28-2-2011 - Charlotte's birth story

My mood while writing this blog: Happy but cautious

Born: February 17, 2011 7:06 am

Birth details

Original due date: February 19, 2011

Type of delivery: Vaginal (with pain relief)

Duration of labor: 51 hours total (12 hours hard labour)

Weight @ birth: 7 lbs 8 oz

Length @ birth: 19.5in

Monday night (February 14) I started to note some contractions - nothing painful and certainly not consistent. Told DH that we should celebrate Valentines Day and our anniversary (February 18^th) that night so we proceeded to have a nice meal and relax. Woke up at 4 am Tuesday morning with some contractions. Spaced 8-12 minutes apart, but painful enough that I couldn’t sleep. Stayed up and then told DH he should go to work as they were far from consistent or close together. He went to work and I proceeded to start to get some things ready for the hospital. At 10 am, I had quite a bit of bloody show. Since I was GBS +ve, I needed antibiotics before delivery. I called the hospital and they suggested that I come in for my first round of antibiotics and to be assessed. DH came home shortly after that and we headed to the hospital. We saw a resident at around 3 PM who checked me and said I was only 2 cm dilated. Contractions were still ~ 5-8 minutes apart. They gave me the antibiotics at that time and he said he wouldn’t be surprised if he saw us back at the hospital that evening. We went home thinking that perhaps I’d be admitted to hospital later that evening. Because I have an allergy to penicillin, the type of antibiotic I needed was to be administered every 12 hours. So if I didn’t go into labour that night, I had to come back in at 3 AM for my next dose of antibiotics. Well, 2 AM rolled around and DH and I headed back to the hospital for our next dose of antibiotics. Another resident checked me – still 2 cm dilated. We got home about 6 AM and headed to bed for some rest. By noon, my contractions were 5-7 minutes apart but quite intense. DH and I watched some TV as I rocked and bounced on a ball to see if we could get things rolling. We were due for another round of antibiotics at 3 PM, so packed up and headed back to the hospital (now 3^rd trip back and forth). A third resident checked me – now 2-3 cm with a “favourable” cervix. She knew we didn’t want to have to go home again but told us she figured that things would progress overnight. I didn’t want to have to go back and forth another time, but staying in that uncomfortable hospital bed was not where I wanted to be so we headed home again. Got home at 7 pm, and tried to rest through the contractions. DH said I slept for 5minutes then would wimper and cry out through the contraction and fall back asleep. Labouring lying down was also extremely hard at that stage. Things only lasted about 45 minutes when I finally woke up in pain, went to the bathroom and felt a gush. Told DH “I think my water broke”. Packed ourselves back up to the hospital at around 9 PM. Each bump and pothole in the road made me crazy, poor DH as there was nothing he could do. Got admitted and the nurses tested to ensure my water had indeed broke (which it had). Laboured for another 3 hours while they were getting me set up for a drip to regulate the contractions, which were still about 4-5 minutes apart but getting longer in duration. At midnight, the anesthesiologist came in and told me that he wanted to check in on me before he headed home for the night. For a moment, I thought maybe I can go a bit longer, but then I thought WHY? So he set up and gave me the epidural. All I can say is, NIRVANA! It allowed me to sleep for a few hours and DH too. The nurses told DH that it would be approximately 1 cm per hour on the drip. So that put us around 7 am to get to 10 cm. We both fell asleep for a while. Around 4 am, I woke up and told DH he should get the nurse – I felt like I needed to push. The nurse checked me and I was fully dilated. OK, time to push! Man, no one prepared me for how long or how hard I was going to have to push. The epidural had started to wear off, enough that I was still relatively pain free, but could feel the contractions to push. After over 2 hours of pushing she was here. I had my eyes closed for the last part of the pushing, all I could hear was DH’s voice, he said “it’s a girl, Kari, and she’s beautiful!”.

We had two names picked out for both a boy and a girl, but when I looked at her, she was definitely a Charlotte. We don’t know where she got that shock of dark hair (one of the nurses asked me if my husband was non-Caucasian with that dark hair but he is Caucasian!). She is so worth the wait, and so worth all the hard work of labour. And she’s here!!