Eliza’s Birth: A Game, a Bridge, and a Train

[continued from part 2]

Back out into the sunshine we went. Our hospital is downtown, about 15 minutes from our house, and we have a professional football team in our city. A Sunday afternoon game was just about to start. Our normal route home was blocked, so we followed the detour, which took us right past the stadium and thousands of people tailgating, finding parking spaces, and crisscrossing the streets.

Having hard contractions while in a car wearing a seatbelt is not fun, and watching people drink beer and enjoy the weather wasn’t helping matters. Meanwhile, A.J. got the fun job of inching through a traffic jam with a laboring wife next to him.

By the time we finally got home, my sleeping pills began to kick in. My contractions were now painful enough that I was beginning to vocalize (not scream!) through them. But in between I was completely out of it and kept dozing off, which was so nice and much needed since I’d been awake for over 24 hours.

After a couple hours, I stood up to go to the bathroom and felt something different. I was pretty sure it was my water, and it seemed to have meconium in it. Christian had passed meconium in the womb, and I knew you’re supposed to go to the hospital as soon as possible if you think that’s happened. I told A.J. we definitely needed to go in this time.

On the way, I called my midwife again and she seemed pretty casual and not positive it was my water. This cast doubt in my mind and the whole way there I was analyzing whether it had really broken. I was going to feel so foolish if it hadn’t.

Between our house and the hospital are a drawbridge and train tracks. The drawbridge has never been up once in all of my hospital trips, and my doctor’s office is in the hospital so that’s saying something. Today though, it was up and we had to wait. And there was a train after that. Oh, the irony. I was so done with laboring in the car!

After we arrived, the minute I stood up I had no more doubt about whether my water had broken. We got checked in again and my nurse said she knew I’d be back. My contractions were still 7-10 minutes apart, but it’d been about 15 hours of labor at this point and needless to say, they hurt. I was so thankful for God’s grace in having my water break so there was no doubt about whether I could stay. I couldn’t imagine going through the hospital trip with contractions any closer together or more painful. And I was very tired.

When the nurse asked me if I wanted an epidural I said yes. My only fear was that I still hadn’t progressed and would be getting it too early, but she checked me and said I was at a 5! I’d gotten to a 5 on my own! I was so happy. And then my pain kicked up a notch and the nurse said that was normal now that my water had broken.

Since it was a Sunday afternoon the anesthesiologist wasn’t in-house, so my nurse had to call him in. Thankfully my contractions stayed spaced out so I was able to relax a little in between.

After a blurry hour of pain and waiting, the anesthesiologist arrived. The initial placement didn’t work, so I had to have it replaced, and that strange but welcome numbness finally gave me some relief. My midwife had come in for the first time while my epidural was being placed, and she said I was now at a 7. She left me to rest for a bit.

A couple of hours later, she came back in and we found that I hadn’t progressed at all since her last visit! My contractions had stayed so far apart during my whole labor that getting the epidural probably caused my progress to stall (although the nurse said that wasn’t the reason).

[continued in part 4]