Do you? Because I really didn’t. But throughout this pregnancy, I heard the phrase time and time again. When I’d ask “whatever do you mean?” I got a similar response from all. 3rd babies are unpredictable. But I brushed that aside knowing that after 2 beautiful births, there was no mystery about how things would go down. I knew my labors started in the 39th week with spaced contractions at night followed by more powerful labor by morning and nice natural vaginal births without the ruckus of pitocin or epidurals. So when Jon and I sat down to watch a movie at 39+4 weeks gestation (“Love and Other Drugs” for those of you who like details) and I started having little contractions I thought, yep, right on track. A few more contractions (which Jon insists were augmented by seeing Jake Gyllenhaal’s tushie on screen)…I alerted the team. Which consists of my sister, Lisa (she hasn’t missed a delivery yet which is impressive considering we lived 500+ miles apart for the first 2 babies). The credits began to role at 10:30 pm and I thought I’d head to bed and see what became of things as I got some rest when I felt, hmm, something different. I believe my exact words were , “What the f***?” and I don’t curse for no good reason. I started to stand up and whooooosh – fluid spilled down my legs. Jon’s eyeballs began to bulge at this point and I stated the obvious…”my water broke!” Jon threw me a towel and I stood up again to a whooooooooosh and a soaked towel. By this time our former nanny had arrived to hold down the fort so we could go have a baby and she saw me streak across the living room with fluid soaking my PJs.
I went into the bathroom and a horrible thought hit me (for those of you who are not obstetricians, be thankful…It is a blessing AND a major curse to have lived on Labor and Delivery)…”this fluid is gushing out so fast and I’m dilated enough that the cord is going to prolapse!” So I immediately plopped myself down on the bathroom floor and even considered hoisting my hips in the air to try to keep the fluid from spilling out. It was no use. Fluid was going all over the bathroom floor. Clear fluid, thank goodness (again, obstetrician’s nightmare is to rupture at home and see sticky green meconium). So I yelled at Jon again to bring me a THIRD set of pants and another towel and some pads and a trash bag for the car seat. Another obstetrician’s fear (ok, this is EVERYone’s fear) is delivering in the car so I then became panicked that we just needed to get the heck out of dodge and make it to the safety net that is Community North. It’s not just that delivering in the car would be awful. It’s that my husband won’t even change a baby’s diaper if the umbilical cord stump is still attached – I could imagine him screaming for me to just not push as we fly down the road…or passing out right as the baby began to crown. I love my husband, but I had no faith in his ability to deliver me if it came to that. So we drove 85 miles/hour while I listened to the baby’s heartbeat with a doppler I borrowed from work (I promise, I will return it) because, again, I have seen too many bad things and I’ve got a mild case of OCD.
Anyway, we arrived safely at the hospital and I was escorted directly to a room. The triage nurse informed me I got to skip Go because “your doctor said YOU would KNOW if you are ruptured.” Ahh, yes, and so will everyone else if they just glance at my pants which were beginning to reveal the evidence. We got to our fantastic room (if you haven’t been in that hospital, it’s like entering a fancy hotel) and I got changed, sat down and closed my eyes. I tried to pretend I WAS in a fancy hotel for a minute just to calm myself down. This just wasn’t how I had planned it! I’m usually cool as a cucumber in labor, but this time I was thinking “where is that stinking nurse so she can hook me up to all the monitors and make sure this baby is doing ok without any fluid?!!!” She arrived, a lovely blonde named Jessica, and she did her thing and I pretended to be calm, but she knew the minute the blood pressure cuff read 147/93 that I it was a farce. My fears became even more evident when she said “baby looks great so you can get off these monitors and walk around” and I said, “nah, I think I’ll just sit here.” Again, I’m usually a stickler about letting me have mobility in labor but I was sorta frozen in fear of the umbilical cord getting squished with each contraction as I happily bounced on a labor ball. So I stayed in bed and told Jon and Lisa to get some rest. My contractions were picking up speed but I knew delivery wasn’t imminent.
About 3:30 in the morning I decided that sitting in a dark room with 2 sleeping people with hard contractions every 5 minutes was not working for me. I tried to wake up Jon but he was conked OUT. So I sat in miserable dark silence for awhile longer until my nurse came back in. I had her check my cervix and wake up Jon – I was 5-6cm. Baby looked good. All was well.
From there it becomes a bit more blurred. I remember getting up to use the bathroom, sitting back down and BLLLEECHK, vomiting. The nurse murmured “just transitioning” and I nodded in agreement thinking now THIS is my usual. In fact, I told her I’d need a bucket along the way because God knows labor just wouldn’t be as fun without retching. I believe it was somewhere around 6am at this point. The nurse checked me and said I was 8cm. She called my doc who was sleeping in the hospital to be readily available, and here is where things got a little, well, overwhelming. She checked me, said I was more like 7cm and that baby seemed to be OP (“sunny-side up” which sounds nice but is the bain of all laboring women’s existence). She put me in a Texas Roll (again, sounds nice and yummy but all it means is I had to lay all twisted on one side to see if he would fix his position) and sat with me for a good 20 minutes during which time I only had 3 contractions. Horrible, gut-wrenching, someone is trying to rip my uterus out of me contractions. I knew what was coming and as she said the words, the wind left my sail. “You need pitocin.” What?! You think I want these contractions MORE OFTEN? But I knew she had a point. My baby was getting a nice break between contractions which allowed his little punk head to keep turning back to OP instead of slamming it into the right position and holding it there as he made his voyage through my pelvis. And that is when I said something that I think Jon thought I would never, ever say…”If I’m getting pit, I’m getting an epidural.” Jon, in all his cuteness, tried to keep the old Angie alive and said, “wait, what would a midwife have you do?” (since I’d delivered our other boys with midwives, we’ve learned that they are masters of getting you through without the big E). I think I said, “they wouldn’t start pit and they’d make me walk. But I don’t care.”
Cue Mike, CNA extraordinaire. He was lightening fast and gave me the perfect light dose of numbing bliss. After 10 minutes I felt like a million bucks again. And baby didn’t seem to mind the change at first but a few minutes thereafter, the horse hoof pace of his heartbeat became a lazy snail pace. Funny thing is, I didn’t panic about it. I rolled myself over and waited patiently for it to come back up. At the same time I said, “I think I feel his head moving around really low” – like “push me out!” low. The nurse checked and I just had a lip of cervix left. She hadn’t even had time to start the pitocin (yay for me! my body DOES know what it is doing!). They called my doc back in the room, put my feet up in stirrups and I pushed with 2 contractions before I saw the beautiful little boy who is resting on my belly now as I type. The coolest thing was being so aware and comfortable as I pushed him out – I could feel his head crowning but it didn’t hurt. I reached down and touched his head thinking “darn it, if I’ve suckered myself into an epidural, I’m going to ENJOY it!” I then felt his little shoulders (thank god again, shoulders can be an OB nightmare) make their way out and he was placed on my chest. I held his skinny-fingered hand and giggled at his angry face. I saw his tufts of hair – brown maybe – and looked into his dark eyes. And at that moment, I realized that I didn’t care at all that he had thrown off my unwritten birth plan. After all, he’s a 3rd baby…and you know what they say about 3rd babies!!
