As Xinerville suggested, I'm copy-pasting (with some grammar edits) my post to the November Moms list here.
Baby Boy (we won't name him until the eighth day after his birth) was born on Wednesday morning, on his due date, at 7lbs 1oz.
Last time I posted I said I'd had accelerating contractions all Sunday night and Monday, and that over Monday night (2-5 am) they slowed back down to every five minutes or so. Well, they sped up again to every three minutes pretty quickly, and stayed there ALL DAY. Baby was facing up, so the pain was mostly in my back, and I couldn't bear to lie down...or stand up...or lean over. I spent the entire time from when I got back from school on Monday evening until my water broke Tuesday night sitting on the foot of my bed braced against the wall making DH come in from the other room to hand me things that were only two feet away because whenever I moved I would get a particularly strong contraction. Still, because the pain was all in my lower abdomen, and the midwife had said that once I was in active labor it would hurt all over, I was figuring nothing was happening. Even though I'd been a big proponent of natural labor all along, I really couldn't imagine it getting much worse and being bearable, though.
So... At around 10 pm, my water broke, and as the discharge was greenish-brown (meconium), we headed straight for the hospital. As soon as my water broke the contractions starting coming every other minute and got dramatically more intense. When we got to the hospital it took them over an hour to triage me because 1) they didn't have long enough straps for the monitors, and 2) I wasn't capable of lying down. I would lie down, and as soon as a contraction hit I was like a Jack-in-the-Box. Eventually, they just put an internal monitor on and didn't bother with the contractions monitor. To get through contractions I made my husband and a friend who was there to help with labor push against my lower back with all their strenghth -- to the point where I still have yellow bruises across my lower back -- but it was worth it for the pain relief. Anyway, I hadn't slept since Saturday night, and I was so tired that my eyes were rolling and I was dozing off in the 30 seconds or so between contractions. The midwife strongly recommended getting an epidural because she didn't think I'd have the energy to push a baby out if I didn't get some sleep, particularly if labor took another few hours. I had to lie down for her to examine me, and I was so afraid of lying down and the process was so painful that it took me 15 minutes to do so! I was 8 centimeters dilated, but we didn't know how fast I was progressing because it was the first time I'd been examined...ever...so we were still going to go ahead with the epidural. Except that as they were positioning me for the anesthesiologist to get at my back I started to push and baby was out within 25 minutes.
The birth itself was pretty stressful. First of all, because of the meconium, they needed a doctor in the room, and because I was progressing very quickly, there wasn't one around. By the time they realized I was pushing (by then the baby had turned, so I had no trouble lying down any more) the baby was already at +1 station, and the nurse went running down the hall screaming "Peds!" That wasn't reassuring... The doctor came running in pushing his cart asking "Where's the baby? Where's the baby?" And when he was told the baby wasn't born yet, sank into a chair and fell asleep. For the first couple of contractions I pushed as I felt comfortable, but then all of a sudden it felt like everyone was yelling at me to get the baby out as soon as possible. As soon as I would release a push the midwife would say "Okay, deep breath and push again, as hard as you can!" There was some panic in her voice. Afterwards, I found out the baby's heartrate had been dropping into the 40s during contractions and wasn't rising high enough in between and they had an anesthesiologist outside with a mask waiting to slap it on my face if I wasn't moving fast enough as they ran me to an OR. Happily, I did move fast enough and the baby came out naturally, with 9/9 Apgar scores, so apparently the drop in his heartrate didn't affect him all that much.
It turned out the meconium had been passed days earlier, to judge by the staining of the cord, and the pediatrician suctioned out his lungs for what seemed to me like forever. Because of that, it took a while before I got to hold him, but once he did come to me he nursed like a champ and stayed awake and alert for a good two hours. Although I was feeling fine that first day, we stayed in the hospital the whole two days because one of the pediatricians who saw him his first day panicked about some sound only he heard in his lungs, but everything checked out.
The most incredible part of giving birth is that as soon as baby is out, all the pain is totally, completely gone -- and not just the labor pain. I had mild carpal tunnel syndrome the last month of the pregnancy, and my wrists still hurt when I started pushing but by the time I was handed baby, the pain was completely gone. There is something unnatural about it, but hey, I'm not complaining!
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