Eric Anthony Herman!!
On Friday, July 12, I woke up with stomach cramps at 5:30 in the morning. I went to the bathroom and lost my mucus plug. I immediately thought, "this is the day." Adriana wasn't awake yet, so normally I would have gone back to sleep. But, since I wasn't in any pain yet, I decided that I should take a shower. I didn't know if I'd have the chance later. I was told labor would be much quicker this time (lies!), like half the time of the first time, so I thought I might be having the baby around 12:30. I wanted to shower before I had to go to the hospital.
I went to tell Scott what was going on. I told him he could go back to sleep, though, since we still had plenty of time. He later teased me about how crazy I sounded. "We're having a baby, but go back to sleep. It's not like there's any reason to get all excited."
By the time I got out of the shower, Adriana was awake, and my contractions had started. Strangely enough, I felt them in my back and thighs. I started to time them, and they were about 7 or 8 minutes apart. Scott asked what I wanted him to do. I told him to go to work since he only works half of the day on Fridays in the summer, and I would call him if things started to progress. He said he wanted hourly updates.
Around 9:00, my contractions were six minutes apart, but they weren't strong. Still, I gave Scott the update, and I also updated my mom and Scott's mom. My mom said she and my dad would go ahead and come since they had a two-hour drive. As soon as I got off the phone with my mom, my contractions slowed down to 7 or 8 minutes apart again. Adriana took a nap around 10:00, and I decided that since people were going to be in our house, I should put laundry away and clean up some other stuff instead of taking a nap myself. Stupid decision. Scott left work at 11:00 because he said he couldn't concentrate on anything anyway.
By 12:30, my parents were at our house, Scott was home, and Adriana was awake. We decided to all go on a walk to see if that would make anything happen. By the end of the walk, my contractions were at 5 minutes apart, but they still weren't at all strong. When we got back from the walk, Scott and I ran and errand while Adriana played with Mom and Dad at home. At 3:00, I got my first semi-painful contraction, and they stayed that severity every five minutes for the next hour.
I called the doctor around 4:00, and I told her that my contractions had been 5 minutes apart for an hour, but they weren't as strong as I expected. She said I could choose to stay at home or come in, but she would recommend coming in just to get checked out, so that's what I did.
Hospitals must make me tense up or something because as soon as I stepped into the hospital, my contractions got really strong. I told Scott that if I would have known that, I would have gone to the hospital at 5:30 that morning instead of waiting around all day. I was admitted to a triage room and a nurse immediately asked if I wanted anything to help with the pain. This was frustrating to me because I had an appointment with a nurse a couple of weeks before where I explained that I did not want to be offered pain medication. I explained that it had happened with Adriana, and I wanted to make sure it didn't happen again. She assured me it wouldn't. Whatever.
The triage nurse checked me and told me I was 3 cm dilated, but that I could be stretched to 4 cm. The doctor came in then, and she had a stick in her hand. She asked if I wanted to have my water broken so we could get this moving. I said that when I had Adriana, the doctor on call that day explained to me that breaking my water would cause me to immediately go into the final stages of labor, and the level of pain would jump dramatically instead of gradually getting to that level. Scott reiterated my concerns, and said that it would essentially be the same as getting induced, which would increase my chances of "needing" an epidural. She kind of blew off our concerns. She said, "it's just going to get you to the level of pain that you would eventually get to anyway." Still, we said that I did not want to have my water broken, and the doctor left.
The nurse told me that I should walk around for awhile to see if any change had been made. She then said, "if you haven't made any progress after your walk, you'll have to decide if you want to have your water broken or go home." What!?!? Being in labor isn't an option? My contractions have been 5 minutes apart for well over an hour at this point. That's when they tell you to call. If I go home, what has to happen for me to be able to call again? If the baby is crowning, is that enough to say that I can come back to the hospital?
So we walked. We were annoyed, but we walked. Mom was with us by this time. Poppy and Adriana were at home waiting for Brandon and the boys to get there. Adriana didn't really know what was going on, but she was excited to get to see her cousins!
When my contractions were 2 - 3 minutes apart, we went back to the triage room to be checked. A new nurse came on (thank God!). She told me I was at 4 cm, and could be stretched to 5 cm. She also told me that I could have a room, and that natural childbirths were her favorite. She said it's the best part of her job.
I got a room with a labor tub, but I couldn't get in until they had my IV in and they had done some other stuff. So the nurse started to put in my IV. Apparently, she hit a valve. I felt a pop, and 15 days later, my hand still feels funny. She tried the other arm. I don't know exactly what went wrong on that arm, but she went to get another nurse after that. Finally, my IV was in. After monitoring the baby for a little while, they said I was allowed to get into the tub. It was 9:00.
The tub did help my pain. Scott asked if it hurt bad yet, and I said it did. He said I was hiding it well then. He said I seemed to be handling it better than I did with Adriana.
At 9:45, I had to get out of the tub so they could check my progress. Here's where it got frustrating. I was still only 5 cm. Just like when I got "stuck" with Adriana, I got really discouraged. I was afraid to ever have them check me again because I didn't want to hear the bad news.
The next couple of hours were kind of a blur. Mom was back with us by this time. The only way I could get semi-comfortable was lying on my side with someone using our massager on my back. At around 11:00, I started falling asleep between contractions because I was so exhausted. This caused my contractions to slow down and made labor last longer, which is why I said it was stupid to not take a nap when Adriana did earlier that day.
At about 11:45, I agreed to let the nurse check me again. I was 8.5 cm at this point, but the nurse said the baby was still pretty high. To me, that was crazy! For the past month or so, I had been in such pain because the baby felt so low. The nurse said I needed to let gravity work for me and sit straight up.
The pain was excruciating! No one could reach my back when I was sitting like that, so I couldn't get any relief when I felt the contractions in my back. I started talking crazy at this point. I yelled at my mom (sorry about that) and started asking for medication. I didn't want an epidural, just something to stop my back from hurting. Scott said no, my mom said it was too late, and the nurse just told me I could get some pain medicine once the baby was out.
Then I felt like I needed to push. The nurse said I couldn't, but I couldn't stop it. I tried so hard to stop, but I pushed twice when I was told I couldn't yet. Mom left sometime around here, but I don't remember it. Then, suddenly, the doctor was in our room (for the first time ever), and I was being told that it was ok to push. Scott said later that he looked at the clock at this point because he was thinking we only had about 30 minutes left. Or not.
I pushed once, and it felt just like a head coming out. I remember thinking, "there's no way...I wonder why it felt like that." But sure enough, I heard Scott say, "oh my gosh! I see its head!" I pushed again, and the doctor said the head was completely out. But then I was out of energy. The baby was coming out so quickly that I didn't have time to regain any strength. Everyone was telling me I needed to push to get the body out. I tried to push, but I wasn't strong enough, so one of the nurses pushed on my stomach as I pushed, and Scott told me the doctor pulled at the same time. Scott looked down and told me, "it's a boy!" Scott's mom later told us that from the time my mom walked into the lobby until she received the "It's a boy!" text from Scott, it was 8 minutes. None of us could believe how quickly the baby came once it was time to push.
The nurses immediately started commenting on his hair. They called it blonde (we think it's more blondish-brown) and couldn't believe how much he had. Then they asked us his name. I said, "Eric Anthony." A little while later, our moms came back to meet their newest grandson.
After getting us into a postpartum room and doing check after check after check, we finally got to sleep at about 6:00 a.m. It was definitely a long day, but it was definitely worth it to have our little Eric join our family.
