Isaac Alexander Whidden
August 17, 2010, 11:07 a.m.
8 lbs 8 oz, 20 inches long
The week or so leading up to Isaac’s birthday was a busy one to say the least. Wednesday August 11 I had my 38 week prenatal appt. I was checked and found to be at 3 cm already and pretty thinned out. I was given the okay to travel though. Thursday Mason had to have day surgery in Saint John, everything went well. Friday I was taking care of my poor recovering baby, and also cleaned the living room. I stayed at my mom’s house that night, for my last baby free evening in what I imagine will be a very long time. Saturday morning I had a massage, it was a gift from Mom for my birthday, we headed back home and Chris' brother Andrew and his girlfriend came over for the afternoon. Sunday we did a giant grocery shopping haul, we wanted to get a bunch of stuff so we could cook some meals to freeze before the baby showed up. I had planned to do some cooking Monday, but Mason was a bit fussy so I took it easy and relaxed most of the day. I still had a week until my due date, and while I thought it'd be nice if he showed up early I wasn't getting my hopes up. I took a bit of a nap while he did, and just chilled, I got his overnight bag for my Mom’s ready and rounded up some stuff for ours.
I went to bed around midnight that night, I was feeling a bit contraction-y (cx), but nothing that seemed any worse than my usual ones that came and went. By 1:30 am I was still awake, and they were getting harder and harder to ignore, I was also having a lot of small but frequent bowel movements. At 3 am I decided to take a bath and start timing the cx. I was in the tub for about 30 mins and they were averaging around 6 min apart. When I got out I called L&D, and since I was GBS+ they suggested I come in, no big rush just whenever I got to it. I started packing our bag and the cx got a lot closer and much more painful. Chris got up and helped get the last minute things ready, like helping with the bag and installing the car seat. I was having trouble finishing the bag, I was getting really overheated and nauseous. Just before we left I threw up, something that never happened in my first labour. We managed to get everything rounded up and got Mason loaded up in the car shortly after 4 am and headed to my Mom’s to drop him off.
It was close to 5 am by the time we got to the hospital and up to L&D, I got changed and checked and was at 5 cm. The nurse got me the ball and I hung out on that while she put in my IV (very clumsily might I add) and started my GBS antibiotics. I was having a lot of trouble with the cx because I was having extremely excruciating back labour. I was practically sobbing through every cx because my back, hips and thighs were just in agony, I hardly felt a thing in my uterus. At some point not long after I got there I asked for an epidural, but it was late and there was something else going on, so I had to wait. I finally got it at around 6:45 am, and felt for the most part better, but I was still having pain in my right hip, but it was tolerable to breathe through. They waited about 30 mins to make sure everything had taken affect and then checked me before putting in my cath, I was still at 5 cm but my bag of water was bulging. Not 10 min after I was checked and my cath was put in my water broke, which was a very strange sensation. There was a little meconium in the fluid but nothing major or worrisome. At this time the shift changed so I had a new RN and OB. The entire time I was there the baby’s heart rate was dipping along with my cx, I was worried that they would use this as a reason not to go ahead with the VBAC, but my OB said that she was fine with it since they were with the cxs not random, and they were coming right back up as soon as the cx was done, so she was okay with it. She also said that I was in fact experiencing back labour, baby was “sunny side up” as she put it. At around 8:30 am I was still having a lot of hip pain and having to breathe through all my cx, so the RN called in the new anaesthesiologist to see about topping me off. He checked my levels and everything was still fine, so he gave me just a little bit and told them to roll me onto my right side. After that I was checked again and to my surprise I had gone from 5 cm to 9 cm in just over an hour!
At some point between 9-9:30 am I was fully dilated and it was time to start pushing. They deflated my cath bulb and said it would come out while I pushed. The whole pushing thing is kind of a blur of pain. Chris was there holding my leg the entire time, watching the whole thing. By pushing I managed to get him to turn half way, but he was still sideways so the pushing was kind of in vain. At that point the OB came in and had to help turn him the rest of the way, which was incredibly painful, but effective because pushing did get a little easier after that. Towards the end I started to wuss out, this pushing business was hard, I felt like I was about to split in half. There was a lot of “I’m tired, I don’t want to push anymore, it hurts too much, etc” coming from me, and a lot of “Pull yourself together, you can do this, you have to do this, no one else can do it for you” from the RN. We were getting to the end but something just wasn’t giving, the OB said she was going to do an episiotomy, at which point I almost actually jumped up and said “NO!” She asked why, I said tears heal better, which she agreed with, and said she almost never does episiotomies anymore. “So what makes me so damn special?” She said I had already torn a bit, as well as in other places, but she was afraid I would end up with a 3rd degree or worse tear, there was just a lip of skin that was keeping him in. Exhausted, tired and sore, I agreed to it. The snip was made and within the next 2-3 pushes his head was out (covered in a massive amount of blonde hair), followed closely by his shoulders and body! At 11:07 am Isaac Alexander was born and after nearly 2 hours of pushing I was finally done!!!
Chris cut the cord and they put him on my chest while they dealt with the placenta. They got me all prepped and started work on stitching me up, my legs felt like jelly, so having them up for all the stitching was hard. I did skin to skin with Isaac and tried nursing, but he wasn’t interested so we just cuddled. After a bit the nurse took him just to a table by my bed to clean him up a bit and do his and then I let Chris have some time with him while they continued to work on me. He was 8 lbs 7.5 oz (which they rounded up to 8 oz) and 20 inches long, with apgars of 9/9. The OB said I had “a lot” of 2nd degree tears, internally as well as my labia, in addition to the episiotomy, so the boy sure did a swell job of literally tearing me a new one. It took almost an hour to put me back together, pretty much as soon as she was done they took out my epi. I got him to nurse for a bit and then they rushed me off to shower. We only had to stay at the hospital for 1 day which was great compared to the 4 night stay with Mason.
Breastfeeding is a tad painful still, but infinitely better than it was with Mason, and I also haven’t really been hit with the “blues” yet. Big brother is adjusting. He is teething and still a bit sore so he is understandably a little crankier than usual. But he is quite fond of his baby brother and loves to give him kisses. We’re trying to be patient with him and give him attention whenever we can. DH got almost an extra week off since Isaac showed up 6 days early, so I have him home with me until Sept 7, which is a godsend, he’s been pretty much taking care of Mason while I am restricted to being a milk factory. I hope we can integrate Isaac into Mason’s routine before he goes back to work. I will say that the recovery for a vaginal birth is so different from my c-section(c/s), in some ways even more painful. I had a very easy recovery from my c/s, and this one has been rougher in a lot of ways. The day after the birth I wasn’t even sure that the VBAC was worth it to be honest, and quite frankly I’m still on the fence. We’ll have to see how ambitious I’m feeling once baby #3 comes along as to what manner of birth I’ll choose.
So that’s pretty much it. If you read the whole thing congrats. As I finish this story I’m sitting here with Isaac napping in my lap, and Mason is sitting in his high chair eating his lunch. I can’t believe this is my life now.
