a labor story

As promised, here is the story of the events leading up to Aidan's birth. I'll warn you now: labor stories are not for the squeamish, faint of heart, or anyone who does not like reading long stories. I might mention words like POOP, PAIN, and DOWN THERE, although maybe not all in the same reference. And this is a loooong story, but one with a wonderful ending. So if you don't like hearing about bodily anything, just know that Aidan and I made it through happy and healthy. For the rest of you - the curious, the pregnant ones, and the unsqueamish - here's the tale:

The entire week or so leading up to Aidan's birthday, I'd had a bad cold. The kind that makes you hack continuously and marvel at the color of what you cough up (see? Told you it might get gross.) It had reached that stage where I was actually getting better, but coughing more - my throat was irritated, which made me cough more, which made my throat MORE irritated, etc. Early Thursday morning around 5am, on the 7th, I had a huge coughing fit (after having been up all night coughing), threw up, and then had a contraction. I'd been having those painless Braxton-Hicks contractions for weeks, the strange tightening sensation in my abdomen, but this wasn't painless - this hurt. Not bad enough to make me say "ow", but bad enough that I thought, hey, a contraction! Maybe I'll go into labor soon! I had about three more like that over the course of a couple of hours, and I woke Jason up to tell him hey! I'm having contractions! They kind of hurt! I was giddy, he was excited. Whee! Contractions!

The rest of the day, they continued. Never regular, never horrible enough to do anything about it. I played video games all day, and I figured that it would be "real" labor if the contractions got bad enough that I couldn't concentrate on the video game any more.

I scored a record high score on that video game that day, but by 4pm, I was exhausted from the lack of sleep, very uncomfortable, and not feeling like going to worship practice that night. I didn't think it was labor... but it wasn't a day at the circus, either. I called Jason and told him I didn't feel up for rehearsal. I ended up agreeing to meet him at Moe's for some burritos, thinking Tex-Mex would make me feel better and get me through the night's rehearsal. I ate a burrito. I got more and more uncomfortable, and my back was really starting to bother me. It felt like I had to take a really, really big poo... but I couldn't.

I don't remember much of rehearsal that night, except that I kept running to the bathroom, thinking I had to poo, and walking around the sanctuary in large circles while our worship leader and my husband both smiled nervously at me.

By the time we got home that night around 9pm, we started timing the contractions. And for an hour, they were about 45 seconds long and four minutes apart. Four minutes apart! Maybe this really WAS labor! Whee! Ow! Whee!

10pm: contractions went away. What? Jason and I had just been debating whether to head to the hospital after only an hour of regular contractions when a good 12 minutes went by without one. And the one that ended the 12 minutes? Minor. I was bummed, still uncomfortable, and totally exhausted. I imagined weeks more of this false alarm business, and I wanted to cry. But I had a scheduled OB appointment at the hospital in the morning, and Jason and I decided to bring our packed bags, just in case. After all, the week before, I'd been 3 centimeters dilated - maybe the doctor would give us some encouraging news of progress in the morning to make up for the night's false alarm disappointment. We went to bed.

I didn't sleep a wink. Those contractions, still irregular, became worse and worse in intensity. I didn't even try to do anything else except wander around the house in a daze all night, randomly picking up the cat and putting her back down again, watching bad infomercials, rubbing my belly.

In the morning, I was cranky, even more exhausted, and determined that I was not coming back to the house that day. We arrived at the OB's office at 9am, and I begged him to please not send me home. I burst into tears. I moaned softly with each contraction. He said he'd check my progress, and he found me 100% effaced and 4 centimeters. "Well," he said, "let's help things along." And then he did something that made me squirm in pain, which I later found out was "stripping my membranes" (about as comfortable as it sounds, yes). He sent me next door to triage with an order to directly admit me to Labor and Delivery and wished us luck.

Unfortunately, we spent the next four hours in triage, where my contractions quickly went from "ow" to "please put a bullet in my head and end my misery". Turns out that Labor and Delivery was a bit, um, full, because apparently every woman wanted to give birth on such a lucky and prosperous date (8-8-08). I moaned, cried, leaned on Jason, tried to remember my Lamaze breathing but ended up just sort of clenching my body and grinding my teeth. Pretty sure they didn't teach that part in the childbirth class, but there I was. I'm normally sickeningly polite to medical staff, even under duress, but I was starting to break down, get cranky, and think some vastly unpleasant thoughts about my overly-chipper nurse who kept promising me, "soon, soon, I'm sure they'll admit you soon".

Finally, around 1:30pm, we got our room in Labor and Delivery. Hallelujah! I was wheeled up, still exhausted, still moaning intermittently, but I had visions of epidurals dancing in my head. As I was wheeled upstairs in my wheelchair, I thought that maybe if I asked sweetly enough, I might be able to get TWO epidurals. Ooh. Yes. That would be divine.

We arrive at our room, I have another whopping contraction, I get settled into bed, the super-cool L&D nurse begins her admission assessment, I have another whopping contraction, we commiserate over the futility of the new online charting system (since I am a fellow employee), and when another contraction hit, I asked, as nicely as I could muster, if I could please have my epidural now. Please. Oh dear Lord. PLEASE. And my super-cool L&D nurse checks me - I'm only about 5 centimeters, so no, not too late for an epidural. Yay! And she checks all my orders... and there's a groan, and she tells me that before I can have my epidural, she has to first send off bloodwork to make sure I won't bleed into my spine when I actually have the epidural, bloodwork that was supposed to have been done by my overly-chipper triage nurse but wasn't. I started to cry, another horrible contraction hit, and I threw up into the trash can. She got the blood quickly and sent it with a "stat" request, and about 20 minutes later, I got the all clear for an epidural.

The two CRNAs who came to do my epidural were nice women, both about my age, chatty and relaxed. I, unfortunately, could not relax - all the pain had made my body very, very tense, which I found out makes putting in the needle for an epidural rather difficult (and rather uncomfortable for me, though NOTHING like a contraction). Finally, I hear one of them say, "I think I got it", I felt a zing down my right leg, and it was in. I asked them how long it would take the medicine to kick in. They said about 15 minutes. Five minutes later, one of them asked me if I was feeling a contraction. Well, no, actually, I wasn't. Had they stopped? They laughed as they looked at me and then to the monitor, saying, "Well, you're having one off the charts right now." You mean I can't feel the pain anymore? PRAISE JESUS.

I'm not of that persuasion, and I do love my husband, but I swear, I was totally ready to make out with either of those CRNAs, right then and there. When the full fifteen minutes had passed, not only was I not feeling any pain, but I felt better than I had in about 10 months. I turned into some fun hybrid of the Seven Dwarfs: I was sleepy, happy, dopey, everything but grumpy. Oh, blessed epidural, gift from heaven.

Half an hour after I got my epidural, the baby's heart rate dropped. It dropped lower than mine, into the 60's, but when it first happened, I was so relaxed and happy, I didn't notice until my super-cool nurse yelled out into the hallway for help, and suddenly the room was filled with people. I was told to turn on my left side - didn't help. I was told to turn on my right side - nothing. And then as the team of doctors and residents came in, I was told to get on all fours. I kept hearing words like "fetal distress" and "this isn't good" as my bare ass was exposed to a dozen strangers (and the window, I might add). I got a shot of something in my hip that made my heart race, but the baby's heart rate came up again. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, left the room, and I got to cover up my butt again and lie down. I was put on an oxygen mask, and I fell asleep.

A few hours later, same situation. Same turning from side to side, with the eventual butt-in-the-air being the final position. No shot this time, but a concerned-looking doctor warned me that if it happened a third time, we might need to do a C-section. I must say that if you're about to tell your patient that they might need to have major abdominal surgery emergently, it's probably a good idea to have a significant amount of narcotics in said patient's system, because when I was told all of this, I think I just sort of shrugged my shoulders and said, "Okay, whatever you think is best."

Around 8pm, I was 8 centimeters dilated - I was on my way! And maybe just a little freaked out about the idea of pushing this baby out, you know, DOWN THERE, but ready to meet my little man. And just as I thought I was ready to do this, well, there went his heart rate again. I moved around. I put my butt in the air. No change. A large group of doctors, residents, and nurses were once again surrounding me, and even though I wasn't fully dilated, they had me do a "test" push to see if I could get the baby out now. I found out just how hard it is to push when you can't feel yourself pushing - was I pushing? I tried. I grunted - did that count? Maybe. At any rate, my doctor said, "Nope, didn't work. Let's go to the OR." I was going to have an emergency C-section.

I was actually a bit relieved - in just a few minutes, I was going to meet my baby boy, and I wouldn't have to worry about tearing or episiotomies or exhausting myself from hours of pushing. Plus, I didn't like how worried everyone was about his dropping heart rate - I think the narcotics dulled me a bit, because I knew I should be worried, too, but I was strangely unaffected until I got into the OR. Maybe it was something about the bright lights, or the chill of the room, or whatever, but it suddenly hit me that I was about to have major surgery, that Something was Wrong, and that everything was happening too fast, and I started to shake. And cry. And shake a whole lot more, which I found out later was due to the anesthesia, but man alive, I thought I was going to shake right off that table. It was also the first time all day that I didn't have Jason right by my side - he needed to gown up first - and that made me cry even more. The doctor kept poking me with needles to see if the anesthesia was working. I kept shaking. Everyone was rushing around me. Jason finally showed up, wiped my tears away, and held my hand.

Next thing I knew, I heard one of the doctors say, "Okay, lots of pressure, lots of pulling", and sure enough, there was pressure and pulling. It didn't hurt at all, but it was a weird, strange feeling, this tug-of-war between medical professionals and your internal organs. I couldn't see any of it, even though the nurse in me was highly curious and wanted to see what my open belly looked like (I know, I'm strange). More pulling and pressure... and then I heard him cry, a healthy, full-lunged wail. He was okay! It took me a few minutes to realize that this was MY baby crying, not someone else's, but soon I was crying, too, and Jason was calling out from over the curtain to me, "He's beautiful!"

And so it was that Aidan Michael Vermeulen came into this world, on August 8, 2008 at 9:35pm, slightly bruised from all the time he spent up against my pelvic bones, but healthy and beautiful and ours.

It was love at first sight.