Giving Birth to Nathaniel

I want to capture this before I forget all the details.



When I went to the doctor on Thursday and she told me I was 4cm dilated, I sort of had a hunch that the little one might come that night. I even went to bed telling Jake that tonight was likely the night, (tho I must admit I’d said similar things before).

Around 3am, I woke up feeling a bit funny. Had to go to the bathroom three times in a row ad had a bit of pain but nothing too strong. I lay down in bed but couldn’t fall asleep. Jake had to get up to go to work at 4am so I didn’t want to wake him up and decided to get up. As I got up, I felt some water and thought maybe my water broke. A trip to the bathroom showed some fresh blood so I got worried and called the hospital. They told me it could be my water and to come in.

So I woke up Jake and told him I thought it was time. We packed up the few things that were left, got some clothes for David, woke him up and piled in the car. Halfway to the hospital, we realized we didn’t have any shoes for David and went back home to get them. I still had no pain and was starting to worry that maybe it was all false and Jake was going to miss work on a particularly bad day to miss work. He kept trying to send an email as we drove to let them know he might not come in. We pulled over to do that, too, and then finally got to the hospital.



He dropped me off and went to park with David. I got one of the guards to walk me to the labor and delivery area and one of the nurses put me in a room to check if my water had indeed broken. It was 4:20am. As it turned out, it hadn’t. While I felt terrible about hauling everyone to the hospital, the nurse said she wanted to keep me there a while longer to see how far apart my contractions were. They were about 5mins apart. This normally would mean going back home but since it was my second labor, she said she wanted to check how dilated I was and that I might have to stay since things might progress pretty fast.

As it turned out, I was 5cm so she told me I wasn’t going home, it was likely that I’d have the baby in 4-5 hours. At this point it was 4:45am or so. Theoretically, Jake could still go into the city, trade and come back. But we decided that wasn’t a very good idea and that he should stay just in case. They moved me to the labor room and another nurse came to get my information. By now it was a little past 5am. As she put in the needles for the blood collection (for cord blood) and for the IV, I called my mom and told her Jake was bringing David over. The nurse couldn’t get my blood to come out so she put the IV in and decided to try the other arm. My arm is very black and blue even now. And she still couldn’t get the full 3 vials the cord blood registry requested. She sent them 2.5 vials.



The nurse asked me if I wanted an epidural and I told her that I thought I could wait a bit longer. The contractions were pretty bad when they came but they were still pretty far apart and didn’t seem to last very long. She got a bunch more infromation and asked me a few more times about the epidural in the next 20 mins. I finally told her to go ahead and call the anesthesiologist. As it turned out he was beginning someone else’s epidural and would be over in around 20 mins. Around 5:40 or so Jake came back. He had dropped off David and gone back home to get some chargers we forgot. A few minutes after he came, my contractions got pretty bad. After one really really bad one, the nurse decided maybe she should check me right then so she dropped everything and checked. As it turned out I was 9.5cm dilated. Which meant I was in full labor mode and it was too late for epidural or anything else.



They put an emergency call to the doctor on call and asked a resident to come over just in case. Two more horrifying contractions later, just knowing I wasn’t going to get the epidural was freaking me out. The resident told me that the baby was coming so I just had to push. She popped my water (which still hadn’t broken) and told me to push. As I felt I might be splitting in half, I pushed once really hard. Just then the anesthesiologist came and, with one look at me, he reaized it was too late for him and left. I begged the resident to get the baby out and pushed one more time. On the third push, I felt the baby come out and we were done. It was 6:04am.

As I had requested, they gave the baby to me immediately and cleaned him while he was on me. He was really really purple. And it turns out his cord was wrapped around his head so it’s a good thing I didn’t have to push too long, we might have ended up in a c-section. He turned pink pretty quickly and his 1-min apgar score was 8 and his 5-minute one was a 9.

At this point, the doctor showed up and when she realized the baby was out, she started to collect the cord blood as the little one and I bonded.

And then they finally took him away to weigh and measure him. 6lbs 7oz and 20.5 inches.

After that, we spent some time relaxing in the labor room, calling our parents etc. The nurse left for the morning nurse who turned out to be the mother of one of David’s classmates which was HUGELY lucky because she got us a highly-desired private room at the hospital. On the way to our room, we stopped by the nursery for a K-shot and his first bath. And then we finally got to settle into our room and start the recovery process.

All in all, an extremely quick labor. It was 1 hour and 44 minutes from the time I arrived at the hospital to the time he was born. Thank God Jake didn’t go to work and had he spent an extra few minutes at home, he might have missed the whole labor. I got realy lucky and had no tears, nothing at all really so I had almost nothing to cause recovery issues. Most importantly, the little one turned out to be perfectly healthy and wonderful.



Here’s to life as a family of four.