Dyan's Birth Story - Part 2

On Sunday, November 19th, Jim's parents were supposed to come over, after the Steeler game, to see how we had decorated the nursery. While I cleaned and straightened up the house, Jim read the newspaper. I'm guessing Jim has conveniently "forgot" that part of the story, but it is true.

We started watching the game late, since it was on DVR, and you know, Jim needed to finish reading his paper. Dylan always seemed to kick the most when I was sitting watching television, and he really seemed to kick a lot during the Steeler games for some reason. At about 2:30 in the afternoon, he kicked really hard, and I jumped. "OW! Jim, he just kicked me so hard!" At 2:45 my water broke. It didn't gush out, as I had expected, and I made it upstairs to the bathroom without Jim even knowing what was happening. After I gave myself a mental pep talk, I called down, "Jim?" "Yea?" "Can you bring me the phone?" "Why?" "My water just broke. I need to call the doctor".

I have to say, my husband is very laid back. I knew, though, that he was nervous about his role. To be honest, I was nervous about how he would be also, but I was very pleasantly surprised. He was calm, (at least outwardly), and got right to work. "What do you need me to do first?" "Pack the car, while I call the doctor". I called the doctor at 3:00, and she told me to go to the hospital, even though, "this could take a while". I sat in the front on the way to the hospital and gave Jim directions, in between contractions. Jim called his parents and I called my dad ( my mom was out Christmas shopping). We told them they didn't need to come to the hospital yet, and that we would call them when the time was right.

When we checked in, the nurse behind the counter kept firing questions at me. I would stop talking every once in a while, to have a contraction, then continue answering her. When she was finally done, she said she just needed to print out our information, and then we could head to triage. I really wanted to lie down, but would you believe, her printer picked that exact moment to stop working? She was laughing, and chatting away, while trying to fix that darn printer, and I was in my happy place where printers aren't needed. Finally, I think I shot her the eyebrows while breathing in through my nose, and out through my mouth, and she said to go ahead to triage and she would come find us when she got the printer working.

In the triage room, another nurse started asking me questions. The only one I remember was, "Natural or drugs?" (I might be paraphrasing here). I remember saying, "I would like to do this naturally, but I reserve the right to change my mind". My doctor wasn't there yet, so another doctor came into the room, to "see where we were at". I heard her say, "She's fully dilated! The baby's head is right here!", and suddenly the room was a flurry of activity. They all started rushing around, and suddenly I was being wheeled down the hall, with Jim chasing after us!

Once they got me in the delivery room, I started pushing. It was around 4:30 and my doctor didn't arrive until 5-ish. I was pushing, but the baby's head was stuck, and wasn't moving much with each push. I wanted to punch the nurse, because with each push, she would scream, "THAT'S THE PUSH!", but nope, not the push. The doctor decided to do an episiotomy and THAT was the push. At 5:54pm, there he was. I had never seen anything more amazing. When he wrapped his hand around my finger, I knew that my life would never be the same.

*For those of you keeping track, Dylan was born 3 weeks early, and my entire delivery lasted only 3 hrs. (I always did like the number 3!) And, yes, there were no drugs. For those of you severely hating me right now, I would just like to remind you that Dylan had colic for the first 4 months of life, and screamed until I thought my head would explode. Things have a way of balancing out. For those of you who had long, agonizing deliveries AND a baby with colic, my sincerest apologies and absolute admiration. You may now throw things at the screen and scream obscenities. Our lamaze class had a reunion, a few months after all the babies were born. After we all met the babies and got caught up, we sat in on another Lamaze class in progress. We went down the line, and told our birth stories one at a time. I was first. Each story after mine seemed to get worse, and worse, and by the end, a guy in the class, who by this point looked rather pale, asked while pointing at me, "Why didn't you let her go last?!"