No need for the doula, or should I say no time

On Wednesday, December 29th, 2004, at 5:02 p.m., we welcomed Sir Andrew into the world. As it turns out, the doula was not needed. At my last midwife appointment the day before, the midwife told me that my cervix was 3 cm dilated and 90% effaced. She stripped my membranes which started a series of contractions for the next several hours from between 5 and 8 minutes apart, but they tapered off at about 10:00 p.m. that night. I continued to have some random contractions through the night and the next morning, and we decided that walking would be a good thing to see if we could get things going again. We went out about 11:30, got lunch and then went to the mall and walked around for an hour or so. When we got home, I was really tired and took a nap. At about 4:10 p.m., I woke up feeling a big, hard pop like the baby had punched my cervix. Sleepy and disoriented, I got up and realized that my water had probably broken.

We called the midwife and finished putting our stuff in the suitcase. Meanwhile, the contractions started coming on about every two minutes. They were OK as long as I was able to pace. As we pulled out of the driveway, I called the doula and let her know we were heading in. By the time, we were a half a mile from the house, I was having contractions where yelling was required.

I tried to do the breathing exercise. Jim said that I was mostly doing it in between the contractions. That was OK because it kept me a bit calmer though until we missed a couple of lights. I opened my eyes, I saw lots of traffic and a car with the little flag things on it and was sure we were caught in game traffic -- we live near one of the biggest basketball schools in the country which is also where the hospital is. I told Jim to drive on the side of the road to go around people. He thought I meant I wanted to pull over and kept saying we are almost there. About a mile from the hospital, I had to push. No panting was going to stop me from pushing then. There was no rational part of my being that was available to me any more. I was pushing.

4:30 p.m.
We pulled up to the ER and Jim ran inside to get help. Meanwhile, it was taking too long and these people waiting outside the ER were watching me and I was screaming and yelling, so I got out and walked in. They came with a wheelchair and I yelled, "NO, LAY DOWN!!!" Nothing like having the attention of the entire waiting room on you. They got the gurney, took me back, and started trying to take my clothes off, which they soon gave up on and just cut off, because I wasn't too cooperative at that point. They checked me out to make sure that the baby was OK and not already out and that I wasn't having a uterine rupture b/c it was a VBAC. The attending OB quickly came down from upstairs and restored a little order. There must have been about 20 people around me. ERs apparently aren't too equipped to handle deliveries. They couldn't wait to get me out of there and up to Labor and Delivery. The OB determined that everything was OK and that since the baby wasn't quite there, we could go up.

They got me up there to my surprised midwife who couldn't believe it was her patient who was the yelling person in labor coming up from the ER. The nurse manager was our neighbor and was also surprised to see us. The OB stayed with us as well. Several pushes later and we had our little guy at 5:02 p.m.! Our doula arrived about 15 minutes later.

Andrew came out with his hand up by his head, so I ended up with a deep 2nd degree tear, which just means that my butt hurts a lot and the dang midwives don't prescribe percocet.

We are in love with out little guy, and Daniel's warming up to him as well. He keeps trying to showing him his cars.