The story of Lily Renee's birth

She's finally here! And we're finally home. We made it home from the hospital on Wednesday afternoon. We had wanted to leave Tuesday but the pediatricians wanted to watch Lily for one more day.

Lily's birth was intense. I started having regular contractions on Sunday afternoon but nothing was painful. It wasn't until Monday afternoon at 3 PM that the contractions were regular and painful. At 4 PM I told Scott to call the midwife. The longer we waited the more traffic there would be and I didn't want to spend any more time than necessary in the car. She told us to come in. When we got to Labor and Delivery I was only 2 cm dilated but 100% effaced. Our midwife was with another mom who was pushing so we saw a Resident and her sidekick medical student. She spoke with our midwife and they agreed that I should leave for 2 hours and come back and see how I was doing. They gave us a few suggestions including walking around Westwood or just going home. I thought I wanted to walk but on the walk from Labor & Delivery to the car I realized I wasn't really in a state to walk around. The contractions were painful and I felt really conspicuous during them. We went home.

I tried taking a bath. The bath felt really good but it still hurt a lot during the contractions. I staying in for about 30 minutes or so and then decided to lay on my side on the bed. Scott quickly ate something during this time but I wasn't able to eat anything. I laid on the bed for the next hour or so while Scott rubbed my back and tried to provide emotional support. Things progressed to feeling worse and worse for me. I know I told Scott I thought I was dying. I told him I needed an epidural. He kept reminding me that I could do it and we would just see what happened. As it approached 8:00 PM (which would have been our 2-hour mark to return to the hospital) we started to get ready to go. This was a slow process because the contractions were so close together. I had to stop for each one and really focus. I told Scott I didn't know how I would make it back to the hospital. In my mind I was imagining what would happen if we had to call an ambulance to take me to the hospital.

But we were able to get on our way. We stopped several times on the way down two flights of stairs and out to the car. The ride to the hospital was not fun at all. Thankfully there wasn't any traffic so we made it there quickly but each contraction was very hard to deal with sitting in the seat with a seatbelt on. We parked in the emergency room parking lot which is supposed to be a 15 minute loading zone. We decided to walk up to Labor and Delivery instead of being checked in through the Emergency Room again. We thought it might be faster and I didn't want to go through there again, probably a little out of embarrassment. When we got out of the car I told Scott I was getting the epidural. We took the elevators up to the 2nd floor to L&D and the floor was being waxed. We only had to walk over a couple of feet of wet floor but the workers wouldn't let me walk over it, meanwhile I'm in serious pain but they are worried about me slipping. We took the elevators down one floor and took a different set of elevators up.

We walked into L&D and found someone to get a nurse for us. We were standing in the hall waiting when two nurses came walking down the hall to greet us. I remember being incredibly frustrated that they were walking and not running down the hall. I got changed and laid on the exam table in triage. They asked me some questions. They asked me something about how much pain I was in and I said I wanted the epidural. At this point the only way I could get through a contraction was to wrap my arms around Scott's neck, lay my head on his shoulder and sway back and forth with him, and moan.

Our midwife, Ann, came in to check me. She said I was at 6 cms. She said I did really good work while we were gone. They weren't expecting me to be that far along at all. They checked me into a Delivery room, into a gown, and into the delivery bed. The nurses started setting me up with a heplock (basically an IV line that isn't connected to anything) and Ann came in to talk to me. She examined me again. She told me I was at 9 cms with a bulging bag of waters. I had progressed 3 cms in about a half hour. She said she knew I had been asking about an epidural. She said at this point she could order the epidural or she could break my bag of waters and we could continue naturally. At this point I was between contractions so I was feeling relatively OK. Scott encouraged me to have my water broken. I considered the epidural but also thought about how it would take a few minutes to get started and how difficult it would be to be still while it was placed. I decided to have my water broken.

Ann proceeded immediately. I'm pretty sure she was trying to do it before my next contraction and before I could change my mind. She told me I would feel warm liquid gushing out. It was not painful at all, there was enough pain elsewhere that I barely noticed she had done it. Unfortunately there was meconium in the fluid. This is baby's first bowel movement and if Lily were to swallow it during her delivery it can cause problems. Ann notified the pediatricians of this and they would have to examine Lily immediately after she was born to make sure she didn't inhale any of it. I was disappointed by this because I've always imagined holding her immediately after she came out.

I did notice more pressure at this point but I don't think really more pain. Ann told me to tell her when I felt I needed to push. I told her I didn't know what that would feel like and she told me that I would. After a couple more contractions I told Ann I was pushing. It was a strange feeling that came over my whole body and there was no way I could have stopped myself from doing it--my whole body pushed. This overwhelming push only happened one more time during the rest of the labor process. I had been looking forward to this point a lot because I had heard that it's usually more enjoyable since you actually get to do something and the end is in sight. At first I struggled with it. I was getting through each contraction making noise and it took me a while to figure out that if I was making noise I wasn't holding my breath and I needed to hold my breath to push effectively. I think I only realized that in the last few minutes of pushing. I told Ann and Scott I was a terrible pusher and I didn't know what I was doing, they tried to guide me and Ann was trying to figure out why I was holding back. I'm still not sure why I was either. I think I may have been preparing myself for a long pushing stage--which luckily never happened. I also had no idea what point I was at. I think people were telling me but I wasn't processing it. I felt her crowning but I wasn't sure what it was. Scott finally told me that her head was out and with another push she came out the rest of the way.

She was immediately passed off to a group of pediatricians that had rushed in at the last second. They were working around here. I saw a little oxygen tube placed by her nose and they were thumping her chest to get the fluid out. It was hard for me to grasp what I had just done. Scott was standing in between the bed where I was laying and the nook where they were attending to Lily. I think he was as shocked as I was. Lily was perfect. She didn't breath in the meconium and her 1 and 5 minute APGARs were 9 and 9 (out of 10). 10 fingers and 10 toes, no birthmarks and no conehead.

Then I had to deliver the placenta. The resident was still assisting Ann. They gave a slight tug on the placenta to see if it was ready to come out and it was not. That was an uncomfortable feeling. A minute or so later they told me to push and I pushed it out. That was probably the most gratifying part of the whole birthing process. My whole body felt relief after it was out, it was like a huge sigh through my whole body. Later I asked to see the placenta. The resident showed it to me and showed me all of the parts, the sack that held Lily, the part that was attached to my uterus and the part that attached to Lily. It was really amazing.

After the placenta was out Ann had to massage my uterus to get it to start contracting. She massaged my stomach which wasn't the most comfortable feeling but it didn't really hurt. Then I got my baby. The pediatricians passed her off to Scott and asked what her name was. Scott let me announce it to the room. Everyone was giving us their congratulations and I got to hold her. She was beautiful of course. I couldn't believe I was finally meeting her. A few minutes later we started breastfeeding. I think this was around 10:45 PM or so. She did a great job.

At that point Scott had to go move the car. Since everything happened so fast our car was still parked in the patient drop off spaces in the emergency room lot. We didn't even have our camera or the rest of our things. When Scott returned he started taking our first pictures of Lily. We had to spend 2 hours in the Delivery room so that the nurses could monitor me and make sure I wasn't hemorrhaging. They were watching my blood pressure because it was getting pretty high. I still felt out of sorts with myself but I didn't really feel bad. The nurses gave Lily a bath and showed Scott how it was done. They also gave her a Vitamin K shot and put antibiotic ointment in her eyes. Ann ordered some blood work on me to make sure I was OK or if my body was just recovering from childbirth and my blood pressure would go down again.

Then it was time to move on to the recovery room. The nurses helped me into the bathroom to clean up. I tried to go to urinate but couldn't and they helped me to get the blood cleaned off me. I got into a wheelchair with Lily and we made our way to our room. Unfortunately we had a roommate. The nurses showed us around the room and said Scott could stay until our night nurse came and checked in with me before he left since visiting hours were long over. He was reluctant to leave but extremely exhausted as well. The nurse came in later and helped me to the bathroom. While she was there she helped Scott change his first and Lily's first poopy diaper.

And our day was finally over at about 1 AM. And Lily and I were on our own for our first night together.