Christmas surprise

Christmas Eve morning, my significant other and I packed a picnic and took a drive up to the top of Mount Diablo. My stomach was feeling a little bit uneasy and as soon as we made it to the top of the eleven mile mountain, I jumped out of the car, got down on my knees and threw up for a good five minutes. After that, I felt better and was all set to go for a light hike on top of the beautiful natural site. After a long nap, we headed to San Francisco to celebrate Christmas and then decided to go to midnight mass to welcome Christmas. During mass, my baby was squirmy--even squirmier than usual. I leaned over to my significant other and jokingly told him that I was pretty sure our baby was just about ready to join us. At 1am, we parked outside of my apartment complex and debated if we should exchange our gifts that night or wait until Christmas morning. As we chatted and walked toward my apartment in the freezing cold night, I felt something warm and wet gush through my pants. I know that very few women have water that breaks in a gush and I had given up on the idea that my baby would arrive on Christmas eve, so I was in a bit of shock. Maybe it's something else, I said to myself before saying anything to my significant other. I took another step and felt another gush. "Honey, I think it's happening," I said.
"It's ok. We will be fine. Let's go in the house and check and then we can call the doctor if we need to," he assured me, trying to keep me calm.

We got into the house and I ran to the bathroom and the water just kept on flowing. I stepped into the shower and the water continued to flow out of me, as if I was a waterfall. I called the doctor as I stood in the bathtub and they suggested that I come in to confirm that in fact my water had broken. There was no question though...we knew the water had broken and there'd be no turning back. Unfortunately though, we were sure that the baby was going to arrive late that my hospital bag was no longer packed. We scrambled to find the ipod, the floppy frog that played the i-pod, pictures, appropriate clothing and more. By the time we were packed, it was after 2am. There was one more order of business that had to be taken care of before we could go to the hospital. We needed to exchange our Christmas gifts. We sat down under the Christmas tree and did a quick swap of gifts and exchanged a quick kiss. "Ok, this is it!" we said to each other. By 3:00am, we were at the hospital.

It still hadn't quite registered for me that in a matter of hours, we'd have a baby. Everything we'd learned in our birthing classes and on the videos we'd watched and books we'd read became fairly irrelevant. The hospital didn't have my birthing plan on hand. Once my contraction monitor was in place, I realized that all the jabbing back pains I'd been experiencing for the past weeks were contractions. In the labor room, my significant other settled into the cot and I got into the bed. We thought we'd rest up in early labor  and be fully energized and ready to push when the baby was ready to arrive. Turned out we were wrong. Every 15 minutes a nurse, a lab assistant, a midwife or someone else was in to check on me. By 8am, the midwife checked me and saw that I was 1.5 cm dilated..she to my dismay recommended that I start petocin. I negotiated and asked her to give me some more time. My significant other and I then put on our jackets and headed out of the room. We walked up and down stair cases, around the hospital repeatedly and then came back to the room. We repeated this a few times throughout the morning. At noon, a new midwife was on duty and was ready to begin administering petocin. I negotiated one more time. I asked her to give me two more hours to be active and see how much progress I could make on my own. By this point though, I could no longer walk more than a step or two at a time without keeling over or grabbing onto a pole, a wall or my significant other. I had a strong urge to push and was certain that they'd find that I was dilated and no longer in need of the petocin. When I got back to the room, the midwife let me know that she wasn't checking me again and that they were going to go ahead and administer petocin. I felt deflated and completely out of control of my own body. By now, my pain level was registering at a 9 or a 10 and I was feeling a constant urge to push. The nurse came in and let me know that she started petocin and came back a few minutes later letting us know that she'd doubled the dosage. I asked for a relaxant to take the edge of. The nurse than administered a four hour narcotic, as the entire medical team was sure I was no where close to delivering. The medicine took the edge off and knocked me out for up to 30 seconds at a time and then I found myself waking up in pain, laying on my side and pushing. I couldn't help it. It was almost like the pushes were completely involuntary. The midwife finally came to recheck me just to appease me and then confirmed that I was at 9.5 cm dilated and then all of a sudden, I was at a 10. I was in full labor while under the influence of the narcotic they'd given me just an hour earlier. First I used a squat bar and made some good progress. Then when I found my rhythm and was ready to keep pushing, the midwife removed the bar, had me get on my back and told me to hold my breath and be quiet. In all my classes, I'd learned about exhaling as a tactic for coping with pain and sound as the source of strength to get us through the intense pain and pushing. I had nurses on each side of me, pulling my legs back with a midwife sitting in front of me sternly instructing me of how and what to do. My significant other was at my side and encouraged me not to give up. "Honey you can do this. I saw her head. She has lots of hair. I know you can do it." The nurse brought the mirror and positioned it in front of me so I could see my progress. I could see the head crowing at the top of the contraction and then just when I thought the whole head was about to come out, my contraction ended and the baby went back inside. We repeated this process about 15 times. And then at last, we heard the click of a scissors--which was the sound of the midwife doing a second-degree episiotomy and then my baby girl was on my belly. What a relief! All of the chaos absolutely paid off and we were given the best Christmas present ever. A beautiful baby girl:).