The Arrival

So I've been trying to write the story of Little SOB's birth, but every time I sit down at the computer, he wants to latch onto a tit, and typing is difficult with a small creature attached to the front of you. He's sleeping right now, but who knows how long that will last! I'll try and get it all in!

The weekend of February 17th, Dr. SOB and I planned to have a nice romantic date because we were thinking it might be our last weekend not being responsible for another human being. On saturday we went to the movies and had a nice dinner, stayed up late and had a lazy sunday morning. We lazed around all day, went to the gym, nothing too exciting. The olympics were on and I had TiVo'd the USA-Sweden hockey game. Dr. SOB was lightly napping on the couch as I watched the game. With about 2 minutes left in the game, I had to pee. I came back to the living room, and as I sat down, my water broke. Just a little, so don't worry about sitting on my couch or anything. (By the way, I was sitting in the same spot I peed on earlier! Can you believe it?) At first I wasn't actually sure my water had broken, but within a few minutes things became quite certain! I called the doctor, my mom, my mother-in-law and a few friends, posted a quick entry here and emailed my peeps that things were going on. Because I was positive for group B strep, I had to go to the hospital right away for antibiotics, even though I wasn't having any labor pains. We actually parked a few blocks from the hospital and walked over with the bags and things. Once I got there, the took me to the first unit where the check you out and make sure you didn't pee your pants and mistake it for having your water break. The doc who checked out my hoo-ha knew Dr. SOB, so that was interesting. It was determined that my water had indeed broken, so I got an IV and shipped to our private delivery room. Once we got there, I realized that I was starving, but they won't let you eat anything that isn't clear once you are in labor, so I sent Dr. SOB out for some popsicles. He came back with popsicles for me and a chipwich for himself, which was evil. We then proceeded to watch Rosemary's Baby on his laptop and talk to about 10,964 people on the phone over the next few hours. This whole time, I wasn't really having any pain, even though the monitors and such said I was having contractions. They gave me something to 'help me relax' around midnight and I kind of passed out, although I was really itchy from the drugs. At midnight, they checked my progress and I was dilated to 3 centimeters. The plan was to start me on pitocin at 6am to get things really going. Around 5am, I started having the real contractions, all by myself! It was kind of rough, but bearable at first. I started to inquire about the epidural because I wanted to be prepared before things got too awful. The nurse told us that the anesthesiologist on call that night was kind of a bitch and if I could wait until 7 when day shift came on, I would be better off. This nurse was a total sweetheart and was honestly just looking out for me, but of course the on call anesthesiologist just happened to be someone that graduated from Dr. SOB's program the year before. In all honesty, she told Dr. SOB that she hated working OB and asked him to tell me to wait until 7am, too! They did start pitocin at 6am, and I asked for the epidural at 7:01am. Unfortunately, there were several cases going on and I didn't get it until 8:30am. Those were a rough couple of hours right there. Once I got the epidural, my doctor came and checked my progress, and I had only dilated to 4 centimeters overnight. They cranked the pitocin, and I fell asleep for about an hour and a half. All of a sudden, I woke up feeling some intense pressure in my pelvic area. A resident came in but didn't check me because she though there was no way I had progressed very far in such a short amount of time. Then I started puking. That is one of those signals listed in every description of labor that baby time is imminent. The nurse called my doctor and had him come in to check me out around 10:30am, at which point I was fully dilated. I think even he was surprised! I started pushing around 10:45 and Little SOB was born at 11:05am on February 20, 2006. He weighed 7 pounds, 10 ounces and was 19.75 inches long.

I think the most surprising thing to me was how not difficult it was to have this baby shoot out of my body. Things went so smoothly and quickly, and the pain really wasn't unbearable, even before the epidural. (Side note: I would never have decided not to get the epidural, though. If you can do it without pain, why not?) It was coming home from the hospital that was the tough part. That's another post!