3-2-1 BLASTOFF!

First, I wanna say how much I appreciate all of the gals from ICAN and various blogs for your advice and thoughts and prayers. Had I not found ICAN, I would never be able to beam about my successful VBA2C on November 9th. It was NOT easy to battle doctors and even wrestle with myself, but it was so worth it!
On November 6th, my due date, I spent the entire day with painful, irregular contractions. I was so sure I was heading into labor. My step sons were set to fly off to Florida for a vacation with their mother, so I was also very upset and emotional about them missing the birth. By the middle of the night, the contractions let up and November 7th was a very easy-going, uneventful day. Monday, November 8th was a very busy one. We were in the process of moving and all of our homeschooling books were mistakenly packed and moved. So I decided to just take my girls to the Botanical Center for a field trip day. I was surprised that I wasn't completely worn out afterwards! I dropped my two youngest girls off with their dad, then my oldest daughter and I decided to go get hair cuts. We went grocery shopping, then back home to pack some.
That's when the contractions started up again.
It was also about this time that I got a phone call that my husband had been in a car accident.
He was fine, but our car was totaled, so I had to pick him up.
Driving was nearly impossible. I couldn't focus on the road and ended up missing my exit to West Des Moines and had to go quite a ways to turn around and come back into town.
After I got my husband, we ran back to Target to grab stuff I'd forgotten. We got home and I still had to make dinner. My daughter didn't get to bed until 11pm, poor thing.
At about 1am, I finally decided to start timing the contractions. I really thought I was just dealing with false labor again, but they seemed to be really close together and consistent.
2 1/2 minutes apart. I couldn't keep track of the clock, but I found a website, that's also a phone app [url]http://contractionmaster.com/[/url]. REALLY HANDY!!
At about 3:30am, with contractions coming 2 minutes apart, and knowing I had an hour and a half drive ahead of us, I woke up my husband and daughter and we packed up and headed to Iowa City.
It was about 6am when we got there and I was told I was barely 2cm dilated. I was so depressed.
They decided since I had such a drive back to Des Moines, that they'd go ahead and admit me.
They also decided I was too overweight for the wireless monitoring, so I was stuck with the regular ones, which don't stay in place, so I have to be very still and can't be unhooked from it for very long, which was very annoying.
I was also talked into an epidural. I was told that should it come down to an emergency c-section, if I didn't have an epidural in place, I'd have to put under for the birth and my husband wouldn't be able to be present. Having had one failed VBAC, this scared me. I went ahead and accepted an epidural, but since I was still only 4cm, they discouraged me from it until the baby moved down more.
Around 6pm, family showed up. I should clarify, family I didn't invite and didn't want there, showed up. They were in and out of the room, talking, phones going off every other minute. It was totally killing my concentration.
The monitors kept slipping, so I was told that I'd have to have internal monitoring if they couldn't keep baby online. I was really upset about it and didn't want it at all. FINALLY, a nurse was able to get the monitor placed right, but the minute she walked out of the room, a team walked in and I was told that if I wanted to VBAC, that I'd have to [i]have[/i] the internal monitoring. This same team wrangled me around to place the monitors. It wasn't well explained to me. It was horrifying and humiliating and painful. There was absolutely no reason for it. My baby hadn't shown a single sign of distress. I was given the epidural around 8cm.
It didn't work. I've experienced that before, so I wasn't too surprised, but it did ruin my ability to keep control over my pain. When you expect pain relief and don't get it.....
It also insured that I wouldn't be able to move into other birthing positions. I was pretty disappointed.
I started to feel an urge to push, but was told not to- that I had a cervical lip and that I could damage my cervix if I pushed too early. The urge to push got stronger and stronger over the next two hours until it became involuntary. I panicked, having been told not to push. I also was worried that I'd have a BM with my mother-in-law. (I didn't, btw.)
Finally, someone went to get the doctor and tell her that I was pushing regardless, so the team came.
I believe being stuck in the bed like I was cause baby to be positioned weird. I pushed hard for probably only 5- 10 minutes and he was out. My perineum was in tact, but I had lacerations near the urethra / clitoris. There was a lot of bleeding and the repair was pretty painful. I had asked for delayed cutting of the umbilical cord, which was “oopsed”. The doctor had already clamped it.
One of the few things that went my way, was that my 9lb 8oz baby boy was left to bond with me for a nice long extended time and I was able to hold him during as many procedures as possible. Another thing that went right was that I had asked that only a specific brand of Hepatitis B vaccine be used and staff was very careful to fulfill that request.
We didn’t name him for a few hours, which annoyed the family. But Warren Elric’s Apgars were 9 and 9. He latched on easily in the delivery room.
There was FAR more interruptions throughout our stay at this hospital than others. Had I realized how intrusive the newborn blood screen would be, I would have opted out.
All-in-all, I got to have my VBAC, but it wasn’t the dream birth, with me in control, like I’d hoped. If I EVER have another baby, I WILL have a DOULA!! There is NO way around it!

Launch Delayed

Today is D-Day. I hate due dates! They're full of lies!
The idea of a due date comes first, from the Bible's account of human gestation from conception to birth lasting about 10 lunar months and second, our miscalculation of a lunar month being 28 days, and third, the unscientific thought that all women have a 28 days menstrual cycle and ovulate on day 14 of that cycle. A lunar month is actually 29.53 days, meaning about 296 days or 42 weeks and a couple days. And remember this is 42+ weeks AFTER conception. Doctors begin counting your 40 weeks at the first day of your last menstrual cycle, about 2 weeks before you're even pregnant. They are giving you a expiration date about 4 weeks too early! All that said, the average first time mom gives birth after about 288 days. The average mom having her second or subsequent child gives birth after 283 days, both longer than 266-280 days a doctor assigns you. But when it all comes down to it, babies come when they're ready and that shouldn't be unnecessarily interfered with. And slapping a specific date on it completely unhelpful and asinine. :P

Testing all drives in safe mode.

Spent the last two days having more intense contractions, but they're very irregular. I've been trying everything to get labor going: drinking raspberry leaf tea, using a breast pump, walking, doing lunges, forcing my husband to be a porn star on demand..... I don't know that anything is actually helping, but I do feel better when I *think* I'm making a difference. HA!


Baby Name Poll still open, lol.