The Headley Family: My Birth Story

I guess the spicy tacos and sex worked because on February 3rd around 5pm, I went into labor. Instead of typing up another post, I'll post my birth story. Reader beware: It's long!

My Birth Story:

I was due February 14 and thought that was seriously one of the best due dates to be given. Well, that and Halloween but I was ecstatic that I was due on Valentine's Day and that I was having a girl! I kept thinking my whole pregnancy how great it would be to give birth on Valentine's Day and that's what I wanted... until the end of January that is. I then told myself that I did not care about having a Valentine's baby as long as she was healthy. I still wanted her to come in February because that is after all one of my favorite months and also I wasn't technically considered full term until then. I also started to get a bit jealous towards the end of my pregnancy of all of the other women I knew that had had their babies when I was still pregnant, and it felt like an eternity until Aubrey made her debut. I kept thinking to myself, "this baby is never going to come out and I will be pregnant forever."

My doctor decided to send me for one more ultrasound to check the size of the baby because my blood pressure had been so up and down my whole pregnancy. My blood pressure obviously did not have any effect on the baby because when I had my last growth scan at 38 weeks, 4 days she was estimated to be 8 pounds, 1 ounce. After my ultrasound I saw my doctor who decided that she would not let me go past 40 weeks and that if I had not gone in to labor by my next appointment at 39 weeks, 4 days I would pick a day to be induced. I figured I would shoot for Valentine's Day because it was only a few days away from then and I had already come this far.

That night I joked with Alex that I was going to eat a ton of tacos and hope that brought on labor. Of course I was joking about having tacos because who at 38 weeks pregnant wants to eat tacos, right? I mean HEARTBURN CITY! But Alex who loves tacos and did not get to eat many my whole pregnancy because I would always shoot down his taco dinner ideas, got his tacos that night. He was happy but I, as predicted, got heartburn. However, I did wake up the next morning with some, "today could be the day" pregnancy symptoms. Maybe it was a coincidence but I decided to take some tums, suck it up and give the leftover tacos another go and had them for lunch. After I ate that hell on a taco shell I took a nap and woke up 3 hours later with cramps that were not very painful but more of that annoying cramping you get when it's that oh so joyous time of the month. I took a shower and waited to see what happened. I did not have to wait long because thirty minutes later my cramping was INTENSE! I told my mom and she started timing my contractions. They were about three to four minutes apart so I decided to go to the hospital. Of course this was the one day that Alex was about an hour and a half away doing an orientation for a new job that he had started. We even joked about me going in to labor the day he had this orientation and sure enough I did. My mom called him to let him know we were on the way and then she drove me to the hospital. The whole way there I did not feel too bad, just very crampy and we called a few family members to tell them that tonight might have been the night.

I arrived at the hospital at 6 o'clock pm and went directly to Labor & Delivery where it took them forever to come in and hook me up to the monitor. Finally a nurse came in and hooked me up for the baby's heart rate and my contractions. Her heart rate was strong and my contractions looked like little hills, one after the other. Alex finally got to the hospital about an hour later and by then I had been checked and was 3 CM dilated and 75% effaced. My mom decided to leave and I was told to go walk for two hours and then come back. I walked around the hospital for exactly two hours and the pain intensity picked up every fifteen minutes it seemed. I went back up to L&D at 10pm where I was checked and incredibly bummed to learn that I was only at 3 ½ CM. Alex then told me that his parents and brother were there and that my mom was on her way back with my sister Holly who wanted to be there for the delivery. I was a little worried when Alex told me we had family there because I thought for sure they would say this was another false alarm and send me home but no, they told me to walk for two more hours and come back.

I started walking at 10pm with Alex and my mother-in-law. I walked up flights of stairs and around the parking garage where Alex's mom had parked because she had a box of diapers and some things she had made for the baby to give us. We walked back to the hospital and that's when the pain really got bad. I had to take breaks almost every three minutes and finally I could not take it. I went back to L&D with tears in my eyes at 11pm and told them I could not walk anymore and begged them to not send me home and to give me something for the pain. They checked me ten minutes later and I was surprised and relieved to learn that I was 6 CM. I even said some inappropriate words to describe how happy I was. I was admitted at 11:30 and received a dose of pain medicine through an IV. It made me sick at first and caused me to vomit a couple of times but then it started to help a little. It did not kill the pain completely but it made it a little bit better and also made me feel like I was on drugs. Alex sort of stared at me because I was a little loopy. Forty-five minutes later the anesthesiologist came to give me my epidural and let me just say that whoever invented an epidural was a freaking genius! Almost instantly my pain was gone. I kept looking at the monitor and seeing huge hills from contractions so close together and not feeling any of them. I was checked throughout the night and by the morning, I was at 8 CM. I thought for sure that my baby girl would be here soon. How wrong I was. I stayed at an 8 for what seemed like forever and finally I was given Pitocin at noon to speed things up. After the Pitocin things started to get very aggravating. I had a nurse who looked like she was straight out of high school and did not seem to know what she was doing. I'd ask her questions and she'd always give me a response of something like, "I'm not sure" or "Let me find out" just what I needed. I also had a doctor who was so rude and acted like she did not want to be there.

At about 1pm they noticed that my bag had ruptured from the top and Aubrey, after almost 8 hours of waiting, had finally dropped so they went ahead and broke my water. After that it seemed things went by really fast and got more intense. They checked me at 3:45pm and I was at 9 CM. By then my epidural had worn off and the doctor informed me that it would probably be a while until I was at 10 CM and being a fist time mom, it would take a couple, if not a few hours to push. I did not want to hear that because I seriously felt the worst pain I have ever felt in my life and to describe it - it felt like someone had put a shotgun up my butt. I was in so much pain I asked everyone to leave the room. That included Alex, my mom, my sister Holly and Alex's mother. I wasn't trying to be mean, I think I just did not want them to see me cry and as soon as they all left I did. And I cried hard. At almost 4pm, not even 15 minutes later I was in the worst pain I had ever been in. I begged the doctor to check me so she did and believe it or not I was a 10. She was shocked as was everyone else. She told me I could start pushing but nothing would happen just yet but I did it anyway. I pushed, they counted to ten and I took a deep breath but I still felt like I needed to push. It was almost like being constipated times one hundred and I needed to get it out of me. The doctor gave me an attitude and told me I could keep pushing but I would ultimately tire myself out and have no energy to push later but I proved her wrong. She left the room and I kept pushing and two minutes later she was called back in because I was crowning. I started pushing on my own at 4pm and I begged someone to run down to the waiting room to get Alex but they said there was not enough time. I felt horrible and prayed that by some miracle Alex would just walk back up but he didn't. Holly did though and by the time she got there Aubrey was already here. I felt horrible. Alex had missed the birth of his first child. His first baby girl and he did not get to cut the cord like he wanted. I felt like I had taken that away from him all because I was in pain and didn't want anyone to see my cry.

Aubrey arrived at 4:04pm, 4 minutes exactly after I started pushing and weighed 8 pounds, 5 ounces and was 20 ¾ inches long.

After Aubrey came, I found out that one of the reasons I was in so much pain was not because I had just delivered an 8 pound baby in four minutes but because that 8 pound baby had torn me and torn me kind of bad. I had to deliver the placenta before they could stitch me up and all I have to say is that delivering a placenta is one of the nastiest feelings ever. Alex was there for that and I think he wished he wasn't. It took almost 45 minutes to stitch me up and because my epidural was gone, I felt everything but it was worth it because she is. After everything was over I finally got to see her before they took her away to the nursery and seeing her is a feeling that I cannot describe and no one would ever understand that feeling unless they have had a child. It took seventeen hours of labor and a ton of pain but I would do it again and a hundred times more just for her.