just one, I’m pretty sure I did cry this time. Two weeks! That seemed like an eternity.
I felt like I had been robbed. I had just done this incredibly hard thing; I gave birth to a 9 pound baby with no medicine, after experiencing painful contractions for more than 24 hours. I didn’t even get to enjoy the first several hours of Mason’s little life, I barely got to hold him for the first 5 hours because I was being put back together again and now I had to go home with a catheter!
I’ll admit I am sad about the way the birth ended, but I am so proud of myself for going natural like I wanted and so happy I was able to make it through. I didn’t even ask for medicine the entire time, which surprised me, I thought for sure there would be a point in labor that I would ask for the epidural and have to be reminded that I didn’t want one but I didn’t! I did it and I so happy that little Mason is here and is happy and healthy and soo cute!
