Birth Story pt. 3

Around 5:30, it was time to start pushing. I could feel my epidural had essentially worn off. It was still fairly effective on my right side, but on my left side, I felt EVERYTHING. It was so, so painful, AND the baby was up in my ribs. I felt foolish pushing, because I didn't feel that urge to push that everyone talks about...but I found out quickly that when I pushed, it took my mind off of the pain from my contractions. I began to live for the moment when the nurse told me I could push again. After about fifteen minutes, the baby was no longer in my ribs and I could feel that I was actually making progress! I tried pushing both on my back and on my side, and it took about 45 minutes of pushing.

When Lily made her appearance, it honestly took me by surprise. It felt like any other push, and all of a sudden I felt her. There was a human coming out of me. Wierd.

I had that thought for about a second, literally, and then realized:

It's time to meet my child.

The doctor held the baby up for us to see, and I quickly leaned around to see what we had, because the umbilical cord was blocking my view.

It was a girl. A beautiful, sweet, baby girl. I couldn't believe it. I said, "It's a girl! It's a girl!" to Mr. ABC123 and we both cried. They laid her on my chest, and I was absolutely in love. That moment of finding out that we had a daughter after all those months of waiting was every bit as perfect as I hoped it would be.

Immediately after she was born, I noticed the doctor getting a little frantic. I happened to glance up at the TV in our room (which was off), and I saw what my doctor was seeing.

There was blood EVERYWHERE.

Basically, they couldn't get me to stop bleeding, and the placenta didn't come out all at once. It took a long time of them working on me, but they got it to stop. Of course, they had to pump me full of medication, so I was violently ill for the next four hours. They had to wait a long time to even be able to move me out of delivery and into the Mother/Baby unit, I was so sick. Normally, the mommies get to hold their babies as they are wheeled up to their rooms. Instead, I got to hold a bedpan to throw up in while my husband wheeled our baby in a basinette. I was able to try nursing her, which was all I really cared about.

We decided to have Lily spend her first night in the nursery instead of rooming in. It killed me to be seperated from her, but I had been awake for over 40 hours and was so, so sick....I needed my rest badly. They promised to bring her to me whenever she needed to eat, so I let them wheel my baby down the hall while I fell into the most glorious sleep--FLAT ON MY BACK, for the first time in months. Of course, you never really rest very well in the hospital, what with nurses coming in all the time to check your vitals (and in my case, my stitches--I tore--and to make sure I wasn't bleeding excessively). Plus, Lily spent most of the night in my room anyway, because they had to wait on orderlies to come and wheel her back to the nursery after I fed her, which took a long time, and I wasn't about to fall asleep and wake up to her gone, without me knowing what had happened! She probably only spent two hours in the nursery, total.

We brought her home on Wednesday, August 31st. I will try to post pictures later, but I've spent every moment since falling more and more in love with my beautifully perfect baby Lily.