17-7-2011 - Baby Mac\'s Birth Story

My mood while writing this blog: Ok

I had my membranes stripped at around 2 PM on 7/11. I had already been having contractions off and on, so I was hoping this would encourage things along and BOY it did and FAST! Throughout the afternoon I started getting them every 10-20 minutes but they weren't intense, so I wasn't sure if this was it or just more Braxton hicks. I stopped timing them to make dinner at 6 and then we all went for a walk. During the walk, the contractions got 6 minutes apart and uncomfortable. We got home and I took a bath at 7. While in the tub, they were suddenly 3 minutes apart! By 7:40, I was still in the tub and they were starting to get intense, so I called the on-call doc at L & D. He asked just a few questions and told me to wait another hour and see what happened. Thank goodness I did NOT take his advice. Within 20 minutes of hanging up, I realized, this is it. We called my parents to come over and watch the boys so we could head to the hospital. The drive to the hospital was about 30 minutes and I was clutching the arm rests the whole way. I was so miserable that I couldn't time the contractions very well, but they were about every 2-3 minutes. We pulled up outside the hospital around 9 PM. The security guards thankfully let us leave our van in the unloading area so Mike could wheel me up to L & D. We got into triage and nearly every room was full plus there was a woman waiting for an induction in line ahead of me. I was there holding on to Mike every 2 or 3 minutes just trying to breathe through the pain and this other woman was being seen first! Luckily, the nurse gets them into a room fast and comes for us. All the triage beds were full so she just puts us into a regular L & D room to triage me. But I KNEW I wasn't going to be sent home. She gave me a hospital gown to change into and left. I had brought my own outfit to labor in, but by this point I was thinking "screw you outfit and natural birth plan, I want an epidural!" Mike helped me into the gown and we just stayed in the bathroom so I could hold onto the hand rails and breathe through contractions. I found that I naturally wanted to go "oooo" and "hooo" to deal with the pain. A few minutes passed and I really could not wait, so Mike went to tell the nurse my contractions were 2 minutes apart. I was starting to get very little break between them because they also lasted so long. Thankfully she rushed back even though they were super busy. I hobbled to the bed feeling a lot of pressure in my rear end. She hooked me up to the monitors and checked me, I was 8-9 cm dilated! At this point it was 9:16 PM and I was officially admitted. The nurse rushed around setting things up and made phone calls while I breathed through each contraction in bed. Mike was coaching me, but at this point all I could really focus on was breathing. At this point I also realized I was going to get my natural birth, there was no time for an epidural! I was scared! Before I knew it, 3 other nurses were in the room and a midwife is called (the OBs were all busy). I didn’t see anyone’s face but the midwife and Mike. The midwife checked me and I was complete! She had to break my water right then because amazingly it hadn’t broken yet. She told me to push when I was ready, so I went for it and I felt everything! It took only about 5 minutes or so and out came my beautiful baby boy! Michael McGarry Simpson was born at 9:53 PM, less than an hour after arriving to the hospital. He was a whopping 9 lb 3 oz and 20.5 in long! We had no idea he'd be THAT big! He had bruises on his face, broken capillaries under his eyes and his eyes were bloodshot from being so big and squeezing through my pelvis. But he is beautiful! He's got chubby arms and thighs and huge cheeks! His hair is dark red. I’m wondering if it’ll be like mine when it gets thicker J Sometimes he looks exactly like newborn James to me, other times I see Henry. But mostly, he just looks like Mac. I think the nickname suits him: a big, burly Irishman!

It was a thrilling experience that I will never, ever forget. It was a totally different experience than having an epidural. I want to do it again like this, but not soon. I will not forget that pain anytime soon! Mac had a little low blood sugar at first because of his size and I had some really big blood clots due to how fast the labor was. But they got those both under control pretty fast. Now he's 5 days old and we are home. He is nursing, but we are struggling with his latch. It isn't coming naturally to him, so it's taking some practice, but we'll get there! So far his personality is very laid back. He is content to sleep most of the day and night and he just melts into your arms or sprawls across your lap. My mom says it’s because he couldn’t stretch his legs for so long inside me J