We went to our daughter’s two week appointment at the Doctor this week and I knew I had to sit down and write down her birth story. The past two weeks have been full of the most profound love I have ever experienced and have exceeded any of the hopes I knew I could have. I’m sleep deprived and still learning so much, but everything with my delivery, recovery, and experience being a Mom has been so much better than I ever expected.
This is the story of how I became a Mama and how little Evelyn came into the world.
I woke up at around 6 AM to go to the bathroom and then came back to bed to snuggle in and get warm again. I was having a hard time getting back to sleep and decided I would look up some items to help me after I was recovering from the hospital. Ironically, about five minutes later, my water broke.
My water breaking was so undeniable that I literally flew out of bed and ran to the bathroom again. I looked up what I should do since my water broke, naively thought that at some point I might stop leaking, and then called Devin on his phone from the bathroom.
“Hey Devin, my water broke.” His response: “are you sure!?” Uh yes. That made me laugh though. I called my OBGYN’s office and we felt a little less panicked.
In the next room, I heard Devin fling himself out of bed and heard him throwing items we had picked for my hospital bag into a backpack. Devin was panicking and asked me to come in and help him pack things. I told him that I couldn’t exactly leave the bathroom and I had no idea that I would even need feminine products for this. Our friends upstairs helped me get some products, but it still looked like I was leaving the house peeing my pants. I woofed down some egg rolls upstairs because my Doctor told me to eat before I came in and we drove the twenty minutes to the hospital.
After we got to the hospital, the nurse had to check me to make sure that my water actually broke. This was actually laughable because I spent the time on the bed completely gushing out. The nurse hooked me up to a monitor and told me that my contractions were 4 minutes apart; that was news to me because I couldn’t feel anything at all. However, my contractions weren’t doing anything to help me progress and they told me I would likely need to be induced.
I was wheeled to another room with Devin which was much bigger. They told me they would start my induction with a medicine called Cytotec that needed to dissolve in my mouth before we tried pitocin. Cyotec made my contractions really strong, but after a few hours, I still wasn’t progressing. I was starting to go into shock because my contractions were so strong. I was sweating so much that my IV tape etc. wasn’t sticking anymore and I had completely soaked the bed. I was really struggling, I began to feel really nauseous, and I could tell that I was likely going to pass out. I told my nurses I was really concerned how things were going to go for me having a vaginal birth if I passed out just from contractions. Within the next thirty minutes, my nurses had put zofran to help with the nausea and a pain med in my IV bag. I was extremely grateful!
For the next few hours, I was able to sleep between contractions because of the pain meds. I felt a little loopy, but it made everything so much more manageable. I was able to breath through my contractions and after snoozing most of the day, I asked at what point I was going to get my epidural. My Doctor checked me and I had now progressed only to a 5 cm. They told me the anesthesiologist would come in and give me my epidural soon. Honestly, this was the part that really scared me! I feel like I always heard a lot of horror stories about people’s epidurals not working and my pain meds were beginning to wear off.
The anesthesiologist came in to give me my epidural. I was kind of shocked, but it really didn’t hurt at all. I was really shocked how amazing my epidural was, but it was seriously heaven. I could feel my whole body, the pressure of my contractions, but no pain anymore. I quickly went to sleep for another two hours and was completely out. When I woke up around 5 PM, I had only dilated to 8 cm. At this point, my Doctors gave me pitocin because after 12 hours… I still wasn’t close.
After my epidural and pitocin, it only took three hours for my body to be dilated to 10 cm! I was shocked when my Doctor came in and told me that I was going to start pushing around 8 PM. At this point, I felt really confident because I knew how much my contractions hurt after being induced and I felt great with the epidural. Beyond that, I had slept all day off and on and I felt well rested. I reminded myself that I can do anything for a day, felt really excited, and told myself that I was going to be able to meet my little girl.
Out of all of the things I had looked up during pregnancy, how to actually push was not one of them. I ended up pushing for two and a half hours with little to no progress for Evelyn to come out. I was really struggling getting enough air which kept messing up my pushing (I should have taken my inhaler prior to this). My Doctor gave me an oxygen mask which really helped, but I was still really struggling getting enough air. My nurse was so encouraging and Devin was so helpful, but there just wasn’t any progress.
My blood pressure was amazing the whole time and so was her heart beat, but I knew that they probably wouldn’t let me push for much longer before they gave me a c-section. I could see the concern of the nurse and Doctor. I was struggling to stay awake in between my pushing because my body was starting to become so tired and I couldn’t stop shaking. I ended up saying a lot of prayers in between my contractions to myself. I asked God that Evelyn would come healthily, be safe, and that I could have minimal trauma.
After my last prayer, I told my nurse that I had a completely new feeling between contractions that I couldn’t explain. From her ultrasound a week earlier, Evelyn was face up and ideally babies need to come out face down. My Doctor and nurse told me they thought she was flipping herself, which would be really amazing, and she did!! With the next contraction, they told me they could see her head.
At this point, Devin was beyond himself he was so excited. Everyone kept laughing and talking about her hair. They told me to push one more time and then wait. Well, my body could not wait. I felt the pressure of her head coming out of my body and my body pushed the rest of her out. I knew as quickly as she was coming that I probably would tear and I yelled for Devin to hit my epidural button 😂.
My Doctor wasn’t even able to get her full medical scrubs on before my baby was out! They asked Devin if he wanted to cut her umbilical cord and I could tell he hesitated which made me laugh.
I felt confused though because there was silence. Wasn’t there supposed to be crying?
My nurse asked me to push again for everything else to come out and I did. I tried reading the energy of the room since Evelyn was so quiet and it was calm. They held Evelyn over me and I told her “hello pretty girl” several times, but then they took her to be cleaned up. I remember my nurse saying there was a lot of blood and my Doctor told me she needed to stitch me up before I held my baby. Devin took Evelyn from the testing nurses while they talked about her Apgar score. I was concerned because the room was so quiet, but her score was excellent at 5 minutes and the nurses kept talking about how happy and calm Evelyn was.
It took a while for me to get stitched up because I had a third degree tear, but I couldn’t believe it when they brought me Evelyn. She stared up at me with her big eyes and then she smiled. I thought maybe it was in my head because everyone always says that newborns can’t smile, but then the whole room mentioned how she was smiling at me.
I couldn’t believe this was my baby and I couldn’t believe how much love I felt for her. We talked to Evelyn quietly and the nurses and Doctor told us we’d have a hour spending just time with her.
Initially, there was concern that I would hemorrhage, but I didn’t. They ended up discharging us from the hospital earlier than they said we would because of it.
A c-section was right on my heels and Evelyn turned herself and couldn’t come out fast enough.
I have a third degree tear, but my tolerance for pain is actually pretty high from my car wrecks and my recovery has been great.
I worried what our bond would be like, and now I realize how silly that was.
Everything that could have happened didn’t, and instead, I found myself telling Devin “I can do this again, but not tomorrow” and began laughing. My Doctor was stitching me up and looked at me like I had completely lost it 😂.
I know we were very lucky, blessed, and watched over with my whole experience.
♥♥♥♥
Time has already been speeding up so much since she was born. My delivery and recovery experiences were excellent and everyone was so nice. Presents are still pouring into our house and I have a list a mile long of thank you cards to write. Feeding has been a challenge because of little one’s mouth shape, but it has been getting better everyday and we’ve had a lot of medical support. We’ve been soaking up the sweet newborn smell and laughing over the silly situations that happen now. We’ve been extremely sleep deprived and completely blissed out, but Evelyn has been the best thing that we’ve had happen to our family.